Orlando Central Florida Grief Therapy and Loss Counseling Services
Why is Grief & Loss Counseling Important
Grief counseling becomes necessary when a person is so crippled by their grief, overwhelmed by loss to the extent that their normal coping processes are disabled or shut down.
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Adults Grief Counseling
Grief counseling facilitates expression of emotion and thought about the loss, including:
- Sadness
- Anxiety
- Anger
- Loneliness
- Guilt
- Relief
- Isolation
- Confusion
- Numbness
Grief Counseling includes thinking creatively about the challenges that follow loss, and coping with changes in their lives. Often people feel disorganized, tired, have trouble concentrating, sleep poorly and have vivid dreams, change in appetite.
Grief counseling may be called upon when a person suffers anticipatory grief, for someone may feel that a loved one is going to die but it’s not likely. Anticipatory mourning also occurs when a loved one has a terminal illness. This can handicap that person’s ability to stay present whilst simultaneously holding onto, letting go of, and drawing closer to the dying relative.
Children Grief Counseling
Orlando Children Grief Counseling Services
The Downward Spiral of Hope: Complex Grieving in Children
Hurricane Katrina taught us a lot about the grieving process in children, teenagers. Unless the situation was a dramatic event, such as discovering the body of a parent who committed suicide or being a war refugee child, untreated grief and prolonged grief are often overlooked. But unexpected deaths by natural causes, accidents, or motor vehicle accidents can cause acting out, depression, grief, insomnia, and anxiety. Children may experience grief, feeling sad one moment and then seem fine an hour later. This is because children experience grief, feelings, and trauma differently than adults and we expect them to respond to counseling in the same manner. Unlike adults, children do not sit and emote how anxiety and depression have impacted their life.
Complex grieving is different from uncomplicated grieving in the fact that the child does not move through the normal stages of grief. They remain stuck. PTSD symptoms are also present, such as avoidance of reminders of the deceased, emotional numbness, nightmares, excessive irritability, excessive loneliness, hopelessness, grief, depression, anxiety. Because of the varying emotional awareness of their parents, these children may become very depressed and hopeless before anyone is aware of their plight. It is very important that these children receive therapy.
A combination of therapy and counseling may be the most successful with these children to address the PTSD symptoms and the grief.
Play therapy is an ideal choice for counseling because children naturally play in their environment.
Trauma Based-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TB-CBT) is also a good choice because it is proven to be an effective treatment for trauma.
Depending on whether the symptoms seem to be more trauma-based or not will determine whether TB-CBT will be the primary therapy with Play Therapy augmenting this counseling treatment. In any case, no one child presents in just the same manner, so it is important to draft a treatment plan specific to the child.
