William Worden has identified four tasks of healthy grief:
(1) to accept the reality of the loss;
(2) to work through the pain of grief;
(3) to adjust to an environment without that which was lost; and
(4) to emotionally relocate that which was lost and move on with life. 

This not necessarily a linear process, and each person experiences these tasks of grief in their own way. Many people will work through their grief on their own, but those who feel “stuck” in the process or find that their feelings of grief are very prolonged or overwhelming may find counselling to be helpful. 

We take a holistic approach to grief counselling at Radiant Mind, meaning that we recognize and work with the physical, behavioral, cognitive, emotional and spiritual domains that are impacted by loss. As everyone is different, your counsellor may draw from different modalities such as ACT, Narrative Counselling, Existential Counselling, Mindfulness and Compassion, and Solution-Focused Counselling to help you with:

(1) cognitive restructuring, in which the grieving person reorganizes and restructures his or her thoughts and concepts to assimilate a loss;
(2) emotional expression of the experience of the loss;
(3) psychological reintegration of new coping behaviors and cognitive strategies for adjusting to life without the deceased; and
(4) psychospiritual transformation, which involves a profound, growth-oriented spiritual/existential transformation that fundamentally changes our central assumptions, beliefs and attitudes about life, death, love, compassion or our idea of a higher power.

We invite you to watch this short clip of Dr. Tara Brach discussing the transformative power of authentically opening to the feelings of loss: