Bereavement Counselling in London

Grief does not follow the sequence of stages that the popular frameworks describe. It is more irregular than that — present and then absent, acute and then apparently resolved, returning in unexpected forms long after the period that others consider appropriate for mourning has passed. And it is not only the death of a person. The loss of a relationship, a role, a version of the future, a part of oneself — all of these carry grief, and all of them can bring someone to therapy.

Bereavement counselling at the practice works with grief in its full range: the acute phase immediately following a significant loss, the complicated grief that does not resolve over time, the grief that has never been properly mourned because circumstances did not allow it, and the grief that is entangled with anger, guilt, or ambivalence in ways that make it particularly difficult to process.

What makes grief complicated

Uncomplicated grief — if there is such a thing — moves through a natural process of mourning over time, eventually integrating the loss without eliminating it. Complicated grief is grief that has become stuck: the person cannot move through the loss, cannot integrate it, and cannot find their way back to the capacity for life that preceded it. This can happen when the loss was sudden or traumatic, when the relationship was ambivalent or unresolved, when there was no adequate support during the mourning period, or when the loss touched older unprocessed losses that were waiting beneath the surface.

Therapy in these cases is not simply about processing the immediate loss but about understanding what the grief is carrying — what previous losses it has reactivated, what the relationship meant, what part of the person died alongside the person or situation that was lost — and creating the conditions in which that fuller mourning can take place.

Sessions in London

Bereavement counselling is available at the Harley Street and Central London offices and online. Sessions are weekly, 50 minutes. The initial consultation will assess what kind of support is most appropriate for your specific situation.