About bereavement counselling
At its simplest, bereavement counselling offers a space to explore the impact of your loss supported by someone who respects the uniqueness of your grief.
If you’re wondering what this might feel like, and how it could help, this page is for you. It offers a detailed summary of the themes that often arise and gives an idea of how exploring them may help you find a path towards healing.
As you read, please hold in mind that your own sessions will be tailored entirely to your experience.
This isn’t a menu of topics to tick off.
Our starting point will always be you, and what you need, as you take a seat, take a breath and connect with me.
With that in mind, let’s dip into the experience of bereavement counselling.
Sharing your story, honouring your loss
No two bereavements are the same; only you know the magnitude, the nature and the nuances of yours.
Counselling can support you in learning to trust your instincts, giving yourself permission to feel what you feel, without judgement and for as long as you need. This might include tuning out from unhelpful messages about how you ‘should’ be grieving, whether those come from society, well-meaning friends or even your own expectations.
There are a number of areas that often need to be explored in order to clarify what your loss means to you.
The circumstances of the death
How someone died — whether it was expected or sudden, peaceful or traumatic — can deeply affect your grieving process. Sometimes the way a death occurred leaves unanswered questions, regrets, guilt or anger. Exploring these feelings can be an important step toward healing.
The time leading up to the death
If your loss was anticipated – for weeks, months or even years – you may have entered the world of grief on the back of stress, worry and exhaustion.
If you are reeling from the shock of an unexpected death, you may look back with regret on the time before your loved one died, perhaps wishing you had known what was to come… or perhaps yearning to go back.
Acknowledging the impact of what came before your loss can be an important element of counselling.
Your relationship with the person who has died
Our relationships with those we lose are often complex. Alongside love, there might also be pain, disappointment or unfinished business. Grieving isn’t just about missing the person, but sometimes also about grieving the relationship we had — or even the relationship we wish we had had.
Counselling provides a safe space to acknowledge and work through all aspects of your bond.
Your relationships with those still around you
Bereavement can alter the way we connect with the people still in our lives. Some relationships might grow stronger, while others feel strained or disconnected. You may notice that others don’t always know how to support you, or that you feel isolated in your grief. Perhaps many of your worries are for other people.
Talking through these concerns can help you find ways to reconnect or set healthy boundaries.
The impact of multiple losses
Experiencing more than one bereavement can leave you feeling overwhelmed and confused. A new loss may stir painful emotions from earlier bereavements, even those from many years ago, and you might find it hard to untangle your feelings.
Additional layers of loss
Beyond the death itself, there are often other losses to process: the loss of a home, social groups, support that you relied on, a role you played, shared activities or holidays, phone calls, routines. These secondary losses can compound your grief and may be harder to acknowledge or talk about.
Recognising and grieving these layers of loss is a vital part of healing.
The many ways your grief affects you
Whatever the circumstances of your loss, grief can hit you in varying and unexpected ways. Some bereaved people worry that they’re losing their mind.
While each bereavement is unique, it’s equally true that grief is a shared and profoundly human experience. Knowing that what you’re feeling appears again and again – across individuals and across cultures – can help to normalise what you’re going through.
The rollercoaster of feelings
From disbelief, devastation, hopelessness and confusion to guilt, anxiety, relief and anger – and everything in between – we can acknowledge all these feelings as natural responses to grief.
Counselling won’t make your feelings go away; I’m afraid there simply isn’t a shortcut. But identifying and naming what you’re feeling, allowing the emotion rather than fighting it, trying out simple grounding techniques – all of this can help build your confidence in riding the waves of emotion as they come.
Or no feelings at all…
What if you’re feeling absolutely nothing, just numb and disconnected? That’s normal too. Here, counselling may be about acknowledging your brain’s instinct to protect you. We might also see if we can tune in, without judgement, to whatever you can notice in your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations.
Feeling different as a person
Many people feel changed by grief. You might be more irritable and intolerant, or absent-minded and demotivated. Perhaps you feel less confident, more anxious and worried than before, or more vulnerable. You might want to withdraw from your social world, or feel dependent on the company of others.
In counselling we can acknowledge all of this, while also noticing shifts and changes over time.
A whole-body experience
Grief can and does show up in the body. If you’ve ever had butterflies in your stomach when you’re nervous, you’ll know that our bodily sensations are closely linked to our emotional state. Physical symptoms of grief can include headaches and migraines, lack of appetite, skin conditions, gastro-intestinal problems, poor sleep, fatigue, tightness in the chest, pain in the muscles and joints, and much more.
We might notice these as messages from your body, drawing your attention to what is going on for you, and what you need, particularly if you’re struggling to connect with your feelings. Understanding physical symptoms as part of a natural grief response can also help to reduce anxiety about your health.
Changes in how you see the world
As human beings, we tend to hold beliefs and assumptions that allow us to see our lives – as far as possible – as being safe, secure and predictable. Beliefs can come from family narratives, society or from your religious faith – and grief can shatter them. You may want to explore this very foundational impact of loss, perhaps grieving a previously-held sense of innocence and trust.
When your brain plays tricks on you
Have you ever picked up your phone to message someone who has died? Do you still expect them to walk into the room? While it can’t take away your pain, understanding the neuroscience of what’s happening in your brain during grief – and that it’s doing exactly what it needs to do – can help you accept this strange experience.
The effects of traumatic loss
Scary and debilitating, the symptoms of trauma can affect you emotionally, cognitively, behaviourally and physically. You can get stuck in the fight, flight, freeze response, your body flooded with stress hormones. When these symptoms are tangled up in grief it can all just feel like one big messy ball of distress.
If your loss has triggered a trauma response, a counsellor may be able to help you identify this, exploring ways to manage and soften the impact over time, soothing your nervous system.
If the effects of trauma are your primary concern, particularly if you are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), you may want to seek support from a specialist trauma therapist.
Moving forward with your grief
When you’re bereaved, the future can feel uncertain, scary or empty. Exploring how you can support yourself as you go on may be an important element of counselling.
Developing your coping strategies
Are you able to identify what your coping strategies are? Do you keep constantly busy? Maybe you self-soothe with food or drink, or secure care from others by very visibly falling apart.
First, I’d like to say ‘well done’. We all have to cope somehow. Your brain is doing a brilliant job of protecting you in the best way it knows how.
But if you suspect there are strategies that might serve you better, some that could be developed and some that could be reduced, this can be explored – with no judgement – through counselling.
How to approach the things you can’t avoid
There are some things in life that come up whether we like it or not. Anniversaries, birthdays – whatever the milestones in your year, these can be particularly challenging times. With a counsellor, you can explore how you feel about them, what you can manage and what you can’t, and how you can communicate this to those around you.
The issue of work comes up for many bereaved people too. When to return to work? How to handle sympathy, questions, insensitivity or awkwardness from your colleagues? What if you burst into tears? Perhaps a shift in how capable you feel. All this can benefit from honest discussion.
The power of distraction
We know that grief requires us to feel our feelings, but if that was all we did it would be utterly overwhelming. Having moments of reprieve, where we are distracted from our loss, is not just OK, it’s essential. A healthy grief can be described as moving back and forth between these two states.
Perhaps you’ll use counselling to notice what provides distraction in your life, to accept the relief it brings, or maybe to wonder if you spend most of your time searching for distraction.
Finding new perspectives
In the turbulence of loss, sometimes a simple concept that resonates with your own experience can help you find meaning and understanding. A bereavement counsellor may be able to offer these ideas when they feel relevant to your explorations.
Developing continuing bonds
An idea that proves helpful for many clients is that grieving doesn’t have to be about letting go of someone you loved. Instead, it can be about finding ways to hold them in your life, in ways that feel right for you.
Finding self-compassion
Do you have a critical inner voice? Do you berate or question yourself? Learning to honour your needs with gentle kindness is often a central theme in therapy.
Finding hope
In the early days of grief, hope can feel impossibly distant. Moments of lightness might feel fleeting, almost wrong. Yet over time, many people begin to notice small glimmers — tiny moments when laughter, connection or even simple peace break through.
Gradually, these glimmers can grow. Life will not be the same, but it can be rich and meaningful again.
Post-traumatic growth
While grief can be one of life’s greatest challenges, it can also, in time, lead to profound personal growth. Many bereaved people report a deepened sense of resilience, a greater appreciation for life, stronger relationships or a clarified sense of purpose.
This growth doesn’t erase the pain of loss, nor does it mean you would have chosen it. But it stands as a testament to the strength of the human spirit: that even after unthinkable loss, new life can emerge.