Depression
Isolation
Suicidal Thoughts
Intense sorrow
Trust Issues
Extreme feelings of fear or guilt
Detachment
Problems coping with loss
Delayed Grief
Delayed Grief happens when reactions and emotions in response to death are postponed. The griever consciously or subconsciously avoids the reality and pain of the loss and suppresses their feelings and reactions. A person experiencing this type of grief may:
Complicated Grief
Complicated Grief is characterized by irrational thoughts and may also be expressed as avoidance behavior. It can be difficult to judge when grief has lasted too long. This type of grief may develop into self-harm or mental illness if the person doesn’t get the support they need. Signs of complicated Grief include:
Self-destructive behavior
Deep and persistent feelings of guilt
Radical lifestyle changes
Chronic Grief
Chronic grief leads to hopelessness, disbelief that the loss is real, and avoidance of any situation that may remind someone of the loss. Signs of chronic Grief include:
Thoughts of self-harm
Experiencing extreme distress
Experiencing intrusive thoughts
Anticipatory Grief
Anticipatory grief occurs when a person is expecting to lose someone or expecting the consequences that one can face after losing someone. It can make a person overthink a situation and make them highly impatient. It often causes feelings of sadness, anger, and guilt. Some signs of Anticipatory Grief include:
Envisioning your life without that person
Feeling conflicted over the guilt of thoughts about a loved one’s passing
Loss of hopes and dreams
Inhibited Grief
Inhibited grief is an emotional response to a loss that may be delayed or incomplete. It can also be the inability to process and accept a loss fully. It is often associated with people who are experiencing chronic stress, anxiety, depression, or other mental health issues. Inhibited grief can also stem from traumatic experiences such as war trauma or childhood abuse. People experiencing Inhibited Grief may:
Show no typical signs of grief
Feeling exhausted most of the time
Develop a physical manifestation of the grief
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You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
Old Chinese Proverb
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Grief counseling, or bereavement counseling, is developed to help people manage the loss of a loved one. Grief counseling provides bereaved people with a space to discuss & process their feelings & emotions. A grief counselor can help you design methods & strategies for coping with your loss and grief.
Grief counseling is recommended especially for individuals whose grief:
This grief and loss counseling can help individuals of all ages deal with their sorrows and other emotional feelings that are integral to the normal response to losing a loved one. But having said that, if a person's grief is intense and he is not able to handle it, then other forms of therapy can help-
Grief Therapy -This therapy can help cope with behavioral and physical issues that a person might experience as an after-effect of a loss. Grief therapy can assist persons who find it difficult to separate themselves emotionally from the loved one who passed away.
Complicated Grief Therapy - Complicated grief is a state where the grief grabs hold of you and don't let you go, which can lead to negative thoughts, disturbing behaviors, and hard-to-manage emotions, which makes it more difficult for the person to adjust to life without the loved one. This therapy is a type of psychotherapy that can help deal with complicated grief.
Traumatic Grief Therapy - People may experience this type of grief when they suddenly lose a loved one or witness their loved one's death. Traumatic grief therapy can support people in coping with the grief's severity, minimize the trauma symptoms, and equip them with coping strategies.
Grief counseling or family grief counseling involves discussing the loved one a person has lost, their relationship with each other, how the loved one died, how it impacted the person, and how that person is coping with it. A grief counselor uses different techniques -
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy- This type of psychotherapy inspires a person to tackle negative feelings and conditions, so they can concentrate on positive patterns to help them reach their goals.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy - It is also a type of psychotherapy that includes identifying and replacing negative thought patterns that badly influence the person's behavior.
Group Therapy - This type of therapy is performed in a group setting. It could be comforting for someone to share their feelings with others going through a similar situation and work together to overcome it.
Art Therapy - This therapy uses innovative forms to convey emotions and encourages healing. It could be helpful to individuals of all ages, along with children, who might find it challenging to communicate their feelings.
Play Therapy - This therapy is mainly used to gain insights into a child's thoughts and emotions to help them process unsettled feelings and develop positive behavior patterns.
There are five stages of dealing with grief, each of which can last for a while, like a few days or for as long as a year.
Denial and seclusion - The last thing that any person wishes to hear is the death of a loved one. Rather than accepting this news, people deny it and claim it can't be real. It is how most people avoid the bad feelings of a significant loss.
Anger - Many people react to loss with anger or any other "negative" emotion since it's easy to denounce than to suffer the pain.
Bargaining - Guilt is another important emotion that usually dominates after an overwhelming loss. People begin to speculate what if and how they could have dealt with it beforehand to stop it from happening or what they must have said before - it was too late.
Depression - Whenever those painful grieving feelings flood your mind, many a time, they overshadow everything else. Hence, it's essential for people when they enter this stage of grief; they should lean on their support system.
Acceptance - This stage of grief is often marked as the end of the grieving cycle; people accept that they've lost this person and find the peace they need to move on. People always tend to enter and exit these grief stages all through their grief process - they don't always follow a straightforward path.
If you are experiencing an emergency right now, please call 911 right away.
While Lifebulb is not a crisis grief counseling center and Lifebulb grief & loss therapists and counselors are not emergency services, we understand that urgent matters can and will pop up from time to time. You will have direct email and phone access to your bereavement therapist or grief & loss treatment center, who will make their best effort to be available to you when you reach out. Depending on your specific grief treatment plan, your grief & loss therapist may provide you with resources to use or contact when situations occur beyond the scope of your online therapy or offline therapy work together.
We accept many major commercial insurance plans, including Aetna, Amerihealth, Cigna, Optum Health, United Healthcare, Tricare, and others. If you don't see your insurance listed, we would be happy to verify your benefits to see if we can accept them, and if not, we offer you an affordable self-pay rate.
All our counselors are highly educated and trained and have received their full clinical licensure from practicing counseling. We also thoroughly interview each of our therapists, ensure that they pass a background check, and train them in-house to work with us.
Additionally, we ensure that each of our counselors and therapists participates in ongoing education to continue providing the best in-person and online therapy and treatment plan for grief and loss services.
We do employ licensed clinical psychologists, as psychologists can offer services, such as best treatment plan for grief and loss and online therapy services and psychological testing, that many other license types are unable to offer. Many times, your counselor or bereavement therapist can work in tandem with a psychologist to provide therapy and psychological testing when necessary to better provide for your specific needs or goals. In this way, we are able to better provide for a wider range of your needs.
Read our comprehensive list of carefully curated resources to learn about grief counseling.
