Grief and Grieving

With almost no exception, types of therapy (Cognitive Behavioral, Dialectical Behavioral, Narrative, EMDR, Existential, Freudian Psychoanalysis, Gestalt, versions of “Systems” therapies, somatic styles) have similar steps in common for what we are calling grieving/”legitimate suffering”. They come to them by different means, but the “soul of the process” is much the same. While I am tempted to say even more about it, will simply point you to here, here, and here, where I have already labored what legitimate suffering is.

For our purposes though, will say that I am framing whatever legitimate suffering is as the method or tool for grieving. Again noted here, we’re defining grieving as moving from any version of “feeling bad” to feeling “less bad”, insofar as is possible. Here’s the steps most all forms of therapy seem to have in common:

1. Telling the story

2. Talking about how we “survived” the experience/s

3. Talking about how it changed the major domains of our life

4. Talking about how it changed us as a person

5. While the above have value in and of themselves, they inevitably “prescribe” additional “interventions” (as we call them in mental health) that would be helpful

A bit more about what we’re grieving though. I want to emphasize that whether sad, afraid, ashamed, hurt, and/or mad, reducing the frequency and/or intensity of these things, all is still grieving. The process is also agnostic in terms of cause, as far as the fundamental steps are concerned. What I mean is, it doesn’t matter if we are grieving someone calling us a name or someone physically assaulting us or anything else - the steps are all required for the best outcome. The “size”/intensity of the thing being grieved also doesn’t matter, the steps are still required.

It is easy to oversimplify those steps. The depth of these discussions (telling the story), the investment in engaging oneself with those experiences/how “present” we are in sharing them, who we share them with, under what conditions . . . all of these are part and parcel of the effectiveness of doing so.