Have you ever lost something or someone?

Losing something or someone can have a huge impact on ourselves and the way we live our lives. Loss is a process of losing something or someone and grief is the response to that loss. It can leave you feeling overwhelmed and brings up a whole range of emotions such as anger, shock, or sadness. All of these feelings are perfectly natural, and we all grieve in our own way. However, we can sometimes feel pressure from family, society, and social media to"Get over it" and "Move on" or maybe "It’s been two years shouldn’t you have got over it by now?" Well, no actually!

As painful as a loss can feel, it’s important to be able to sit with it, think about it, and feel. Then we can find some way to navigate our way through it to bring about healthy changes, for example learning to live in a different way without that person. This can take time.

There are many different types of losses that we all face depending on how closely we become attached to the person or object we are grieving. For example, we can lose:

• family members
• relationships
• jobs
• marriage/partner
• money
• pets 
• career
• house/home
• country 
• personal/sentimental objects
• possessions
• injury or illness
• even our sense of self

Other types of loss and grief are:

• Ambiguous loss - Someone who is psychologically present but physically absent e.g. divorce, missing people or physically present but psychologically absent e.g. dementia, chronic illness.
• Anticipatory grief - Feeling of loss before someone dies.

How to deal with loss when it feels like a huge void

Well, first it can feel like we want to get rid of those strong emotions and often find things to distract ourselves from actually feeling what we need to feel. We’ve all done it! The emotions we are avoiding will come back, like a balloon when you try to push it underwater- it just keeps popping back up again.

How can therapy help?

Talking to a qualified counsellor can help to process and feel the emotions you need to feel during grieving. It’s a confidential space to talk about anything without being judged and someone who is not involved with family or friends. Depending on what you need, your counsellor might point you in the direction of using grief models which can help you to understand what’s happening to you. For example:

• Kubler Ross grief cycle
• Murray Parkes' stages of grief model
• Tonkin model of grief - "Grief does not shrink, but life grows around it."
• Dual process model

These models can help you to understand what’s going on and that there is hope to move forward with your life. It means adjusting to a different way of being in the world without that person or job - whatever the loss means to you. Remember, you’re trying to cope during difficult circumstances.

I am here to offer empathy and compassion to support you in your journey through loss and grief whether you need face-to-face, online or over-the-phone counselling. I am based in Bedfordshire and please do get in touch if you can relate to what I’ve shared and would like some support, visit my profile to find out more.