Grief and Loss Counselling in Nanaimo, BC.

After significant loss, you may experience difficult and surprising emotions, such as anger, shock and guilt. It may feel like the sadness will never go away. I know personally what this feels like and I support many people who are trying to find ways to cope and find their reason to continue. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There are however many healthy ways to cope with the pain. You can get through it! I can help you.

Losing someone in your life can be a painful, frustrating, bewildering experience. Part of the healing process is to express your grief, sharing what your loss means.Through the process of therapy there are ways to make your grieving more complete and more positive. I offer a safe, confidential, nonjudgmental place to talk about your grief and to create your own unique roadmap through it. Some of the grief related issues I help people deal with include anger, hurt, feelings of abandonment, ambiguous feelings surrounding death of someone with whom the relationship was rocky, guilt, loneliness, and more. "Hope begins in the dark." --Anne Lamont

Grief and Loss can be some of the most devastating of Life's experiences. I offer a non-judgemental and compassionate space for you to express what you are going through using ONLINE tools like video conferencing, email and text supports. We need to express our feelings, and will either talk or use art making tools, or employ both in this important first step. With grief and loss, we want to move at your pace, and generally slowly and gently, and will journey down this path together. I use Mindfulness techniques, and encourage you to use aspects of your own spirituality or faith, to assist you in your recovery from grief and loss.

Many life events can force us to be struggling with feelings of grief and loss not just the death of someone close to us. These life transitions like separations, job losses and health issues or limitations can be complex and can often take longer to adjust to without healthy support people who can help us to explore our thoughts and feelings. Rather than avoiding the pain attached to these events, counselling can encourage us to move through the grief toward making peace with what occurred.

Grief & loss can seem debilitating and overwhelming and many people struggle in moving on. Counselling is a highly effective resource for healing after a loss. Through compassion and understanding we will work to heal the pain of the event and move into acceptance and peace. Whether you are grieving the loss of a loved one, the loss of health or mobility, divorce or mid life transition, we can help.

Experiencing a loss goes beyond the loss of the family, friend, pet, or child to be. Not only have you lost the loved one physically; you lose what your life was with them; and what your future with them would have been. Overcoming such loss can feel overwhelming and impossible to heal. Counselling can make a significant difference in getting through this difficult period. Family members who may mean well may not understand the loss and inadvertently cause us pain: by expecting us to ‘get over it’, and by impatient and unsympathetic. Counselling offers a compassionate sounding board that is sympathetic and non-judgemental. We are able to heal at our own pace in a supportive environment.

When losing someone or something important to us, it can take lots time to adjust and learn to live our life without that person, thing or way of life. Either it is the death of a loved one, loss of a relationship, loss of a pet, loss of a job or important possessions, change to your way of life, grieving is a normal response to a life event and bottling it up can create damage or even harm to a person. It can take time to adjust and accept to learn to live life without that person, thing or way of life. When it gets too challenging or overwhelming, or if it gets in a way of living a healthy life, sometimes turning to professional support can help getting through this challenging event.

I offer counselling services at The Centre For Expressive Therapy to children and adults who are suffering from grief and loss. I use Holistic Expressive Therapy which I have developed that addresses the unique physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual needs of each individual. I design effective expressive therapies to address your specific needs. Together we will work through the stages of grief, the stages in the healing process and mediate the impact that grief, loss and bereavement has in your life. Expressive therapies will help you with issues such as fear, depression, anxiety and sleeping problems.

At different times in our lives, we are faced with grief and the loss of someone special, or perhaps the loss of a lifestyle or way of being. Transition and letting go can challenge a person at the deepest level, yet with a healing perspective, growth and renewal can emerge from loss. I provide tools to help people rebuild their lives and sense of purpose in life, while learning approaches to ease the pain of loss and grief.

We learn a lot about grief through the family and society we were raised in. Many of the ways we cope, or messages we learned about dealing with loss, we developed at an early age mostly unconsciously. I work to help people become aware of how they deal with loss. We explore hidden beliefs about what it means to experience loss and how we then deal with it. We move on to explore where people are stuck and then teaching them better ways to move on.

Grief and loss can be devastating to our lives and leave us feeling like we are in a pit we can't climb out of. There is no right or wrong way to grieve and each person's experience with it will follow its own unique pattern. It can also be very isolating. In counselling you will have a safe space to share your grief, develop self-compassion, and learn strategies for moving forward when you are ready.

You are grieving and you want me to help you feel better. Unfortunately, if you've lost a loved one or had other losses in your life, I can't change what's happened to you. Instead, I can teach you how to embrace your grief, to stay with your difficult feelings. By doing so, you open the door to self-change and the chance to discover meaning in your life.