Grief and Loss Counseling in Ithaca, NY.

Grief and loss are painful experiences we all face at some point in our lives as part of the human condition. No matter when it occurs, it can be shocking to experience such intense emotional and physical pain in the body. Sometimes it's a chronic dull pain that holds on and sometimes it can return as if it was just yesterday. Clients have found that having a safe place to allow their feelings to be expressed with support can be healing and can help in moving through the pain. Gradually, clients share that over time they are able to find ways to adjust to life without their loved one. It is important to remember that everyone's needs are unique in this process.

When we lose someone we love, it feels like we have lost a part of ourselves. Something within us has been torn out, leaving a hole that we easily imagine will never heal. The pain can be profound, the feelings of helplessness, or regret, or guilt overwhelming. Having a partnership where you can talk through these feelings can make a huge difference not only in how quickly and how well you are able to move through the process of grieving, but also how you ultimately are able to frame the experience and your memories of the person lost into the narrative of your own self and life as you move forward. What you carry with you afterward is just as important as surviving the hurt of the loss.

Often clients reach out to a psychotherapist when there is a death or separation in a relationship. Chris provides Grief and Loss counseling and Psychotherapy where empathy and caring help clients get emotional closure to help them move forward. A sudden death and loss can causes a person to have increased anxiety and depression and limit functioning. Chris has worked with numerous clients to heal and move forward through effective counseling and psychotherapy in New York. Clients benefit from talking out their feelings where I help them get closure and provide the skills to move on and enjoy life again.

Grief is a deeply painful and often lonely and scary process to experience. Depending on the severity of your loss, it can impact every aspect of your life, like a giant ball in the box that is your life. Every time the ball hits the wall of the box it hurts. Over time, the ball gets smaller and doesn't impact every aspect of your life. However, when it does bounce against the wall it hurts just like it did in the beginning. With the right understanding of how grief it ebbs and flows over time and the space to allow it to be expressed, one can begin to heal.

I provide services that support people in loss of previous life style, loss of their own ability due to a disability, and loss of someone they were close to or a colleague. Grief is different for everyone, but one of the most popular models arranges the 5 stages of grief as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. People take different amounts of time to get through these stages of try to skip over them but they are natural. Since everyone’s grieving is specific to them, my method is adjusted to accommodate my clients. My hope is to support you through this process to build coping skills, listen and be an extra resource.

Despite what most think, there is no expected cycle of grief. One can feel all the cycles at once or all of the sudden be overwhelmed with a cycle they thought they already worked through. We will be patient with our clients while offering support, kindness, and the space to heal. TCC offers many treatment modalities to support grief counseling. We will discuss our modalities and help you to decide on an approach that best meets your needs.

Grief and loss inevitably leads to anger & sadness. Not surprisingly, it also can lead to depression and feelings of guilt. The latter is called irrational guilt, as most of us lack magical powers to cure dying people. Even if they mean the world to us. I would encourage my clients to express feeling of guilt and anger often unconscious related to the loss. The anger is often at the person who died. Of course, this is irrational anger in most cases, as we all are going to die. The anger is over losing someone we love, value. I would use clinical interventions that usher in the grieving process. This fosters coming to terms with and an acceptance of the loss.