Grief Therapy

in Pasadena & Palm Desert and all of California Online

Are You Struggling To Recover From A Significant Loss?

Have you recently experienced a loss that turned your world upside down? Do you find yourself:

Feeling guilty and remorseful about unfinished business?
Having feelings that you don’t understand or know how to express?
Suffering from feelings of abandonment, confusion, and denial?

Maybe you experienced the loss of a loved one, a pet, or the end of a long-term relationship or a job. Or perhaps you suffered a miscarriage or were diagnosed with a life-changing illness, and now you’re not sure how to navigate the resulting confusion and heartache of this change.

Regardless of what kind of loss you experienced, one thing is clear: life will never be the same. As a result, you may be thinking that it’s time to connect with a therapist who can help you find hope and healing.

Grief Can Make You Question Your Whole Sense Of Identity

Living with grief and loss can often feel like navigating uncharted waters. Your identity becomes so wrapped up in another person (or a job, relationship, or way of life), that when you lose them, you’re not sure who you are anymore. Making decisions is difficult, making plans equally challenging, and it is as if you have a void that nothing and no one else could ever fill.

In some circumstance grief can lead to depression. You might carry out tasks absentmindedly, overeat or skip meals, and make lengthy to-do lists to avoid thinking about your loss.

As a therapist who specializes in working with survivors of grief and loss, I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. Loss is an unavoidable part of life, and with it there may be opportunities for growth.
It’s my goal to help you lean into thoseopportunities and find meaning and purpose in the wake of profound loss.

Have a Question or Want to Schedule a Session, Reach Out!

Our Culture Doesn’t Make Room For Grief

Here in the US, we don’t have strong rituals for the grieving process. At best, we give grievers a few days or weeks to mourn their losses and then we expect them to move on with their lives and continue as normal.

This is true of losing a loved one, but it’s also true of other losses. Miscarriages are seldom treated as real losses, in spite of how much our culture idealizes pregnancy. Additionally, the complexities of divorce and separation are rarely addressed, as are the difficulties of losing a job and having to start over. Pet grief, too, is often viewed as “lesser”—yet there are few things harder than losing an animal that loved you unconditionally.

In therapy, you have the chance to work with someone who will honor your grief and give you the validation you need to feel seen, heard, and supported in this difficult time.

Grief Is A Physiological Process, Not Just An Emotional One

As I often tell my clients, there is always more than one loss in a loss. That’s because when you lose someone or something that was dear to you, it messes with the chemistry of your brain.

For instance, a beloved pet increases your brain’s dopamine, flooding you with feelings of warmth, comfort, and happiness each time you see them. When you lose your pet, your brain loses a valuable source of dopamine. The loss doesn’t just hit you emotionally—it hits you physiologically, too.

On top of that, grief takes a toll on your body. Crying is fatiguing, as is the process of sorting through the logistics of death. Grievers have enough to deal with already, but when you add the stress of dealing with everyday life in a new context, it can be exhausting.

Therapy Can Help You Feel Whole Again, Even In The Midst Of Your Grief

Even though our culture puts pressure on people to grieve quickly, the truth is that you can’t rush the grief process. It always takes time. Therapy can help you learn to live with the loss, integrate it into your life, give it meaning, and make it part of your story and identity. Who (or what) you lost may be gone, but your relationship with them continues.

Grief therapy involves:

Assessing available support systems and resources for coping with your grief
Learning about the biology of loss and how grief operates on a physiological level
Helping you set realistic expectations for your grieving journey
Exploring how the loss has affected different areas of your life (finances, family life, etc.)

Normalizing your feelings around loss, even the feelings that aren’t socially acceptable (e.g., you might feel anger toward a loved one who died)

Getting therapy can help you prevent grief from turning into clinical depression, ensuring that you’re able to keep your head above water throughout your healing journey.

Contact Me

Schedule A Consultation

Tailoring My Approach To Grief Counseling Sessions

Grief looks different for everyone, and there is no wrong way to grieve. You can feel happy, sad, hopeless, and relieved—sometimes all at the same time. In therapy, I will honor the messiness and uniqueness of your grief and help you mourn at your own pace and in your own way.

Some of the main approaches we can use to navigate the ups and downs of the grieving process include:

Grief-Focused Therapy, which focuses on creating rituals for honoring the one you lost and learning to make practical decisions and prioritize tasks without them.

Emotionally-Focused Therapy for identifying, naming, and understanding the complexity of feelings around your loss.

Narrative Therapy, which can help you construct a new identity post-loss and create narratives that will shape the way the loss impacts your life.

Trauma-Informed Therapy for navigating feelings attached to a traumatic or complex loss (e.g., losing someone you had a strained relationship with).

From time to time, I may weave in mindful interventions and body-based tools involving posture, movement, and breathing. These exercises can help you cope with difficult emotions and stay grounded even in the midst of your grief.

I can also help you find small ways to honor and commemorate the one you lost, allowing you to feel their closeness even though they are no longer with you. After all, I often tell clients that when we lose someone dear, they go from being outside of us to being inside of us.

You May Have Some Questions About Grief And Loss Counseling…

What’s the purpose of therapy if it can’t restore my loss?

You’re right—therapy can’t make your loss disappear. But what it can do is give you a place to integrate the loss into your life in a way that allows you to fully heal. Therapy can help you make sense of what happened, and it can also provide a space to talk about the aspects of grief that don’t make sense. There is relief to be found in being able to laugh, cry, vent, and freely express your emotions without fear of judgment. That’s what therapy offers.

Am I ever going to feel normal again?

Life may never be the same again, and in that sense, things will never go back to “normal.” But that isn’t reason to lose hope, because through the power of healing, you may end up feeling better than normal. You are equipped to process loss and learn from it as part of life, and my role is to remind you of that as you journey toward wholeness and restoration.

What if talking about my grief makes it worse?

Talking about loss isn’t easy, but counseling isn’t merely about dwelling on the past. It’s about continuing the relationship with your loved one—or your pet, your job, etc.—where it left off. It’s about rebuilding that relationship in a new context, allowing you to move forward without losing sight of the ways that the person or thing you lost changed your life.

You Don’t Have To Navigate This Season Of Loss Alone

Through the power of grief therapy, you can turn heartache into wisdom and grief into a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Let’s create a life that honors your loss while looking forward to new life ahead.

If you’d like to learn more about how counseling can help you as you work through the bereavement process, you can use the contact page to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.

Offering virtual and in-person grief therapy services to clients in Palm Desert and Pasadena, California.

Contact Me

Schedule A Consultation