Grief Counseling

Grief counseling offers caring support to guide you along your healing journey.

The Center for Creative Counseling offers grief counseling with licensed professional counselor and Certified Grief Informed Professional (CGP) Hayley Wilds.

What is Grief?

Grief is a universal experience.

It’s likely that your experiences of grief and loss will bear some resemblance to the experience of others. In fact, people may go through similar stages of grief when dealing with a loss, and you might, too.

However, though grief is universal, and your experience of grief may follow a timeline of sorts, no two grief experiences are the same. What’s more, there is no right way to grieve.

According to an article on grief stages from Counseling Today (October 27, 2016), “experts now know that grief does not move smoothly and predictably through a series of predetermined stages. In reality, it is a process that follows a different course for each individual”.

For example, when a loved one dies, you go through your own unique response to the experience – mind, body, and soul – forming an emotional tapestry of sorrow, sadness, and internal pain. The grief becomes part of you, interwoven with lived experiences, memories, and your relationship to the deceased.

This is a normative process and one that is deeply personal.

Types of Grief and Loss

Though death of a loved one is a common grief and loss example, it’s important to note that the grieving process is not exclusive to loss of a loved one. There are many types of grief and loss, some of which aren’t always acknowledged or talked about. In fact, some forms of loss are overlooked by society and can result in a sense of disenfranchisement.

Grief and loss experiences can include any of the following:

death of a loved one
death of a pet
miscarriage
infertility
job loss
divorce
serious illness or chronic health conditions (cancer, loss of mobility)
changes in cognitive ability (dementia, traumatic brain injury, stroke)
incarceration
military deployment
foster care/adoption
missing persons
all forms of oppression & discrimination

What is Grief Counseling?

According to the American Psychological Association, grief counseling can include “the provision of advice, information, and psychological support to help individuals whose ability to function has been impaired by someone’s death, particularly that of a loved one or friend.”

Because grief is a normal human response to significant loss, there is no message here that grief is a symptom to be “treated” or “fixed”. Quite the opposite. Grief is something to be acknowledged, embraced, and encouraged.

Grief counseling is a type of therapeutic support in which a trained grief informed professional can provide support, guidance, and a sacred space to help you along your grief journey.

A grief informed professional can support you in choosing and achieving grief tasks and rituals that help you cope with the emotional, physical, and spiritual reactions to the loss.

Why Grief Counseling is a Good Idea

The goal of grief counseling is not to make your pain go away. As most people who have experienced a significant loss will tell you, the grief never really goes away.

So why seek grief counseling then?

Because grief hurts.

Sometimes it’s so painful that it can feel like a tidal wave wants to flood out of you. And that’s when things can get complicated. If you fight against this natural push to grieve (whether consciously or not), you might develop longer-lasting symptoms.

Grief counseling can help you open yourself to the process and move through it instead of around it. What’s more, an experienced grief counselor can aid you in developing beneficial and seriously powerful rituals that not only help you heal, but truly honor your loved one.

As grief expert Elisabeth Kubler-Ross once said:

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

Grief counseling can help you heal, rebuild, and become whole again, but in an entirely new way.

How Grief Counseling Works

The purpose of grief counseling is to support your own natural grieving process. Grief counseling is not intended to push you through it, or to help you “get over it”. It’s meant to provide a safe space for you experience the pain of your loss.

In order to heal from your pain, you must first experience your pain. As Helen Keller said, “The only way to the other side is through.”

It’s a difficult process but a necessary one. A daunting prospect to face on your own for sure. But with the support of a trained grief informed professional, you won’t have to face it alone.

Creating a Sacred Space

The most effective way to grieve a loss is to allow yourself to feel the pain of the loss. Often, your natural instinct to avoid pain can get in the way of this process. Plus, it can be pretty scary to face all of those complex and intense feelings on your own.

But in grief counseling, you aren’t alone on your grief journey. You are given a sacred space for exploration. allowing your body and mind to do what it wants to do in an environment that promotes emotional safety and a relaxed body – space to experience the pain of the loss in a supportive environment.

Honoring All Types of Loss

Grief counseling not only helps you process your feelings, but also offers you an opportunity to receive validation for your loss. This is especially important when it comes to disenfranchised losses that aren’t always recognized or honored by society.

For example, miscarriage grief is rarely discussed in social circles. When I experienced my first miscarriage, I felt very alone in the experience. It wasn’t until I started to open up about my loss and seek support, that I realized how common it was.

Society’s silence and discomfort with this type of grief perpetuates the false idea that miscarriage grief isn’t valid or important enough to be discussed. But when you seek the support of a grief counselor, you are able to honor your loss and give your grief the space and attention it needs.

My miscarriage experience was intensely painful and there were times I didn’t think I would ever feel better. But thanks to the support of a therapist, I was able to navigate through my grief and truly heal.

This lived experience of miscarriage grief had a profound effect on me. It’s one of the reasons I specialize in working with moms. And I am so grateful to have the opportunity to provide the same sacred space to others going through a similar experience. (If that is you and you live in Pennsylvania, then I want to work with you. Sign up here to find out as soon as we have a therapy opening.)

Grief Tasks for Coping

Grief counseling can offer you an opportunity to identify rituals and “tasks” that will support your healing.

Grief tasks can help with unfinished business, forgiveness, unresolved relational conflict, and intense sadness or longing. Things like writing a letter to a loved one, creating a memorial tribute, holding a celebration of life ceremony, or making art to process your loss can aid you in your grieving process.

What Are the Benefits of Grief Counseling?

Grief counseling can not only provide much needed support through a difficult time, but it can actually improve your mental health.

Here are a few of the benefits of grief counseling:

increased understanding of the grieving process
improved daily functioning
emotional resilience
purposeful rituals for continued grieving/healing
newly formed sense of self
more useful meaning and frame around the loss
redefined relationship with deceased loved ones
improved/enhanced self expression

Is Grief Counseling Right For You?

If you are dealing with a loss, there is a really good chance that grief counseling is right for you. Humans are social creatures who naturally strive to be in sync with one another. The sense of connection that grief counseling provides can be extremely healing.

Grief counseling is right for you if you:

have experienced a loss that you believe you need to work through
are struggling with daily functioning due to grief and loss
feel stuck and can’t seem to move past your feelings of loss
have been told by caring individuals that you would benefit from grief counseling
are experiencing symptoms of anxiety, depression, insomnia, or other mental health symptoms in connection with a loss
want the caring guidance of a grief counselor to support along your grief journey

Online Grief Counseling in Pennsylvania

The Center for Creative Counseling provides online grief counseling all over Pennsylvania. With online grief counseling, you get work through your grief from the safety and comfort of your own home.

⭐ Getting started is easy – just click below to sign up for the Practice Openings Email List and be the first to find out when the practice has a therapy opening.

Sign Up to Get Updates on Therapy Openings

I use a secure telehealth platform to protect your privacy and maintain confidentiality. Plus, I use a secure messaging and email platform that allows for the safe exchange of images to help us process your artwork with ease.

The Center for Creative Counseling offers online grief counseling to residents all across Pennsylvania, including busy metro areas like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Erie, and Villanova, or more rural spots like Somerset, Lancaster, or New Hope, PA. Whether you live in Wexford near North Park outside of Pittsburgh, in Squirrel Hill in the heart of the city of Pittsburgh, or somewhere in the South Hills of Pittsburgh, you can receive online grief counseling through the Center for Creative Counseling. No matter where you live in Pennsylvania, the Center for Creative Counseling has you covered.

Plus, the Center for Creative Counseling offers additional online therapy services like family therapy and art therapy as well. Please visit our Services page for more info.

Interested in Grief Counseling?

If you have experienced the loss of a loved one and you live in Pennsylvania, the Center for Creative Counseling can provide online grief counseling. I am a grief informed professional with experience supporting clients in processing loss.

I offer a free 15 minute consultation to make sure I am a good fit for what you are looking for. If you want a grief counselor who is dedicated to supporting you along your grief journey (and you live in Pennsylvania) I am here to help.

⭐ Getting started is easy – just click below to sign up for the Practice Openings Email List and be the first to find out when the practice has a therapy opening.

Getting Started:
Grief Counseling in Pennsylvania

Interested in receiving grief counseling through the Center for Creative Counseling? Awesome!

We offer online therapy services in Pennsylvania. Sign up to to be the first to hear about our therapy openings.

Hayley Wilds, MA, LPC, CGP

Certified Grief Informed Professional

Hayley is a licensed professional counselor based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hayley has worked with parents, kids, and families for nearly 20 years. She specializes in therapy for moms, family conflict, trauma, and grief work.

SOURCES:

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). APA Dictionary of Psychology | Grief Counseling. Retrieved May 8, 2022, from https://dictionary.apa.org/grief-counseling

Meyers, L. (201–10-27). Grief: Going beyond death and stages. Counseling Today. Retrieved May 8, 2022, from https://ct.counseling.org/2016/10/grief-going-beyond-death-stages/

Sirrine, E. H. (2020). The Ultimate Grief Treatment Toolbox: Over 60 Interventions to Promote Healing & Hope Among Grieving Children, Adolescents & Adults. [Digital Seminar]. PESI. https://www.pesi.com/store/digital