Will I Ever Be the Same Again???
Grief comes in many different forms and in response to many kinds of losses. Sometimes an existential crisis occurs in the context of loss and grief. The desire to return to their pre-loss functioning and what has been good and satisfying in the past can bring clients into therapy.
Many clients find that dealing with loss and change in bereavement counseling helps them reflect on areas of the self that may need fleshing out and development. For some individuals, loss can become a call for fuller development of their humanness. Since life truly is not the same after a significant loss, external definitions of the self may be either less satisfying and/or no longer applicable. We tend to want to put ourselves back together again in the same way, but the trauma of loss brings up close our interior life as never before. That is, the experience of loss cannot help but bring one’s emotional life closer to the surface.
Grief counseling provides a needed framework to cope with the disorientation of loss. At the same time therapy helps individuals begin to regain their balance and search for new ways of being. The therapeutic relationship can help a client create personal meaning in the world. Stephen Joseph,PhD, professor at the University of Nottingham states,”When adversity strikes, people often feel that at least some part of them – be it their views of the world, their sense of themselves, their relationships – has been smashed. Those who try to put their lives back together exactly as they were remain fractured and vulnerable. But those who accept the breakage and build themselves anew become more resilient and open to new ways of living.”