Mental health counseling can be a powerful support in helping you understand, process, and move through the complex emotions that come with loss.

Grief is a natural response to loss, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to move through. Whether you’re mourning the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a health diagnosis, or another life change, grief can show up in waves of sadness, anger, numbness, confusion, or even physical symptoms.

Therapy for grief offers a supportive space to process these emotions at your own pace, make sense of your experience, and find ways to cope while honoring what you’ve lost.

Understanding how grief therapy works and what makes it different from simply “talking it out” can help you decide whether professional support might be a helpful step in your healing journey.

Therapy for grief is a specialized form of counseling that helps individuals process the emotional, psychological, and sometimes physical impact of loss.

A licensed therapist, psychologist, counselor, or psychiatrist can provide therapy for grief, offering a supportive, nonjudgmental space to explore feelings such as sadness, anger, guilt, numbness, or confusion.

Rather than trying to “fix” or rush grief, this type of therapy focuses on helping you understand your unique grief response, develop healthy coping strategies, and gradually adjust to a world that may feel very different after your loss.

Grief generally follows stages or periods that involve different feelings and experiences. To help make sense of this process, some experts use the stages of grief.

It’s worth noting that grief stages do not occur in a linear pattern, and more than one stage can be present at the same time.

The Kübler-Ross stages of grief model, created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, was originally written about people dying, not about people grieving, but later, she wrote about applying the principles to the grieving process after a loss.

There are five stages of grief under the Kübler-Ross model. These include:

  • Denial. After the death of a loved one, it’s not uncommon to be in denial about what happened. This can help temporarily protect you from the overwhelming emotions that come with grieving.
  • Anger. You may find that you are angrier than usual and direct your emotions at other people, including the person who died. It’s also possible to direct the anger toward yourself.
  • Bargaining. When you move out of denial and anger, you may find a period where you create a lot of “if only” and “what if” statements.
  • Depression. This is often called the “quiet” stage of the grieving process. You may experience overwhelming feelings of sadness or confusion. It’s common for your emotions to feel heavy during the depression stage, and you may want to isolate yourself from others.
  • Acceptance. When you get to a point where you accept what happened and understand what it means in your life, you’ve reached the acceptance stage.

Over the years, some experts expanded this model to include seven stages:

  1. shock and denial
  2. pain and guilt
  3. anger and bargaining
  4. depression
  5. the upward turn
  6. reconstruction and working through
  7. acceptance and hope

Research from 2021 shows that the stages of grief don’t always match everyone’s experience, and using them as a strict guide can make people feel like they are grieving “wrong.”

Kübler-Ross created the stages to describe what people face when they are dying, not as a guide for those who have lost someone.

Still, the model can help show that grief involves many different feelings, such as sadness, anger, and confusion, and that all of these emotions are typical and valid.

When grief is long-lasting and interferes with daily life, it may be a condition known as prolonged grief disorder. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), prolonged grief is marked by the following symptoms:

  • pervasive yearning for the deceased
  • difficulty accepting the death
  • intense emotional pain
  • emotional numbness
  • feeling like you’ve lost a part of yourself
  • persistent depression
  • withdrawal from typical social activities

In general, this type of grief often involves the loss of a child or partner. It can also be the result of a sudden or violent death.

According to research from 2021, prolonged grief disorder may affect 7%-10% of people who have lost a loved one.

Finding help for grief

Most therapists provide grief counseling. If counseling is outside your budget, many mental health professionals offer sliding-scale fees.

Also, consider in-person and online support groups. Talk with a doctor about a referral to a mental health expert. You can also find a counselor online or nearby through one of the following websites:

Seeking therapy after a loss can help you overcome anxiety and depression by processing your experience at your own pace.

Each mental health expert may utilize a different approach to help patients tackle grief, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) are two methods often used for bereavement.

Cognitive behavioral therapy

CBT is a common treatment approach for mental health conditions like depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

During a CBT session, the therapist will help you identify negative thought patterns that can affect your behaviors.

They may ask you to explore thoughts related to grief and loss or other unhelpful thoughts to address how these thoughts affect your mood and behavior. They can help you lessen the impact with strategies such as cognitive restructuring, reframing, and targeting behaviors.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)

ACT is another method that may help with grief and loss.

ACT may be helpful with prolonged, complicated grief by encouraging clients to use mindfulness to accept their experience.

ACT uses the following six core processes for grief counseling:

  1. Acceptance of negative emotions. This step involves a willingness to experience and accept negative emotions and thoughts.
  2. Cognitive defusion. This process involves distancing from emotions so that they’re easier to examine and understand.
  3. Contact with the present moment. By teaching mindfulness, ACT encourages people to focus on the present rather than ruminating on the past or worrying about the future.
  4. Self as context. This step involves observing yourself having experiences or becoming an observer of your experiences.
  5. Values. These are the principles you hold that help direct your life.
  6. Committed action. The culmination of ACT, this step involves taking action and overcoming obstacles by working through the previous steps.

Grief counseling for children incorporates many of the same elements as counseling for adults, but the therapist uses techniques appropriate to children.

According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, children, especially younger ones, react differently to death than adults.

In general, preschool-age children see death as temporary and reversible, but kids ages 5 through 9 think slightly more like adults. Some common ways grief counselors treat children include:

  • Play therapy. Play therapy uses a child’s most instinctive behavior: interacting with the world around them through play. A therapist may use dolls, puppets, stuffed animals, a dollhouse, or other toys to encourage the child to communicate thoughts, feelings, questions, and concerns they may otherwise find it difficult to express in talk therapy.
  • Art therapy. Art therapy allows a child to express themselves creatively and without words. A therapist may ask a child to draw or paint a picture of the person they are grieving, then use it to explore their feelings.
  • Bibliotherapy. Several children’s books address death directly, but in a child-centric way. A therapist may use books to help a child understand death and dying and what can happen moving forward.

Things you can do to feel better if you’re grieving

Self-care is a critical component of the grieving process. In addition to participating in therapy, consider ways you can take care of yourself. Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Stick to a daily routine.
  • Get physical activity daily.
  • Eat a healthy diet.
  • Restrict or avoid alcohol.
  • Practice mindfulness meditation.
  • Spend time with friends and family.
  • Incorporate at least one thing in your day that brings you joy.

It can be difficult to quantify or predict the outlook for people experiencing grief, especially since each person manages it in their own way. It’s also challenging to predict which treatment will work best.

Grief does not follow one particular path. Healing is unique to each individual, and the outlook for people experiencing grief looks different for each person.

A therapist can play a key role in supporting the healing process by facilitating counseling sessions based on your situation.