cope with grief & loss through therapy in Colorado

WHAT IF YOU’RE GRIEVING?

It’s just so much…

Has someone you loved dearly died?
Have you experienced a loss in your family or community?
Are you facing an ending relationship - whether through divorce or a breakup?
Have you endured a miscarriage or baby loss?
Has someone you’re connected to died by suicide?
Are you navigating significant health changes that have impacted you in ways you never imagined?
Does someone you know have a terminal illness and you’re preparing for this?
Have you lost a job or your work community?
Are you going through a major life change that’s left you feeling lost, confused, alone?
Have you experienced other significant life changes that have left you reeling?

If you said “yes” to any of these questions (or others unlisted), you may be experiencing grief and facing a loss in your life. You are not alone.

Grief happens within countless areas of our lives. Grief isn’t just what we experience when someone we love dies, although that is and can be a very real way grief happens. Grief is any and all feelings and experiences that occur after a loss or significant change.

So, what defines a “loss”, then?

Loss includes a lot of life changes: the good, bad, and ugly ones. Big changes and little changes count too. And here’s the thing, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to grieve, it’s all real because it’s yours, and there is no set timelines or “finish line”. We wish it were more linear than that, but that’s not how grief works. Grief and loss stretch far and wide, and the experience looks different for everyone. Grief is unique as each snowflake and fingerprint. There is no rule book, but there are ways to get through it with support and care.

At Rooted Counseling in Colorado, we often describe grief as a network of aspen trees. Each tree you see above the ground is its own tree, its own living thing; however, they are all connected underground. They actually share the same root system. What does this mean? It means that grief and loss can trigger or possibly bring up other griefs, losses, and changes in your life. That’s part of how it works. It’s part of what can make facing a loss or life change so difficult. And it’s often part of how grief can feel so messy.

ARE YOU SUPPORTING SOMEONE WHO IS GRIEVING OR FACING A LOSS?

If you find yourself supporting someone who’s grieving, we at Rooted Counseling in Colorado are also here for you to offer therapy and support. Being a friend or a family member, a colleague or a neighbor to someone who’s experiencing grief and loss can be difficult and confusing. Many of us might feel like we…

We can help you learn skills to support yourself as you care for the person who’s grieving in your life while also giving you tools to explore your own grief if that would be supportive to you. We can help you learn skills to support yourself as you care for the person who’s grieving in your life while also giving you tools to explore your own grief if that would be supportive to you.

Don’t know what to do
Can’t figure out what would be helpful
Get stuck trying to say “the right thing” or not say the “wrong thing”
Feel helpless watching someone experience such tremendous pain
Ache and grieve ourselves because someone else experiencing their grief journey brings up some of our own unaddressed pain from our griefs and losses

Through grief and loss therapy in Colorado with Rooted Counseling, we can help you learn skills to support yourself as you care for the person who’s grieving in your life while also giving you tools to explore your own grief if that would be supportive to you.

HOW GRIEF AND LOSS IMPACT US

Simply put, grief impacts all of us. Grief is all around us, and many of us are grieving various things in our lives, whether we realize it or not.

Grief may leave us feeling…

Anxious
Depressed
Tired
Overwhelmed
Sad
Irritable
Hopeless
Alone

Grief is painful. And the pain is great, because our love is and was great - either for the person who died or for the life we imagined or envisioned for ourselves.

The experiences of grief and loss can make the day-to-day tasks and events in life feel heavier, more difficult to manage, and lead us to believing that something is “wrong” with us. Oftentimes, we think we should only feel sad or impacted for a few days and then “move on” or “be back to normal” after the funeral or after the breakup. Grief doesn’t exactly work that way, and it will often last much longer than you want it to. Grief is a normal experience of being human, yet our culture often doesn’t know what to do with grief and wants to rush it along. It’s unsettling to be the griever, and it’s unsettling to watch someone grieving. Because we can’t “fix” the grief or make the grief stop or go away.

Experiencing grief or loss can change how we view the world, how we interact with others, and how we feel about ourselves. At Rooted Counseling in Colorado, our perspective on grief and healing is that therapy can help you learn to incorporate the loss into your life, to learn to live with it, even with pain and ache.

BUT IS MY GRIEF REACTION NORMAL?

Some things that we may experience in grief include:

Bodily reactions (getting sick, feeling tired, anxious)
Impacts on our relationships or work (disconnection, communication challenges)
Changes in our interest or ability to focus, even changes in our sleep

DID YOU KNOW? THERE’S MORE THAN ONE “TYPE” OF GRIEF

There may be the “primary loss”. This type of loss is what we tend to think of mostly with grief and loss when a loved one has died.

In addition, there are what’s called “secondary losses” or “future losses”. These are losses or changes that are connected to the main loss or change. Examples of secondary losses include:

Not being able to have a service or a funeral during the COVID pandemic
Getting through a Mother’s or Father’s Day after your parent died

There’s also what’s known as “disenfranchised grief”, and this one is a biggie. Disenfranchised grief is a loss or change that isn’t typically seen as worthy of grief and is stigmatized or judged by others. Examples of disenfranchised grief include:

Divorce
Miscarriage
Death by suicide
Changes that have impacted your health and quality of life
Losses that go against cultural norms
Even a break up

There is no “fix” to grief, as we don’t believe you are “broken” in your grief reaction or grief response. Something significant has changed in your life, and that is life-changing. Whether someone you love dearly has died or something in life that you loved and valued has ended, any and all losses can have an impact that affects everything.

HOW CAN GRIEF THERAPY IN COLORADO HELP ME?

We wish we could give you the secret to skip ahead of your pain. Wouldn’t we all love that shortcut?! Getting started with grief and loss therapy can be daunting. However, working with one of our skilled therapists at Rooted Counseling in Colorado can support you and teach you real ways to explore your grief. Within grief therapy, we will explore your relationship to the one who has died or the loss in your life to better understand the meanings attached to your grief and loss. We will look into how grief was modeled to you in your family while you were growing up and your beliefs about grief that were taught to you from your family/community/religion. We will help you identify your coping skills that are working for you and perhaps hurting you. We’ll help you learn coping flexibility and new ways to support yourself in your grief. Oftentimes, facing the grief and loss in our lives is too great, so we turn to other things to help us numb or manage the pain. This could be any form of distraction: food, substances like alcohol, pornography, movies, work, etc. We want to help you expand upon your current coping skills so that you can learn healthier and more supportive coping skills as you walk along your grief journey.

Two people hiking on trail in mountains.

IDENTITY IMPACTS: “WHO AM I NOW?”

Grief and loss can have huge impacts on our identity, how we see ourselves in the world, and how we define ourselves. Examples of this include:

If it’s our partner who has died, how do we see ourselves now?
If it’s a career or a way of living that we’ve lost, how do we describe ourselves going forward?
If it’s our health that has changed, who are we if we can’t do the same things that we used to do?

Together, we will help you explore how your identity has changed since the death or loss, what it feels like now, and why these identity shifts feel so hard. We will also consider what new parts of your new identity have changed or grown and how you can describe and define yourself now as you continue your life.

SAYING GOODBYE: CONTINUING BONDS

Another important part of grief therapy is looking at ways to say goodbye to the one who died or to the part of ourselves or our lives that ended while also identifying ways to continue bonds. This may be a new concept to you, that’s ok. We’ll guide you through it, as this can be an important part of our healing on our grief journey. Together, we can help you identify how to stay connected to the person who died in this place of your grief, or how to stay connected to the essence of yourself despite the changes and losses you’ve endured. For example, we will explore how your relationship with the person who died has changed and how you might consider continuing that relationship, even now in the loss. You may have heard of the concept of the “invisible string” that can connect us to our loved ones, even after they have died. This concept can be powerful as we consider ways to stay connected to our loved ones, honor them even after the death, and incorporate them into our life now.

MINDFUL COPING: “HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS?”

With grief and loss treatment through Rooted Counseling in Colorado, you’ll also learn ways to incorporate self-care culture into your actual life, in big or small ways or something in between. This can help you learn and strengthen ways you contain the big and often messy emotions of grief. Choosing ways to make room in your life for self-care practices can actually change your relationship with the grief and loss in your life as you learn, bit by bit, to tend to and care for your grief instead of feeling like you’re only carrying the heavy weight of your loss.

BUT WHAT ABOUT…

My grief helps me feel connected to my loved one who died. I don’t know who or how to be without my grief. I don’t want to give it up.

Sometimes, we may fear that working through our grief and losses will change or even erase our relationship with our loved one who died or our own past selves before our loss. Sometimes, we may be afraid of starting grief therapy because we don’t know who we are without our losses. Starting something new can be scary. We get it. We believe that it’s possible to learn to live with the pain of our losses and grief, and that healing and restoration are possible on the grief journey.

Do I really need counseling for grief and loss? Doesn’t everyone experience it? I should be able to handle it on my own.

Grief can be isolating and leave us feeling like no one understands or that we are crazy. We may even begin to feel like we’re living in a different world than those around us. Because of this, working with a skilled therapist who specializes in grief and loss can be a huge support. We are meant for community and connection, and it’s oftentimes unrealistic to expect that we can handle it all on our own all of the time, especially in the wake of our losses and changes. We can help you learn new tools and ways to incorporate the losses into your life so it doesn’t have to cost you so much emotionally. It really does take a village, and that’s okay.

Is it worth the expense? Grief therapy seems too expensive.

Working with a skilled therapist to identify ways to explore your grief loss and the things that matter most to you can be worth the investment. Whether you start grief therapy to improve your health and well-being, strengthen your relationships, or reconnect with your own life passions, learning to grieve with support and live with your losses can actually enrich your life in numerous ways.

I’m too busy and stressed for grief and loss treatment. I don’t have time.

We get it. Life is full, and adding “one more thing” could feel impossible right now, especially as you are grieving. Our practice currently provides online services, so that you can meet with your therapist online during your day at a time that’s more convenient and flexible for your schedule. Let us help you and walk with you during this time.

START GRIEF AND LOSS THERAPY IN COLORADO

At Rooted Counseling in Colorado, we are passionate about supporting people in their grief journeys. It’s something we care deeply about. Since grief can be isolating and confusing and feel like it’s lasting forever or we’re doing it “wrong”, we are honored to walk with you as you take steps towards healing. You are not crazy, and it’s okay to not know exactly what to do or how to do it. It may take time to learn new skills and techniques to integrate the losses and changes into your life, but we think it’s possible. And it’s worth it!

Contact us