Grief Therapy How the Psychologist Works It

When we suffer the loss of a loved one, we are plunged into great sadness and there is no possible consolation. If you are a psychologist you will know that grief therapy it is one of the most difficult situations to deal with. If, on the contrary, it is you who needs to go to therapy, you may have a thousand doubts about whether the psychologist will be able to help you and how he will do it..

The answer is yes. The psychologist can help you work through the grief, the how will depend on several factors. For example, from moment of mourning where the person is. This can deny reality, focus on other tasks and avoid thinking about it.

These are protection techniques that are normal in a first stage. Yet they are harmful if we stay stagnant in them and we use them as a resistance mechanism that prevents psychology from making us change.

Acceptance

This acceptance goes beyond the rational. It is not just about knowing that that person is gone, but accepting it emotionally. This is known as “crying out to him.” For this, it is important to carry out certain rituals like a funeral or a farewell letter. It is also important to talk about the loss without downplaying it. All these actions can be very beneficial to accept this loss.

Once we have accepted it, we should work with that pain. This does not mean avoiding it. In fact, avoid pain can make the mourning go on.

The acceptance phase can be one of the most difficult to work in therapy. The patient may not understand the need to remove that suffering. You may have the feeling that when you leave the consultation you feel worse than when you entered.

You need to find a middle ground Between avoiding pain and basking in it. To do this, you have to identify the good memories that person has left, and focus on them.

Subsequently, work has to be done on the adaptation to a medium without that person. It can help the person acquire a new role or even skills that they did not have. You can also try to find the solution to practical problems derived from the loss, such as economic ones..

A place has to be found for the deceased person that allows them to remember it but continue to live. You have to work with distortions of the type, "the more you suffer means that I miss you more".

We have to emphasize that remembering the deceased is inevitable and healthy but that we should not feel guilty for doing so. This would be the last of the stages of grief therapy. However, the individual differences are manifold.

Some of the tasks that can be useful to us are:

• Write a letter to the deceased expressing our feelings
• Write positive memories or situations with that person
• Work with photos of the deceased person
• Make a list of positive things in your life
• Relaxation techniques

It is very important to adapt each technique to the person and to the particular moment of the grief suffered.