Grief Counseling
We will all lose someone we love at some point in our life—most of us at many points—and the loss can often hit us harder than we expect.
If we feel really knocked off our feet or are struggling for a prolonged period of time, that may be a sign that we need some professional help to move on.
Our main goal of most grief counseling is to help the client integrate the reality of their loss into their lives going forward, and helping them to maintain a healthy bond to the loved one they lost, If an individual was experiencing distress before the loss they suffered, or if their grief is chronic and interferes with normal functioning, our mental health professional. can help them to address their intense emotions and move on with the healing process. Additionally, as with most forms of therapy, it is most effective if the individual voluntarily seeks it out
Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: What’s the Difference?
In general, the difference between counseling and therapy is merely one of semantics. Both counseling and therapy use discussion between the client and the mental health professional to help the client address emotional, mental, or behavioral issues and solve problems.
However, the terms “counseling” and “therapy” are sometimes used in slightly different ways; counseling is more often used to refer to sessions focused on assisting clients who are dealing with everyday stressors and looking for ways to cope with normal issues and problems, while therapy is more frequently used to describe sessions in which clients are battling more difficult, more pervasive, and/or more chronic problems, like depression, anxiety, or addiction.
Thus, although grief counseling and grief therapy are basically the same things, “grief counseling” may refer to the counseling that any individual might receive after losing a loved one, while “grief therapy” is more likely to refer to sessions that a client engages in when they are experiencing issues outside of the normal range of responses due to their grief.
For example, if a widow is simply struggling to cope with the loss of her husband, she may seek grief counseling; however, if she has lost her appetite and has had trouble sleeping for weeks, it may be a more serious problem that she seeks grief therapy for.
