Grief Counselling
As we encounter the changing terrain of life, loss and grief are an inevitable part of life that we will all experience. Whether it be the death of a beloved, estrangement from family, illness, disability, unemployment or any other separation from person, place, situation or activity. To grieve and mourn is a way that humans can express and assimilate their losses.
Feeling Grief
Grief is a subjective experience often filled with prolonged confusion and suffering. Following are the main grief reactions or responses that can be experienced:
- Emotionally the bereaved experiences feelings of sadness, anger, anxiety, loneliness, helplessness, shock, yearning, relief and numbness.
- Physically the body carries the weight of the grief through physical symptoms such as a hollowness in the stomach, tightness in the chest or throat, over sensitivity to noise, breathlessness and fatigue.
- Cognitively the bereaved may experience disbelief, confusion, preoccupation and hallucinations.
- Behaviourally the bereaved may experience a disturbance in sleep or appetite, become forgetful, hyperactive, socially withdrawn, have dreams of the deceased, searching or calling out for the deceased and crying.
How Gestalt therapy can help with Grief
Gestalt therapy views loss and grief within a holistic perspective for grief affects all levels of experience, such as the body, emotions, cognition, socially, spiritually and religious beliefs. Gestalt defines loss and grief as a process that encompasses the whole field and the person is to be viewed holistically and uniquely with no time frames on their grief. Gestalt therapy does not diagnose or cure and grief is not seen as something to overcome or even finish. Grief is about change and change is a natural part of life, thus to Gestalt therapy grief is an inherent part of life and one that is necessary to the process of development. It is about helping you make meaning of your loss and create new meaning in your life. For, when a person finds meaning and purpose within their grief or loss somehow this allows their grief and loss to be more bearable.
Gestalt therapists understand that the loss and grief process involves a painful emotional adjustment which takes time and cannot be hurried along. Gestalt methodology at its core appreciates the complexity of not only the client’s process, but the loss and grief process as a complex process that holds both universal characteristics and unique variations.
There is no plan, no timeframe, no predictions for only the uniqueness of the person and their situation will determine what the grieving process looks like and when the grieving process has been resolved or changed.
Historically Gestalt therapy trusts that pain, uncertainty and difficulties are necessary to the process of development. And, although mourning eventually subsides, and a person develops into something new, it is with respect that we know that a certain part of that person will always remain inconsolable. A substitute for the loss will never be found just reformed, and the bereaved will be forever changed!