Therapy for Grief and Loss
Grief can affect nearly every part of life. It may change how you think, feel, sleep, connect with others, experience your body, or imagine the future. Whether your loss happened recently or years ago, therapy can offer space to understand what you are carrying and find ways to move forward without minimizing what mattered.
Grief and Loss Therapy
Support for navigating loss, change, and life after something important has changed.
Grief is a natural response to loss, but that does not mean it is easy to navigate. It can bring sadness, anger, guilt, numbness, relief, confusion, anxiety, loneliness, or a mixture of emotions that changes from one day to the next.
There is also no single timeline for grief. You may feel relatively okay one moment and overwhelmed the next. Anniversaries, places, songs, conversations, milestones, or unexpected reminders can bring grief back to the surface. Sometimes grief becomes more noticeable after the initial support from others has faded.
Therapy can provide a place where your grief does not need to be rushed, explained away, or made more comfortable for someone else.
Grief Is About More Than Death
The death of someone important can create profound grief, but grief can also follow many other forms of loss.
You may be grieving:
The death of a family member, friend, partner, or other important person
The loss of a relationship, friendship, or community
Anticipated loss related to serious or terminal illness
Changes in your health, mobility, independence, or physical abilities
The loss of a role, career, home, or sense of stability
Changes associated with caregiving or aging
Estrangement from family or other important relationships
A future you expected but did not get to experience
Changes in identity, belonging, or your sense of self
Multiple losses that have accumulated over time
Some losses are readily recognized by others. Others may receive little acknowledgment even though their impact is significant. Therapy can make room for grief that has been overlooked, misunderstood, or difficult to discuss elsewhere.
When Grief Feels Complicated
Grief does not follow a predictable sequence. The commonly discussed “stages of grief” are not steps that everyone experiences in the same order or completes on a particular schedule.
For some people, grief gradually becomes easier to carry. For others, the intensity remains significant or begins interfering with daily life, relationships, work, sleep, or the ability to reconnect with meaningful activities.
You may notice:
Persistent sadness or emotional pain
Difficulty accepting or making sense of the loss
Guilt, regret, anger, or unresolved questions
Numbness or feeling disconnected from yourself
Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
Changes in sleep, appetite, or energy
Anxiety about additional losses
Avoiding reminders of what happened
Feeling stuck between holding on and moving forward
Loss of meaning, direction, or purpose
Feeling isolated because others seem to have moved on
There is no requirement that grief become severe before you seek support. Therapy can also be helpful when you simply want a private place to process what has changed.
Anticipatory Grief
Grief can begin before a loss occurs.
Anticipatory grief may develop when someone you love has a serious or terminal illness. It can also occur when you are facing changes in your own health, functioning, independence, relationships, or future.
You may find yourself grieving what is happening now and what you know may happen later. Hope, sadness, fear, gratitude, exhaustion, anger, and uncertainty can all exist at the same time.
Therapy can provide space for these conflicting emotions without requiring you to choose between preparing for loss and remaining present with the life that still exists.
Ambiguous and Disenfranchised Loss
Some forms of grief are particularly difficult because there is no clear ending or because other people do not fully recognize the loss.
Ambiguous loss can occur when someone is physically present but psychologically or relationally changed, or when someone is physically absent without a clear sense of closure. This may happen in situations involving dementia, serious illness, estrangement, disappearance, separation, or major changes in a relationship.
Disenfranchised grief describes grief that is minimized, unsupported, or not openly acknowledged by others. This can include the loss of a relationship others did not recognize, estrangement, reproductive loss, the death of an ex-partner, the loss of a pet, changes in identity or community, and many other experiences.
Your loss does not need to fit someone else's definition of what is “supposed” to be painful for it to matter.
How Therapy May Help
Grief therapy is not about forgetting someone, eliminating sadness, or forcing yourself to “move on.” The goal is often to develop a different relationship with the loss so that grief can exist alongside connection, meaning, and continued living.
Therapy may help you:
Understand your individual grief response
Process difficult or conflicting emotions
Explore guilt, regret, anger, or unfinished conversations
Adjust to changes in roles, routines, relationships, or identity
Develop ways to cope with reminders, anniversaries, and milestones
Navigate family or relationship changes following a loss
Reconnect with supportive people and meaningful activities
Explore questions about meaning, values, identity, or purpose
Make room for memories without becoming overwhelmed by them
Build a life that acknowledges both what was lost and what remains
There is no predetermined destination for grief therapy. What healing looks like depends on you, your circumstances, your relationships, and the meaning of the loss.
An Individualized and Integrative Approach
I approach grief from a person-centered, strengths-based, and trauma-informed perspective. Therapy is collaborative and shaped around your needs rather than a predetermined timeline for how grief should unfold.
Depending on what is helpful for you, our work may incorporate approaches from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness-based approaches, motivational interviewing, and other evidence-informed practices.
For some people, grief work focuses primarily on having a place to talk openly about the person or experience they lost. For others, therapy may involve coping skills, self-compassion, rebuilding routines, navigating relationships, exploring meaning, or learning how to experience difficult emotions without becoming consumed by them.
Complementary practices such as mindfulness, meditation, or trauma-informed yoga may also be incorporated when appropriate and requested.
When Grief Affects the Body
Grief is not only an emotional experience. Stress associated with loss can affect sleep, appetite, concentration, energy, muscle tension, digestion, and other aspects of physical well-being.
This can be especially important when grief occurs alongside chronic illness, chronic pain, disability, caregiving, or other health concerns. Physical changes may contribute to grief, and grief may make existing health challenges more difficult to manage.
Therapy can help you pay attention to both emotional and physical experiences without treating them as completely separate parts of your life.
Therapy Across Different Stages of Life
Loss can have different meanings at different stages of life.
Adolescents may be navigating grief while they are still developing their understanding of identity, relationships, independence, and mortality. Adults may experience grief alongside parenting, relationships, careers, caregiving, or major transitions. Older adults may encounter multiple losses involving loved ones, health, independence, roles, community, or changes in the future they had imagined.
I provide therapy for adolescents, adults, and older adults. Treatment is adapted to your developmental stage, circumstances, strengths, and goals rather than assuming everyone experiences grief in the same way.
Grief, Trauma, Anxiety, and Depression
Grief can overlap with other mental health concerns without being the same thing.
A sudden, violent, frightening, or otherwise traumatic loss may involve both grief and trauma. Loss can also contribute to anxiety, depression, panic, sleep difficulties, or thoughts about death. People living with chronic illness or pain may experience ongoing grief related to changes in functioning, independence, relationships, or identity.
When concerns overlap, therapy can address them together rather than requiring you to separate your experiences into different categories.
Online Therapy for Grief and Loss
Online therapy can provide a private and accessible way to receive grief support from a familiar environment. This may be especially helpful when leaving home feels difficult, you are balancing caregiving or other responsibilities, or grief has affected your energy and motivation.
Therapy with Z provides online psychotherapy to adolescents and adults across participating U.S. states. You must be physically located in a state where I am authorized to practice at the time of your appointment.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if I need therapy for grief?
You do not have to reach a certain level of distress before seeking therapy. You may want support because grief feels overwhelming, because it is affecting daily life, or simply because you want somewhere to talk openly about your loss.
Is there a normal timeline for grief?
There is no universal timeline. Grief can change over time and may become more or less noticeable at different points. Important dates, milestones, transitions, or unexpected reminders may bring grief forward again even after significant time has passed.
Does grief therapy help me “move on”?
Therapy does not require you to forget, detach from, or stop caring about what you lost. For many people, the work is less about moving on and more about learning how to move forward while continuing to honor an important relationship, experience, or part of life.
Can I come to therapy before someone dies?
Yes. Therapy can help with anticipatory grief when someone important to you has a serious or terminal illness. It can provide space to process uncertainty, prepare for possible changes, navigate caregiving, and remain connected to what matters in the present.
Can therapy help if my loss happened years ago?
Yes. There is no expiration date on grief. Older losses can become more noticeable during anniversaries, transitions, new relationships, health changes, or other experiences that give the loss new meaning.
What if other people do not understand why I am grieving?
Your grief does not have to be validated by other people before it deserves attention. Therapy can provide space to explore losses that have been minimized, misunderstood, or difficult to discuss.
You Do Not Have to Grieve on Someone Else's Timeline
Loss can become part of your story without becoming the entirety of it. Therapy can offer space to remember what mattered, understand what has changed, and discover how you want to continue living alongside the reality of what you have experienced.
You do not need to know exactly what you need from therapy before beginning. We can start with where you are now.