Grief and Loss Counselling in Cranbrook, BC.

Helping people work through their grief and loss is often about encouraging their healing process. This healing process is natural and yet we can get stuck. With compicated grief issues it can be helpful to have a counsellor facititate the client with caring and compassion to further the healing. People need to come away from counselling ultimately believeing that their is hope for a less painful, brighter future.

When we experience loss, we can become stuck in a pattern of negative feelings and emotions. It can be hard to more forward in the healing process. EMDR can help by targeting and reprocessing the underlying memories and emotions associated with the loss, thus allowing us to move through the stages of grief in a more healing and adaptive way. By reprocessing the negative experiences, we reduce the negative symptoms and increase our sense of emotional resilience and well-being.

Are you using alcohol, substances, or addictive behaviors to cope with grief and loss? Although they provide relief in the short term, their long-term effects on your relationships and health can make it even more difficult to cope. Through a compassionate non-judgmental approach, I help clients explore their relationship to grief and loss so that they can overcome addictive coping strategies. If you're looking for another way forward, feel free to reach out and we can set up a free consultation to discuss further.

Grief is a potential reaction to a loss of any kind whether through death, divorce, abandonment, separation, job loss, illness, disease diagnosis, kids leaving home, etc. Feelings of anger, resentment, shame, confusion, isolation or abandonment can result. Friends and family may not know what to say or how to provide support. A trained professional, who is profoundly sympathetic, respectful and empathetic, with the skills required to help one navigate through this difficult time, can be critical in helping one regain equilibrium.

Grief therapy is a form of psychotherapy that helps you to cope with grief and mourning after the death of a loved one. Loss can result from a number of things including relationships that end, careers that do not work out and other personal losses that result in painful emotions. Support is a necessary component of healing. Often grief therapy is utilized when the natural process of grieving is interrupted by life circumstances.

My approach when working with grief and loss is to honour the relationship with your lost loved one. We have this idea that when someone dies that we are not supposed to talk about them anymore as if they never existed and that you are supposed to mourn and move on. I do not believe that is helpful. Instead, I believe there is a way to grieve that honours the person who no longer walks the earth and keeps the relationship alive. Death is the end of their physical presence but not their influence on your life.

When we are facing grief and loss, there is often a complex web of emotions and many layers of meaning-making to encounter in our healing process. The path is never linear. The timeline requires sensitivity and nuance. Compassion, patience and the ability to hold seemingly contradictory feelings are paramount. With gentle presence, we can hold the magnitude and the subtleties of this experience moving step by step towards healing.

Grief and loss, while universal aspects of human experience, manifest themselves very differently depending upon the nature of the relationship with the person we have lost, the circumstances surrounding the loss, and our own stage in development. Grief often involves not only loss due to death, but the also loss of identity that accompanies a chronic health condition, relationships ending, the transition to retirement, or the loss of a beloved pet. The transition through grief involves a highly individual process of finding closure, bringing a sense of meaning to the loss, and re-investing in life following the loss.

Grief and loss can be caused by many different events in life and we all respond to our feelings of grief and loss differently. Grief and loss can include: Death of a loved one, separation or divorce, loss of a relationship, loss of a job, empty nest transitions, retirement, job relocation or loss of a pet, to name a few. Bettina will compassionately help you through this difficult time of grief and loss, so you are able to move through the difficult stages with more support, compassion and understanding of yourself.