What is GRIEF and LOSS COUNSELLING?
Grief and loss counselling is an approach which helps you process the emotional, spiritual, physical, social and psychological pain after experiencing a loss. While grief is a natural response to loss, formal counselling helps to process feelings, before they become overwhelming or lead to more long-term complications.
BENEFITS of COUNSELLING
Counselling services offer a range of positive benefits that can help improve your life. You can express yourself freely in a confidential setting with an unbiased, trained counsellor who is bound by a professional code of ethics.
This allows you to understand your thoughts and feelings and how they influence your behaviour. Emotions can include anger, guilt, sadness, relief, uncertainly about the future, worry about finances and many others. Therapy sessions provide the safe space to process your thoughts and emotions which help you to become aware of how you have learned to cope. Essentially, how you have learned to survive the ups and downs that life can bring. It can provide an understanding as to why you now may feel like you are stuck and unable to move forward.
It is normal to feel apprehensive when planning to see a counselor for the first time. It can bring forth feelings of excitement, nervousness and even anxiety. Tarah’s warm approach will ensure this process is as comfortable as possible for you.
WHAT TO EXPECT from COUNSELLING?
During your initial session, both of you will discuss what brought you to counselling and before the end of the that initial session, you'll have one or two goals to start working towards. This will form the foundation of a personalized plan to support your healing and goals. When you are ready, both of you will start to explore the areas in your life which have led to imbalance, and how this might be impacting your ability to live fully. Areas of strength and resilience in your life will also be explored and used to support positive changes. There is always a way to healing. Tarah particularly likes to use genograms and loss lines in her work which can provide a lot of helpful information and stems from her natural use of social systems.
THE GOAL of COUNSELLING
Every moment of your session is led by you, we move at a pace that is based solely around your needs and comfort level. For change to occur, you are going to need to trust yourself and allow your feelings and emotions to bubble up to the surface. Tarah will be there to walk alongside you as you navigate through them. Part of our work together may include your becoming aware of your ‘grief triggers’ or ‘loss triggers’ in whatever form they show up in your life and gently introducing new ways of coping or practical tools to help you manage the waves of your grief, which can be intense. We may explore aspects of meaning you attribute in your life which stem from your individual experiences, past losses, your culture, values and personal resilience. The personalized process of counselling will help you learn to adjust to your new way of being in the world. When we experience a loss, we carry it with us indefinitely and thus need to learn new ways of living with what was lost. This can sound overwhelming and unattainable at first, but with support and self-care, healing is always possible. Always.
Grief and Loss touch everyone's life in some form or another - Tarah