Traumatic Grief and Loss Counseling
As a therapist specializing in helping adults heal from traumatic events, I have worked with individuals who have experienced various types of sudden or unexpected losses, including:
- Suicide of a loved one
- Loss of a family member, friend, or pet through accident or illness
- Job loss, business loss, bankruptcy
- Relationship break-up or divorce
- Loss of dreams, plans, self-confidence due to accident, illness, or other traumatic loss
My approach for traumatic grief and loss counseling typically includes a combination of these services:
- EMDR therapy to address the upsetting memories, painful emotions and problematic beliefs associated with the traumatic loss. I have worked with clients who have been in talk therapy for grief and loss, and they have found that when the loss was sudden or happened in a traumatic way, EMDR therapy quickly: reduced the anxiety, depression, confusion, anger, and other painful emotions; helped them connect to happier memories of the loved one; and helped them feel better about themselves. Often they say they wish they hadn’t waited so long, as the EMDR therapy helped their grieving process.
- Talk therapy based on a traumatic grief model that involves talking about: the facts of what happened; the feelings about it; the good and bad memories; how this loss has changed your views about relationships, work, life; implications of this shift in views; and ways to accommodate the loss.
This model is especially helping when working with losses that do not involve the death of someone, such as a job loss, business closing, or relationship ending. Often in these situations, people think the best way to get through the grief, anger and worry, is to not talk about it and to just stay focused on finding a new job or relationship. However, not talking about the loss, can sometimes lead to anxiety, depression, shame, or other problems that interfere with finding the new job or relationship.
- Brain Health Coaching to assess your anxiety, depression and sleep problems and provide you with education on ways to reduce these symptoms through food choices, nutritional supplements and other drug-free approaches for symptoms relief.
- Career Coaching to regain confidence and determine next steps following a traumatic job loss, business closure or when a divorce or relationship ending is prompting a need to re-enter the workforce of make a change to your business or career.
If you’d like some coping tips on dealing with loss, click here to read my article on Five Ways to Cope with the Loss of a Loved One