The experience of grief is an experience of loss. We feel grief whenever we lose something, whether we enjoyed ‘having’ it or not. This can be a job, a relationship, a person, a pet…Any change that has an element of loss will be experienced as grief. Grief is a natural process of ending and beginning. It is ingrained in all of life experiences.
When speaking about Grief, I often use the metaphor of loose seaweed floating in the water. It goes up, it goes down, it goes sideways. It slows down, it speeds up. And every once in a while the seaweed gets stuck on a branch that is rooted to the ground,and it stops moving.
The seaweed in the metaphor is grief. The branch is feelings such as Anger, Shame, Regret, or any other yet to be resolved experiences from the relationship between you and the person or thing that was lost.
These ‘branches’ need to be addressed and released so that the natural process of grief can continue.
Example: Alex lost his mom 2 years ago and has been going through the natural grief process. He came into my office expressing that he has been feeling a lot of anger at his mom for dying and has not been able to move through it. I reminded him that Anger is a natural and important feeling that is often a part of grief, and that if he is not able to process it and keep it moving, we will take a look at whats underneath. Then we explored his anger feeling toward his mom for dying, we saw that it was connected to an experience he had on his first day of Kindergarten, when he was left on his own feeling scared and alone. Using an integrative approach of mind-body we helped 5 year old Alex heal from that experience. As little Alex healed he began to experience his first day of kindergarten much differently – he felt stronger, more resourced, capable, and hopeful. These feelings generalized to old Alex and he was quickly able to move through his Anger.
Using an integrative and holistic approach of Mind and Body therapy, we will:
- Explore your grief process, and the points where you have been stuck until now (the ‘branches’) – these can sometimes present themselves in peculiar ways.
- Take each of the points of ‘stuckness’ down to its root cause
- Release any trauma that is being re-activated by the current experience
- Give you a repertoire of tools to help you in continuing on your grief journey and releasing any further small points of ‘stuckness’
It would be my honour to support you through your grief process!
Contact me for a FREE consultation.
Fee $140 per hour
Recommended length of therapy: 3-10 sessions