Typically, grieving is characterized by the loss of someone in your life. However, grief can be experienced towards a variety of major changes in our lives. Throughout the course of our lives, we experience grief and loss of some kind and in some capacity. The grieving process can span through a wide range of emotions and thoughts, and can be hard to discern what emotion is what because of that. Parts of grieving might be about feeling the sadness. But oftentimes, there can also be feelings like anger, guilt, or even regret.
Sometimes, we can shift between thoughts about the loss we experience because that makes sense at that particular moment. As a result, we might also share about our grieving differently depending on what we are feeling at that moment. Some might prefer to be in the company of other loved ones, while others might prefer personal activities as a way of healthy coping.
Therapy can be a method of helping you process the loss that has been experienced, or the big changes that are occurring in your life. Regardless of whether the grieving is focused on the loss of a friend, family member, or any life change, grief affects us differently. Working with a therapist can help with untangling the numerous thoughts and emotions that come up in your grieving experience – and can also help you to identify new methods of coping in a safe and nonjudgmental space.
By processing your grief at your own pace in therapy, the work being done is always based on your situation as you present it. In that way, working on your grieving process with your therapist is unique to you. An important thing to remember is that there is no true way to grieve; and no one method of grieving is better than the other. Each person’s experiences and relationships with those they have lost are different; so the ways that we grieve by extension would also be different and based on the relationship with those we lost.
