Grief and Loss Counselling in Thunder Bay, ON.

Managing grief and loss is a difficult. Using expressive arts to heal from grief and loss gives you an avenue to understand how grief fully impacts you. You will learn to understand and read your body and know how to maintain self-care and resources in the future. Stepping Stones Consulting will teach you new and different approaches to healing grief and loss, enabling you to continue to move forward.

Grief brings the hardest combination of all feelings - despair, anger, fear and love. It can right leave us with unmanagable pain, feeling disoriented and questioning everything. Sometimes it feels too painful to step back into the world that dares to carry on as if nothing happened. Sometimes we need someone to remind us that it is a place we are passing through and not a destination. I offer gentle guidance and strong support through grief. I work with you find ways to make sense of you loss, learn to manage your feelings in new ways and find your way back into life again.

Since everyone is unique and grieves differently, my approach to grief therapy is to tailor counselling to fit with the needs and experiences of the individual person. I offer a safe supportive environment where people can feel free to talk in depth about their deceased loved one; learn how to better understand and cope with their personal reactions to the pain of grief (emotional, physical, behavioural, and spiritual); explore new ways of staying connected to and remembering the loved one who has died; and learn to adjust to a different life than the one they used to know.

The loss of a loved one or any form of loss can be a difficult process. This loss be especially difficult if there are complicating factors or many losses within a short period of time. Sometimes someone to witness, and help you process your loss can make a world of difference. I specialize in supporting people to resolve complex grief and loss and would be honoured to guide you through your journey.

Parents will learn how to support and discuss grief and loss in a comfortable manner to their children. Children and parents will learn about the stages of grief (shock, anger, denial, rituals and commemorating) and how the intensity of feelings for each stage can vary developmentally for their child over time. There are many types of loss ie: pet loss, family loss, living losses, abandonment, neglect, traumatic loss, community losses, death, traumatic changes. Tx can be offered individually for parent/child or jointly. Puppetry, story telling, art, role playing, sand trays and dollhouses and figurines will be used to help children make meaning of their losses.

I inform my grief and loss counselling practices on various models of death, dying and grief. These models include Kübler-Ross' Stages of Death and Dying as well as Stroebe and Schut's Dual Process Model of Grief. I also incorporate death rituals, mindfulness and meaning-making in helping clients process their feelings of grief and loss.

Focus on stages of grief and loss, normalization of unique grief process for every person, processing difference between stages of grief/loss and unresolved mourning. Focus on difference based on impact of grief and loss based on development and unique features of relationship loss, change or life transition. Recognition that the impact of grief and loss as ebbing and flowing through our lives.

Grey Matters International and the work of Kevin J. Fleming, Ph.D approaches issues of grief & loss through the lens of innovation----instead of growing the same neural networks responsible for the pain in weekly therapy sessions, we reset the brain to move forward quicker and efficiently by working on the stuck limbic system so as to empower the person with more success and traction. For no one wants to stay in a grief mode for too long; but when you don’t include the brain in your work with someone, you risk describing the water to them while they drown and calling it success. Contact Grey Matters International, Inc now at kevin@kevinflemingphd.com or 877-606-6161.

I use a Mindfulness Based approach together with Compassion Focussed Therapy to address grief and loss. I help the individual build on existing personal strengths and resources, and work with that person in a respectful manner to enhance coping strategies. This helps the individual move forward with dignity, and at a pace that meets their specific needs.