Therapy for Grief & Loss

Find hope after loss.  

At ECC, we provide personalized therapy to help you cope with grief.

What Is Grief?

Grief is the experience of coping with loss. It's more than just sadness, it's a range of emotions from sorrow and anguish, to hurt, anger, or guilt, and even positive emotions like gratitude. Grief is a natural response to loss, and not just the death of a loved one, but other types of loss as well, such as the end of a relationship or a big life transition.

What is Ambiguous Loss? 

While death is the scenario most often associated with grief, there are many other kinds of loss that can lead someone to grieve. According to the Mayo Clinic, ambiguous loss or ambiguous grief is a term for the experience of profound loss and sadness when a person hasn’t experienced the death of a loved one. 

Ambiguous loss can include: 

• Relationship breakups (this includes romantic partnerships but can also include friendships) 

• Infidelity

• Job layoffs or career transitions

• Miscarriages and infertility struggles

• Family estrangement

• Financial problems

• Moving to a new place

• Natural disaster

• Political unrest

• Changing belief systems

Types of ambiguous loss: 

• Leaving without a goodbye: This type of loss happens when you lose physical connection with someone but you’re not sure if they’re dead or alive, such as addiction, abandonment, or they’ve gone missing. The uncertainty, lack of closure, and inability to mourn as a family or community with a ritual such as a funeral can compound feelings of grief. 

• Goodbye without leaving: This type of loss occurs when you’re grieving a person who is physically alive but not engaged in your life as they once were due to a chronic illness like dementia or another medical issue, estrangement, incarceration, or addiction. The change in the relationship, even if the choice was yours, can be very painful. 

• Situational goodbye: Grief isn’t always the result of death or even a change in a relationship. Witnessing loss in other places, such as war, natural disaster, a shooting or violent crime in your community, or political unrest, can stir feelings of grief. Other, less life-threatening experiences are also valid reasons for feeling grief, such as job loss or financial struggles. 

Signs You May Need Grief Therapy

Therapy can be very beneficial at any time after a loss, but you might consider starting therapy if you are experiencing persistent and intense experiences of grief for an extended period of time that significantly impacts your daily functioning. According to the American Psychiatric Association, it might be time to seek grief therapy if you’re experiencing any of the following:

• Intense longing for the deceased

• Preoccupation with thoughts or memories of the deceased

• Identity disruption, feeling as though part of oneself has died

• Disbelief about the death or loss

• Avoidance of reminders of the deceased

• Intense emotional pain, such as anger or sorrow

• Difficulty reintegrating into daily life

• Emotional numbness

• Feeling that life is meaningless

• Intense loneliness

• Physical symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, nausea, chronic pain, changes in appetite, trouble sleeping, and more. 

If you are experiencing these symptoms beyond the acute phase of grief, you may be experiencing Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD). A therapist trained in grief counseling can help you develop tools and insight to move towards living life in a meaningful way after the loss of your loved one. 

How Therapy Helps with Grief

In theory, we all understand that grief is part of the human experience, but when loss actually happens in our lives, the intensity and unique shape of our grief can still catch us off guard. Yet just because grief is part of the human experience, doesn’t mean we have to cope with it alone, or reign in how we express it. 

Therapy can help you process your loss(es), name the ways that the loss has changed your life, and all of the emotions that come with that. In therapy, the goal is not to overcome or "fix" the sad feelings that come with grief, but find healthy ways of expressing them so that they don't keep you from experiencing joy. Through therapy, you can find ways to integrate the loss and grief into your life so that you can move forward. 

At ECC, our therapists may use one or a combination of these modalities to help you process your grief: 

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment that helps people learn new ways of thinking and behaving to cope with grief. 

• EMDR- An effective treatment approach that can be help people whose grieving process has become blocked or for whom the loss was traumatizing.

• Art therapy- Art therapy is a powerful tool for healing and self- expression in times of grief. It can help with the complexity of emotions including guilt, shame, regret and anger. 

Just as grief is essential to the human experience, so is asking for help when we can’t cope alone. No matter what type of loss you’ve experienced, no matter how you feel about it, from intense to numb or ambivalent, ECC therapists are here to help you emotionally process your experience and navigate your new normal. If you need support with grieving, moving on from death, divorce, estrangement, or another type of loss, we're here to help. 

Reach out to schedule an intake session today. Together we can help you connect meaningfully with your life. 

Learn more about our approach to grief therapy by reading our blog: