Grief and Loss: How Therapy Helps in the Grieving Process

Loss touches everyone at some stage of life. When a loved one dies, the world changes irrevocably. Grief is a natural and healthy reaction, but sometimes it can feel so heavy that you cannot manage alone. In those moments, therapy can be invaluable support.

The Many Forms of Grief

Grief is not a single uniform experience but a multidimensional process that can include:

• Emotional grief: Sadness, longing, yearning, anger, guilt, and feelings of emptiness.
• Physical grief: Fatigue, pain, loss of appetite, sleep disturbances, weakened immunity.
• Cognitive grief: Difficulty concentrating, memory problems, confusion, blurred sense of reality.
• Social grief: Isolation, difficulty being with people, changing roles.
• Spiritual grief: Questioning life's meaning, religious or existential reflections.

Grief is highly individual. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and grief has no timeline.

Stages and Process of Grief

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's well-known model describes five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, current research emphasizes that grief does not progress linearly through stages but is more of a wave-like motion.

William Worden's task model of grief work offers another perspective:

1. Accepting the reality of the loss: Understanding that the loved one will not return.
2. Processing the pain of grief: Confronting and living through emotions.
3. Adjusting to a world without the deceased: Reorganizing daily life, identity, and roles.
4. Finding a new connection to the deceased: Integrating memories and meanings into life.

When Does Grief Require Professional Help?

Grief itself is not an illness, but sometimes it can become complicated and require professional help. Complicated grief is indicated when:

• Grief does not ease at all over months
• Coping with daily life is impossible even long after the loss
• Intense yearning and longing comprehensively dominate life
• You avoid everything related to the deceased or conversely cannot detach from memories
• You have suicidal thoughts or death wishes
• Substance use has increased with grief
• You feel emotional numbness and cannot feel anything

Complicated grief affects an estimated 10 percent of those who experience loss.

How Therapy Helps with Grief

Therapy does not take grief away, nor should it. Instead, therapy offers:

A safe space: In therapy, you can express all your feelings: anger, guilt, even relief: without fear of judgment.

Normalization of grief: The therapist helps you understand that your reactions are normal and acceptable.

Processing emotions: A professional has methods to help you face and work through difficult emotions safely.

Supporting adjustment: The therapist helps build new ways of living in the world after loss.

Finding meaning: Integrating loss into one's life story can bring peace and meaning.

Different Losses and Associated Grief

The nature of grief varies by type of loss:

Sudden death: Accidents, suicide, or sudden medical events leave behind shock and disbelief. Trauma processing may be part of grief work.

Death after chronic illness: Grief can begin before death (anticipatory grief). After death, both grief and relief may come. Both are allowed.

Loss of a parent: Regardless of age, a parent's death fundamentally changes one's relationship to origins and mortality.

Loss of a child: One of life's deepest losses. The need for professional help is especially great.

Pregnancy loss: An often silenced and minimized loss that can cause deep grief.

Self-Help in Grief

In addition to therapy, you can support your own grief work:

• Give yourself permission to grieve: without a timeline
• Write about your feelings in a journal
• Talk about the loss with someone you trust
• Take care of your physical health: sleep, nutrition, exercise
• Participate in a peer support group
• Create remembrance rituals that feel meaningful
• Avoid major life changes during the first year

Therapy Costs

Grief therapy typically costs 80–120 euros per session. Kela's rehabilitative psychotherapy is an option if grief has led to depression or an anxiety disorder. Crisis therapy may also be a suitable form of treatment in the acute phase.

Grief is not about forgetting the loss. It is learning to live with it: carrying a love that no longer has its object but never disappears.

Where to find a therapist

You can look for a therapist in several places:

• Search services run by the Finnish Psychological Association (Psykologiliitto) and professional bodies.
• Kela's service provider search, if you are applying for rehabilitative psychotherapy (only Kela-approved therapists qualify for reimbursement).
• The Valitse Terapia service and other directories.
• Your own health centre, occupational health service or student health service (YTHS), which can refer you onward.

You can contact several therapists and see with whom the collaboration feels natural.

Get help in a crisis now

If you are having thoughts of self-harm or are otherwise in an acute crisis, you do not have to face it alone.

• In an emergency, call 112.
• MIELI Mental Health Finland crisis line: 09 2525 0113 (English and Arabic), 09 2525 0111 (Finnish), 09 2525 0112 (Swedish).
• For under-29s: Sekasin chat (sekasin.fi).

Help is available anonymously, and you do not need to be sure your situation is serious enough.

Sources

• MIELI Mental Health Finland
• MIELI: Crisis helpline
• Mielenterveystalo (Mental Health Hub)
• Kela: Rehabilitative psychotherapy