I Just Can’t Get Past It….
How Psychological Therapy Can Help with Grief
When I first started working as a Clinical Psychologist I was quite daunted by the prospect of working with people who had been bereaved. I used to think –‘ it’s only natural that a person would feel devastated at the loss of a loved one. Could therapy do much about that?’ In fact should a therapist intervene when someone is moving through a perfectly normal process (even if it feels really unpleasant)?
Over the years, I’ve had contact with many people who are struggling with the loss of a loved one and either felt stuck in an endless cycle of grieving or felt so overwhelmed they could no longer function. They’d tried the ‘wait and see’ option, but nothing seemed to improve. They went to grief counselling to try and navigate through it. For some this was immensely helpful. For others, they just felt as though they were talking and talking and nothing was moving.
What I have found when people come to therapy overcome with grief, is that trauma is often at the root of the blockage. Witnessing a death is, at the best of times, a major event and one which our brains find difficult to make sense of. Witnessing a particularly traumatic death of a loved one (whether it’s sudden, if there is prolonged suffering or if there are a lot of disturbing images relating to the death) can leave us stuck in an endless loop of intense emotions, deeply unpleasant images and unhelpful thoughts. This gets in the way of the usual process our minds need to go through in order to heal. Every time we start to think of the loved one we have lost, we are thrown back into that moment, with all the same intensity of feeling and distress we had at the time. We can’t even begin to remember the person we loved with any joy because the memories of what happened just get in the way.
Often, this is a short lived experience and many people find that the initial intensity subsides over time. They are able to move on into grieving for their loss in whatever form that takes. However, for lots of other people the trauma of the death remains and they can feel stuck for months or years, unable to move on.
Trauma focused psychological therapy can be transformative for people stuck in the trauma of bereavement. There are many different types of trauma focused psychological therapy that can help people to overcome the blocks and allow the grieving process to flow.
One of these therapies which has proven effectiveness is Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing Therapy or EMDR. EMDR is an evidence based therapy that is recommended by NICE and the World Health Organisation for trauma. Unlike standard talking therapies, it doesn’t require participants to talk about their experiences in very much depth, and relies on the brains own natural ability to work through difficulty and to heal, with guidance from a highly trained and skilled therapist. In my experience, EMDR specifically adapted for traumatic grief has allowed clients to let go of the trauma of the death of a loved one so that they can grieve in peace.
Whilst no therapy will definitely work for everyone, many clients report a sense of letting go - a distance from the disturbing images. They tell me that, following EMDR therapy, they are able to remember the good times and feel the joy that they had with their loved one, even though they are also sad to have lost them.
So if you are troubled by the experience of grief that seems stuck in time, remember that this is often a very normal reaction to an extremely traumatic event. Feeling unable to move past it is no reflection at all on you or your resilience. Your mind might just need a little help to move past the trauma of what’s happened and to move forwards with hope.
If you would like to make an enquiry about EMDR therapy for grief with me, please click HERE.
