Grief Counseling – Coping with Death & Loss

What is Grief Counseling?

Grief is our natural, emotional response to loss. Most commonly associated with the death of a family member or other loved one, many other circumstances cause us to experience grief. 

Common reasons for grief include relationship breakups, losing your health, or having a miscarriage. People also grieve for a job they lost, which can often lead to a loss of financial stability. Even retirement can cause grief, even if someone looks forward to it. Losing is not restricted to the death of a loved human. Losing a beloved pet can hit us just as hard. 

There is no fixed process or timetable for how we grieve, but grief and loss counseling experts have been able to identify five stages of grief:

• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression 
• Acceptance

Those stages are not necessarily linear, and there is no time limit on how long you might experience them. Grief and loss counseling can help develop coping strategies at each individual stage. Those strategies allow you to handle your grief better and manage to live with it. 

Like many emotions, grief does not necessarily stop entirely at some point. Instead, good grief counseling services help you experience your emotional reactions without being governed by them.

How does Truecare’s Grief Counseling Work?

Experts believe that the death of a loved one is one of the biggest challenges we have to cope with throughout our lives. Grieving for someone or something triggers more than feelings of sadness. Most of us also experience regret, yearning, guilt, and anger. 

Emotions connected to grief can vary widely in their strength. As you are going through the grieving process, it is normal to feel fine and overwhelmed by your emotions the next day. Apart from the five stages, there is no real roadmap for grief. 

Grief and loss counseling can help you understand your grief better. Where other forms of counseling spend significant time exploring the causes of the problem, grief and loss counseling can seem a little more obvious. That is especially true when it comes to the death of loved ones. In those cases, grief counselors can immediately help you focus on coping strategies. 

TrueCare24’s grief counseling is as individual as your experience of grief. Our adaptive approach allows us to target grief counseling sessions to your exact needs, whether you are grieving for a family member, a beloved pet, or a stage of your life that has come to an end. 

TrueCare24’s services are available when and where you need them across the United States. Our certified grief counseling specialists are happy to conduct in-person sessions and telehealth-based grief counseling. 

Online grief counseling has been extremely popular since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. When grieving relatives could barely attend funerals, grief counseling was an important way to experience closure. 

Why Should you Consider TrueCare™ for Grief Counseling Services?

No one should be dealing with loss or grief independently. Some people may be able to cope with their grief without external support, but most would benefit from specialist help, including online grief counseling. 

TrueCare24 is a proven provider not only of grief trauma counseling. While we have certified grief counseling specialist staff available to support you, our team also offers counseling for depression,  anxiety, and stress. That means we have extensive experience supporting emotional difficulties of a wide range. 

This versatile experience allows us to customize care and treatments to individual requirements. It is essential for mental health care, but it is especially critical for grief. Because there are so many different circumstances in which we experience grief, a flexible, adaptive approach to counseling is vital. 

Through telehealth counseling sessions and an extensive network of specialists, we can support you no matter where you are. Grief counseling can occur in individual sessions or family groups, depending on your needs. 

Grief Counseling Techniques

Apart from the five stages of grief, mental health experts have identified two different styles of grieving – instrumental and intuitive grieving. 

Instrumental grieving aims to minimize emotional expression. People who express their grief in this way tend to try to control their emotions and focus on problem-solving tasks in front of them. After the death of a loved one, they may throw themselves into funeral arrangements, for example. 

Intuitive grieving is the opposite of instrumental grieving. This style is based on an increased emotional experience. Grieving individuals may look to explore a lost relationship, share their feelings with others, and consider their mortality. 

Grief trauma counseling starts by helping you understand your grief and your grieving style. Even if people with great intentions surround you, they may not be able to help with your grief unless they are explicitly trained. 

A certified grief counseling specialist helps you understand the stage of grief you are experiencing. But they will also help you develop individual coping strategies that prevent grief from turning into more permanent depression. 

The common myth that “time heals everything” is only partially true. Some people may experience grief for what appears to be an extraordinarily long time. That is normal, too. Grief counseling services help you understand this better. 

Most grief counseling services and consultations will create a safe environment for you to feel your loss truly. Pushing aside emotions rarely works in the long term as they tend to return stronger. Well-meaning friends and relatives may try to advise what you should do to feel better. However, that is not always the best approach. Certified grief counselors will give you the tools to follow your needs, including developing healthy coping behaviors. 

In addition, grief counseling helps you deal with the often-large swing of emotions people experience after a loss. Feelings of grief can have different triggers. Recognizing those and dealing with them is part of what you learn from grief counseling.

FAQs on Grief Counseling