Grief can change everything at once.
Some people come to grief therapy soon after a death.
Others come years after a loss, when grief catches up with them.
Some grieve losses no one else sees, like a relationship, a pregnancy or a future they hoped for.
Maybe you feel:
- empty
- guilty
- heartbroken
- numb
Your grief is as big as your love.
Grief therapy gives your loss somewhere to be held.
What is Grief Therapy?
Grief therapy helps you understand your grief, feel it and let it change you.
It starts from the idea that grief isn’t a problem to solve, but a response to love and loss.
Grief therapy also looks at how the loss happened and what it changed in your life.
It can help with the loss of a person, pet, pregnancy, relationship, health, home, job or a life you expected.
For families, therapy can help each person grieve in their own way, together.
Therapy gives you a place to grieve without hurrying.
How Grief Therapy Helps
Therapy gives you a companion in your grief, someone who stays even when the world moves on.
It can help whether your loss was sudden or expected, recent or long ago.
In grief therapy you can learn to:
- carry guilt and regret more gently
- find ways to stay connected
- make room for every feeling
- move between grief and daily life
- talk about your loss openly
Nothing can replace who or what you lost, but therapy can help you live alongside the loss.
Time alone doesn’t heal grief, which often comes in waves that touch different parts of your life.
Grief can soften and make room for life again.
What is a Grief Therapist?
A grief therapist is a registered therapist who helps people through the effects of loss.
Many therapists support grief, and some take specialized training in grief and bereavement.
Some train in traumatic grief, for losses that are sudden or overwhelming.
Some therapists work with children and teens, who often grieve in bursts and through play.
Some specialize in pregnancy and infant loss.
Some work in hospice and palliative care, before and after a death.
What matters most is that the therapist is a good fit for you, whatever approach they use.
Some Approaches for Grief Therapy
Expressive Arts
It uses art, writing or music to express what’s hard to put into words.
Multicultural
It honors the ways your culture and family grieve, mourn and remember.
Person-Centered
It offers steady presence, so your grief can unfold at its own pace.
Spiritual
It makes room for questions of meaning, faith and life after death.
What to Expect in Grief Therapy
Grief therapy often starts by talking about who or what you lost.
You might bring photos, letters or memories to share.
Early sessions often explore how the loss happened, how you’re coping and who supports you.
Your therapist might ask about your relationship, and what the loss has changed.
Some therapists suggest small rituals between sessions, like writing a letter or visiting a meaningful place.
If people have told you how or how long to grieve, that’s worth talking about.
Grief therapy can be a few sessions or a longer companionship, depending on what you need.
People have long tried to explain how grief should go.
In the 1800s, mourning came with rules.
A widow wore black for about two years, then grey, then lavender. After Prince Albert died in 1861, Queen Victoria wore black for the rest of her life.
In 1917, in the middle of a war that left millions grieving, neurologist Sigmund Freud published Mourning and Melancholia. He wrote that grieving meant slowly letting go of the person who died, and called it the work of mourning. Letting go was seen as the goal. Years later, after his daughter died, Freud wrote to a friend that after such a loss, we remain inconsolable.
On November 28, 1942, a fire swept through the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, killing 492 people. Psychiatrist Erich Lindemann studied the families and survivors left behind. In 1944, he described grief as normal, with predictable signs, and believed it could often be worked through in a matter of weeks.
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In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying. She described five stages from her conversations with dying patients: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
The stages were meant to describe dying, not grieving. Kübler-Ross herself said people move through them in different orders, or through several at once. But the stages became the way the world talked about grief.
In 1989, grief researcher Kenneth Doka named disenfranchised grief. It describes losses others don’t recognize, like the death of an ex, a pet, a pregnancy or a death by overdose.
In 1996, researchers Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman challenged the idea of letting go. They found many people stay connected to those who died, through memories, rituals and conversations. They called these continuing bonds.
In 1999, researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut described grief as moving back and forth. People turn toward the loss, then toward daily life, then back again.
In 2001, psychologist Robert Neimeyer described grief as rebuilding meaning in a changed world, not working through stages.
In 2002, psychologist George Bonanno followed people from before to after their spouses died. He found that many were resilient and never went through intense, drawn-out grief, which challenged the idea that everyone has to do grief work.
But grief is still often measured by how quickly people return to normal.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic left many people grieving alone, without funerals, goodbyes or anyone to hold them.
In 2022, psychiatry’s diagnostic manual added prolonged grief disorder for grief that stays intense and disabling for a year or more.
In Alberta, employers only have to give 3 days of unpaid bereavement leave a year, and only after 90 days on the job.
Many cultures grieve in community, through ceremony and over long periods of time. In Canada, some of those ways of mourning are often overlooked, and were once banned.
Sudden, violent or stigmatized deaths can bring trauma along with grief, but the trauma isn’t always recognized or talked about.
And grief that doesn’t follow the stages can be mistaken for being stuck.
Trauma-sensitive grief therapy works inside those gaps. It trusts that your grief has its own timing. It makes room for every loss, including the ones others don’t see. It works with trauma before asking you to process the loss. It honors the ways your family and culture grieve. And it lets you stay connected to who or what you lost.
Trauma-sensitive therapy starts by honoring your loss.
Trauma-Sensitive Grief Therapy
What if your grief is tangled with trauma?
A loss can bring up shock, fear or old wounds.
Trauma-sensitive therapists understand that how you grieve is shaped by what happened, what came before or what it left behind.
5 phrases you might hear in Trauma-Sensitive Grief Therapy:
- There’s no timeline here.
- What helps you feel connected?
- It makes sense this brought up old pain.
- What else was happening in your life then?
- We can go as slowly as you need.
Trauma-sensitive grief therapy invites you to trust your grief.
Principles of Trauma-Sensitive Grief Therapy
Every loss counts
Some losses aren’t acknowledged by others. Your grief and your feelings are real, whoever or whatever you lost.
Bonds continue
You don’t have to let go to heal. Staying connected through memories, rituals or conversations can be part of grieving.
Safety first
When a loss is sudden or violent, the shock can block the grief. Feeling safer comes before facing what happened.
Your own way
Grief has no right order or timeline. In trauma-sensitive therapy, you can grieve in the ways that fit you and your culture.
Questions You Can Ask a Grief Therapist
A consultation is a good time to ask questions. Trust how you feel after the conversation as much as the answers themselves.
How do you understand grief?
Have you worked with this kind of loss?
What if my loss was traumatic?
Can we talk about my faith or culture?
What if I’m not ready to talk about it?
What if my grief is years old?
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