Grief Counseling For Illinois Residents
The death of a loved one is heart-wrenching.
You bounce from anger to guilt to sadness to regret and back to anger. At times the pain may feel unbearable or unreal. Gripping such a harsh reality is not easy. You feel they died too soon. You didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. The helplessness of not being able to save your loved one or fighting the guilt of not doing enough is equally burdensome.
Grief is the collection of emotions you experience whenever you lose something important to you. We most commonly associate grief with the heartache of death, however, it may also follow a divorce, separation loss from fire or theft, a lost job, the demise of a lifelong dream, loss of youth, loss of control, and loss of health, vision, or hearing. Grief can also follow seemingly joyous occasions such as graduations, moving, kids leaving home, and childbirth.
The sorrow of grief is more intense than sadness and evokes other complex emotions that are challenging to process alone. It is a journey you take to find healing and peace. You cannot ignore, suppress, postpone, or control it. Although grief is unique to an individual, for many, navigating grief is not easy.
Regardless of where you are in your bereavement season, one thing is certain - you don’t have to grieve alone. Unfortunately, you cannot avoid grief.
How Grief Counseling Helps
Grief counseling also called bereavement counseling helps you cope with the loss of a loved one. It provides space for you to process your emotions, thoughts, and beliefs in a healthy and safe environment. You may benefit from grief and loss counseling if the pain of loss is interfering with everyday living.
Grief counseling does more than help you cope with loss. Accepting the changes that accompany grief is challenging. For example, we know people don’t live forever, but we don’t really think about how life changes when they are gone. Your grief counselor will assist you in making meaning of your loss by formulating an understanding and interpreting your Life event in line with your beliefs and values.
You should seek the help of a grief counselor if:
You do not want to get out of bed, shower, work, or hang out with loved ones because of the death of a loved one.
If you have thoughts that you’d be better off dead, have considered harming yourself to be with your loved one, or have attempted suicide in the past. Suicidal thoughts are common during the grief process.
Your grief is affecting your work or other relationships. You may avoid interactions or put off tasks.
Signs and Symptoms of Grief
Grief may manifest in several ways, including:
Intense grief, suffering, and reflection at the loss of a loved one
Keeping your loved one's passing as your only main concern
Excessive concentration on or avoidance of memories of the departed
Intense and enduring yearning for the deceased
Having trouble accepting the death
Unease or detached feeling
Resentment for your loss
Feeling that there is no point or value to existence
A lack of faith in people
Inability to savor life or recall happy memories with a loved one
Grief in The Black Community
Grief manifests differently in different cultures. In the Black community, grief is a common experience because this demography has a shorter life span than the other races because of many health-related disparities and racism. Although many in the Black community have experienced the sting of death, research shows this demography experiences a long and complex form of grief.
Prolonged grief disorder increases a person's vulnerability to substance use, depression, and physical conditions like heart attacks, cancer, and immune disorders. Unfortunately, the stigma around mental health prevents many in the Black community from seeking help on time. Many triggers increase the likelihood of Blacks having long-form grief.
The Black community has the highest rate of wrongful deaths without any form of justice for the bereaved. It lives family and friends discouraged and heartbroken over the pointless hateful killings. Grief counseling is especially important for the Black community to reduce mental and physical conditions that persist because of long-term grief.
At Living in Empathy, our trained grief specialists will help you to move through the various emotions you are experiencing and allow you to speak freely about the person who passed away, whether that conversation is good, bad, or ugly. Our grief counselors help you find meaning in your loss and overcome any guilt that you may experience. We will provide space for you to reimagine your life without those you have lost while also honoring the relationship.
Treatments Options in Grief Counseling
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) may be used to teach you how to respond to inner thoughts and outside stimuli in ways that produce the emotions and behaviors that lead to the life you desire. A goal of CBT is to help you increase awareness of negative thought patterns in an effort to decrease or avoid engagement with negative behaviors.
Narrative therapies are often used to help you with expressing and communicating the emotions that surround your loss. The goal is to make sense of your grief through storytelling and connecting your loss with memories. Narrative therapies allow you to engage with meaning-making that helps to create a deeper understanding of the change you are experiencing.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy provides you with skills to help you stay present while you process your grief. ACT particularly focuses on the use of values so that you will not fight the natural feelings and emotions of grief. By remaining present and increasing your resilience, you’ll increase your ability to live a rich, full, and meaningful life.
Setting recovery objectives, living with and communicating the loss, monitoring progress, and making plans are also strategies to assist in the grief counseling process.
Start Grief Counseling with Living in Empathy
There isn't a magic pill that can make your grief go away, but our grief specialists at Simplicity Psychotherapy are ready and able to help with the challenges of the grieving process. In order to start grief and loss counseling follow these steps:
Reach out for a free consultation
Schedule your first appointment for grief counseling
Get support as you navigate your life after loss
Other Therapy Services Offered
Our caring therapists offer other services besides anxiety therapy to help support your mental health and well-being. In addition to individual therapy, we also offer trauma therapy, depression and grief counseling, therapy for black men and women, and LGBTQIA2S+ therapy.
Contact us.
We would love to hear from you.