About Grief Counseling
If you are on this site, it is highly likely that you have lost a very important part of your life. We want to welcome you and let you know that with the staff of Joshua Center, you are in good company. Each of us has lost someone we loved and have walked the path of mourning at least once. We are thankful you have chosen to let our team walk with you.
Many people don’t know what Grief Counseling is until they or their families need it. So, to better explain what we do at Joshua Center, let us first define Grief Counseling. Grief Counseling is a type of professional therapy designed to help you work through the various range of emotions you may feel after a loss. At Joshua Center, we help people of all ages find healing and hope by marrying cognitive therapy practices with J.W. Worden’s Tasks of Mourning as our guide.
J.W. Worden’s Tasks of Mourning are part of the grief healing process, as they help a bereaved individual adjust to a new way of life without what they lost. The four tasks of mourning require an individual to process their grief by acknowledging the pain associated with their loss, adjusting to their new environment, and learning to accept the reality of the changes in their life.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning invite you to take a deeper look at the big picture of how grief affects you and invites a different perspective of healing into grief counseling and therapy in the following ways.
1. Accepting the reality of loss reveals the fact that grief is a natural part and process of life. When undergoing your healing journey, you learn that experiencing grief is natural. When someone you love dies, grief makes you want to hold on to them.
2. Processing the pain and suffering that attaches to grief means allowing yourself to feel the raw and painful emotions attached to your sorrow. Grief counseling helps you by giving you permission to release your pain and pour out your tears. Your counseling or therapy sessions might include music therapy and the encouragement to cry out loud to help you process your pain.
3. Adjusting to your life without your loved one is also a significant part of working through your grief during counseling. Your counselor or therapist can help you wade through your feelings of loneliness and isolation and guide you through your loss of identity while helping you rebuild a new one.
4. Maintaining an enduring connection to your deceased loved one in the midst of embarking on a new life is another way that Worden’s Tasks of Mourning help you in counseling.
These tasks are only the roadmap our counselors travel alongside our clients. Since the only way through grief and mourning is to feel your way through, this can be difficult for the children and families we serve. We use cognitive therapeutic practices and storytelling to help our clients build a toolbox they can draw from as they grow and grieve their loved one in different ways.
Mourning takes as long as it takes, so there is no real overarching timeframe counseling will last. Each individual is different. With that in mind, many children and families start to find hope while healing around 6 months to a year.
Reference:
Based on Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner, Fifth Edition, Springer, N.Y.)
