Services
Bereavement Counselling- Counselling and Psychotherapy
What is it?
Losing a loved one is a devastating experience. The term “ bereavement” describes this state of complete sorrow. Sometimes the pain can be worked through with the support of family and friends and other times professional support is required.
 | What is certain is that every individual grieves differently. The goal of bereavement counselling is to get you to a place where you can remember the deceased with less pain while also feeling comfortable reinvesting in your future life. The process of bereavement and the related symptoms can also be felt in cases of adoption, separation and divorce. |
What are the symptoms?
Many people who are in the throes of a deeply felt loss, feel that they are going crazy, but grief, which is very normal, brings with it a set of common physical, emotional, behavioural and cognitive symptoms:
Physical:-
- Hollowness in the stomach
- Tightness in the chest
- Tightness in the throat
- Oversensitivity to noise
- Breathlessness
- Weakness of the muscles
- Lack of energy
- Dry mouth
Feelings:-
- Sadness
- Anger
- Guilt and Self-Approach
- Anxiety
- Loneliness
- Fatigue
- Helplessness
- Shock
- Yearning
- Emancipation
- Relief
- Numbness
Thoughts:-
- Disbelief
- Confusion
- Preoccupation
- Sense of presence
- Hallucinations
Behavioural:-
- Sleep Disturbance
- Appetite Disturbances
- Social Withdrawal
- Dreams of the Deceased
- Avoiding reminders of the deceased
- Searching and calling out
- Sighing
- Restless overactivity
- Crying
- Visiting places or carrying objects that reminded the survivor the deceased
- Treasuring objects that belonged to the deceased
What helps?
In my experience, grief is a very personal process, and just as each individual is unique, so too is the grieving process. Counselling draws down on the plethora of theories on grief counselling and therapy to ensure that the appropriate interventions are used depending on your unique situation. One brief example of what this could mean in practice is listening to details of your loss, including the death, the funeral, the gravesite and talking about the deceased past and present. Often those close to you are not able to listen to this continuously and yet it is essential to your healing.
For further information on bereavement, loss and grief, please refer to the following web pages:-
* http://www.hospice-foundation.ie
* http://www.barnardos.ie
* http://www.healthpromotion.ie
* http://www.nawi.ie
* http://www.iol.ie/~isidansr/home.htm
* http://www.miscarriage.ie
Worden, J. (2001). Grief Counselling & Grief Therapy. (Third ed.). New York: Springer Publishing Company.