Therapy for Grief: What It Is, Types, and How to Cope
Last Updated on May 29, 2025 by Prath
Reviewed by April Justice, LICSW
- Published on 29 May 2025
‘They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite’ – Cassandra Clare.
Indeed, grief is infinite, everlasting, and all-consuming. It is a manifestation of love with no outlets.
Loss, in any form, is a deeply painful experience. Like childbirth, you may hear all about grief and feel well prepared for it – but when it actually happens, it’s faster, stranger, and more difficult than you could have ever imagined.
But in all this pain, you are not alone. Therapy for grief can be a space to explore what it means to grieve and how to find comfort and hold on to the light of life.
Let’s look into what therapy works best for grief, the types and interventions that can help, and learning how to deal with grief and loss.
How Does Therapy for Grief Work?
Most people can deal with grief or loss after:
- Loss of a loved one
- Loss of a pet or animal
- Unemployment
- Growing up and mourning your childhood
- Breaking up
- Moving to a different country
Loss can manifest in many ways. For some, it could mean feeling too emotional. In comparison, others may feel too numb or emotionally exhausted.
When the distress becomes so prolonged that you’re unable to function normally, you may consider therapy for grief.
Here, you can learn how to cope with grief through therapy, process your emotions, and replace maladaptive behaviours with positive habits.
For example, a person grieving can experience many different emotions. These include fear, anger, frustration, confusion, or even relief.
How do you make sense of these? What do you do with yourself when you’re unable to contain the anger? These are some questions you may explore with a grief therapist.
The Goals of Grief Therapy
Therapists may usually focus on the grief process that’s related to bereavement. However, these therapeutic concepts can be extrapolated to other forms of loss (eg divorce).
The core of grief therapy is to help you adapt to the following:
- Loss of a loved one; and
- A new reality
Grief therapists often refer to the ‘four tasks of mourning’ during sessions. These include:
- Accepting the reality of losing something or someone
- Processing the pain of grief
- Adjusting to a world without the deceased (or without the expected situation)
- Finding a connection with the loss while moving on to a new life
Therapy to help with the loss of a loved one may also mean that you:
- Learn to regulate your emotional and behavioural pain
- Overcome obstacles to readjustment after loss
- Find new ways to explore your identity after loss
Rest assured, therapists are trained to tailor the sessions to align with your grief process and style.
Signs you might benefit from therapy for grief
Therapy for sudden loss can help you if you face any kind of distress. The intensity of your feelings does not have to be ‘too high’ for you to talk to a therapist.
That said, below are some common signs you may benefit from grief counselling:
- You feel stuck or frozen in your grief months after the loss
- You’re withdrawing from people, friends or colleagues at work
- You have intense feelings of guilt or anger that won’t go away
- You’re experiencing sleep or appetite changes
- You feel like something is wrong with you
3 Types of Grief
Identifying the type of grief you’re experiencing can help determine which therapy works best for you.
Some common types of grief include:
1) Complicated grief
Complicated grief is also known as persistent complex bereavement disorder.
If you’re experiencing emotions like sadness or fear for a prolonged time, and if these emotions affect your life in a negative way, you may have complicated grief.
Complicated grief therapy can help you better understand your experience and teach you healthy ways to respond to it.
Common signs include:
- Feeling hopeless
- Suffering from short-term memory loss or relapses
- Exhibiting avoidance behaviour (eg avoiding people or situations that remind you of your loss)
- Isolating from your loved ones
- Feeling too depressed to function normally
2) Traumatic Grief
Traumatic grief can be a response to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Trauma, in general, may occur when you experience something deeply distressing or frightening. The symptoms can manifest emotionally, physically, or psychologically.
Traumatic grief, specifically, may occur when you lose a loved one suddenly or violently. Examples could include losing someone in a car accident, a flight accident, due to war, genocide, or death due to a hate crime.
At Talk Your Heart Out (TYHO), Therapists use trauma-informed therapy for grief to help you process and cope with unresolved trauma.
3) Depression and Grief
Mental health issues like chronic depression may occur due to grief. The depression symptoms could be a direct result of your loss.
Common signs of depression due to grief may include:
- Feeling down or numb for most of the day, nearly every day
- No longer enjoying activities you once loved
- Feeling tired or having low energy even after sleeping
- Eating significantly more or less than usual
- Experiencing brain fog, being forgetful, and struggling to make decisions
- Feeling guilty or worthless due to the loss
- Having headaches, stomachaches, or unexplained muscle pain
- Thoughts of death or suicide
Grief therapists can help you:
- Identify the differences between depression and grief symptoms
- Identify common symptoms in multiple mental health issues that may occur due to grief
- Learn evidence-based tools to address and manage the symptoms
- Create a roadmap of how your healing journey may look
Case study of prolonged grief disorder & navigating identity loss
Find the detailed case study here.
Background:
A man in his early 50s faced two significant and sudden losses:
- Professional loss: He lost his role in a family-owned business
- Personal loss: The man experienced the unexpected death of his son
Presenting symptoms:
Due to the complicated grief, the man showed signs of:
- Chronic low mood, feelings of hopelessness, and lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities.
- Difficulty falling and staying asleep.
- Intense longing for his deceased son and difficulty accepting the loss.
- Intrusive and distressing memories related to the traumatic loss of his son.
Assessments indicated that he was experiencing symptoms consistent with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD).
Therapeutic Interventions:
A combination of therapeutic approaches was employed over six months:
- Reconsolidation of traumatic memories (RTM): This technique was used to address and reduce the distress associated with traumatic memories, particularly the flashbacks related to his son’s death.
- Inner child integration therapy: This approach helped him explore and heal unresolved emotional wounds from earlier in life, which may have been increasing his current grief and trauma.
- Medication: Prescribed to manage acute symptoms of depression and anxiety, with plans to reduce or remove from the treatment plan as therapy progresses.
Outcomes:
Throughout treatment, the person experienced reduced symptoms, improved functioning, and improved emotional processing.
This case study highlights the importance of therapy for grief, the effectiveness of combining targeted therapeutic approaches to address complex grief and trauma and facilitating a return to a meaningful life.
If you would like to seek therapeutic intervention for grief, talk to a Therapist today.
Grief Therapy vs Grief Counselling
Therapy for grief and grief counselling are used interchangeably. However, you may notice some subtle differences, such as:
- Grief counselling: Grief counselling is usually a short-term intervention focused on helping you through a specific loss (eg losing a job you loved). This intervention is ideal for those who are looking to navigate normal grief (ie grief due to the loss of a loved one).
- Grief therapy: Grief therapy is often a long-term and in-depth intervention. Ideally, you may benefit from therapy for grief if you experience complicated emotions and other co-existing conditions like depression or generalised anxiety.
At TYHO, all our Therapists provide both grief therapy and counselling. Hence, you may not need to worry about the difference in usage on our platform.
Simply find a Therapist who can help you with grief and have this conversation with the professional directly. Some questions you can ask include:
- Can I seek grief counselling even though I feel like I may also have anxiety?
- Can you help with both grief therapy and counselling?
- Which intervention will I benefit from the most?
- Do you have past experience helping clients with grief?
Best Counselling for Grief and Loss: 3 Effective Interventions
Each therapeutic intervention may focus on different aspects and may not work for everyone. Hence, it’s important to psycho-educate oneself and talk to your Therapist to identify which method works best for you.
The three most effective therapies for grief include:
1) Role-Play
Having imagined conversations with the person you lost helps you process unresolved feelings.
The role-plays are conducted through expert guidance and support from the grief therapist.
2) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
ACT is used to help you identify, accept, and process difficult emotions without letting them control your lifestyle.
Therapists may use key ACT techniques like mindfulness, values clarification (ie identifying your personal values), and committed action to align your behaviours with your values.
The overall goal is to improve your emotional resilience and improve your life after loss.
3) Grief Rituals and Symbolism
Learning therapeutic rituals or symbolic actions to honour the deceased can be an effective tool to gain a healthy closure after loss.
Your therapist may teach you skills to incorporate rituals into your daily life. Some tools taught in therapy for grief may include:
- Writing letters to the person you’ve lost
- Creating a memory box with photos or keepsakes that remind you of your loved one
- Establishing an annual ritual like cooking their favourite meal on their birthday or visiting a place both of you loved at the start of every year
How To Cope With Grief and Loss
Below are some strategies you can use to deal with grief and loss:
- Build a support system that can help you when you struggle to function at your best. These can involve your friends, family members, or community friends.
- Stay physically active for 4-5 days a week. Moving your body and stretching can help release the happy chemicals in your brain and release tension in your muscles.
- Maintain a routine to get through the day. You can start the morning with some meditation, journaling, and physical activity. Including some therapeutic rituals we discussed above, like writing a letter, can also make your day feel more meaningful.
- Set small and short-term goals you’d like to achieve for the hour, day, and week. These goals can help you hold on to the light and process grief healthily. Personal goals include talking to a friend or cooking a meal. Professional goals can involve finishing a project at the end of the week or visiting a networking event.
Taking care of yourself during grief isn’t selfish. It’s necessary.
Try asking yourself: If someone I cared about were in my shoes, would I want them to look after themselves?
Chances are, the answer is yes – and you deserve that same kindness, too.
Key Takeaways
- Therapy for grief is not about forgetting the loss but helping you healthily process the loss.
- Understanding what kind of grief you’re experiencing can help you determine the kind of support you need.
- Therapy for grief may involve effective techniques like role-play, ACT, and meaningful rituals.
- You can also learn how to cope with grief by incorporating small habits daily.
Experiencing grief can feel intense, but it doesn’t fundamentally change your core identity. If you feel stuck, lost, or overwhelmed due to grief, talk to one of our expert grief Therapists.
Find an outlet to share your love, for it’s worth so much more than keeping it buried.
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