Understanding Grief & Loss
Grief is a natural and deeply personal response to loss; it is the emotional suffering one feels when something or someone they love is taken away. While often associated with death, loss encompasses any significant change that alters your sense of normalcy and connection. Especially if we have a close (or complicated) connection to the thing or person we lose, grief can feel particularly heavy. Grief can sometimes feel like an isolating process, but you don't have to do it alone.
Acute Grief
The natural grieving and mourning process that comes from death or separation from a loved one. This form of grief could also include a significant relationship loss (e.g., divorce, separation, or excommunication).
Ambiguous Loss
A loss that lacks clear closure or finality, such as when a loved one is physically missing (e.g., a missing person or deployment) or psychologically absent (e.g., due to dementia).
Anticipatory Grief
Also called 'pre-grief', this is the grief and anxiety felt before an impending loss occurs, such as during a loved one's terminal illness or a major upcoming life change.
Where Trauma Meets Sorrow
If bereavement occurs abruptly - like a sudden health crisis or mishap - mourning often merges with additional layers of traumatic stress. This specific type of distress is incredibly taxing, frequently resulting in PTSD-like responses. The traumatic load can also increase when you feel isolated and people don't understand your grief (e.g., 'disenfranchised grief'), or if you keep going through multiple grieving episodes without having the chance to process each one (i.e., 'cumulative grief'). We guide you in unraveling intricate grief-related feelings to safely navigate the event(s) together.
How Can Isaacs Psychology Help?
Our clinic offers a roadmap for finding your feet and moving forward after loss. Our approach respects and allows for the natural grieving process, which can be very specific to each person. We integrate scientifically-backed methods such as ACT, CBT, strategies from Prolonged Grief Therapy (PGT), and other supportive therapies to meet you where you're at, in ways that promote stabilization and meaning, while honouring your loss and suffering at each stage of the process.
Identity & Role
Loss of a job, career role, or the physical changes following health shifts. This grief can encompass grief/loss about certain roles or responsibilities (e.g., no longer being "a spouse", "a sibling", or "an employee").
Traumatic Grief
Sudden loss due to accidents, medical emergencies, or violence. While any loss can evoke a traumatic reaction, some circumstances of the loss itself can be particularly traumatic.
Re-Grief
Periods of life where feelings of loss and grieving feel stronger because of reminders of the past loss (e.g., the anniversary of a loved one's death, or being in a place that brings back memories).
Masked Grief
When someone shows a lack of emotional response (numbness) to a loss, but may expresses the grief indirectly through physical symptoms, behavioral changes, or other symptoms.
Prolonged Grief
Also known as 'complicated grief', this is unyielding pain, yearning, and difficulty functioning that persists heavily beyond a year after the loss. It is when grief feels strong on an ongoing basis.