Have you suffered a temporary or permanent injury preventing you from competing or changing your life?
Are you struggling to head off to college or into retirement?
Have you suffered a loss or experienced a great change that makes you question who you are and/or fear your own mortality?
These are all situations where we experience grief.
DO YOU FEEL UNABLE TO MOVE FORWARD, AS THOUGH LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN?
Have you experienced a flood of emotions—such as denial, anger, or depression—as you try to process your grief?
You may be trying to cope with the loss of a loved one and can’t imagine going on without them. You might feel like you’ve lost your identity as you struggle with the fear, confusion, and anger caused by their absence. When grief overtakes you, you may experience an array of intense emotions within a few minutes and the pain is unbearable. What’s more, you might feel anxious because their death is causing you to confront your own mortality.
Similarly, suffering the loss of something important to you, such as your sport or passion due to injury or impairment, could mean you’re coping with unacknowledged grief. Perhaps you didn’t realize how much your self-worth was wrapped up in your occupation or the sport you played. Now that it’s gone, you don’t know what to do with yourself or who you are without it. You may have become anxious or depressed—or perhaps even suicidal—when you picture life without your passion.
Going off to college or retiring is supposed to be a joyous time in one’s life. However, without having an idea of what we are transitioning to and even planning what it will look like on the other side of this life transition can have us anxious, depressed, and even longing for the days when we knew what to expect. Knowing what to expect and reflecting on experiences of knowing what to do when things go wrong feels safe.
WISHING LIFE COULD GO BACK TO HOW IT WAS BEFORE
You may wish you could snap your fingers and things would return to how they were before. However, as you remain stuck in disbelief over your loss, you feel angry and isolated.
Adopting a “nothing matters anymore” attitude, you may be putting yourself in high-risk situations—such as self-medicating—as rage mixes with grief. Or perhaps you’ve withdrawn from others or become short-tempered around well-meaning loved ones who don’t understand how you’re feeling. We may even isolate ourselves and not want to come out from under the covers. These are all possible reactions to grief, as there is no “right way” to grieve.
Fortunately, I can help you process your grief and move forward from loss. Moving forward is not forgetting. Moving forward is accepting and possibly even finding purpose.
Grief work provides the tools necessary to get through this painful chapter and find hope for the future.
BUT YOU MAY WONDER IF THIS IS RIGHT FOR YOU…
IF GRIEF IS A NORMAL PROCESS, WHY DO I NEED HELP?
By normalizing grief for you, counseling and coaching can help you better understand its stages and identify when you might be stuck in an emotion that’s causing you avoidable distress. And if you have to address important life matters while experiencing grief—like legal or financial issues—you could benefit from the objective perspective of a counselor who doesn’t have a stake in what happens except to support and help you.
TALKING ABOUT MY GRIEF WILL BE PAINFUL.
Although experiencing grief is an inevitable part of life, it can be painful to talk about. However, the more you avoid expressing it, the more it festers. Unprocessed grief can manifest into anger, bitterness, depression, isolation, and anxiety, adversely affecting your outlook on life. Festering long enough it can lead to physical problems, especially cardiac concerns.
The purpose is to prevent you from getting stuck in extreme emotions and figure out how to self-regulate so you can see clearly and behave differently. Working with me means you won’t face your grief alone and will find healthier ways to process it.
WHAT IS SARAH’S EXPERIENCE WITH GRIEF COUNSELING?
I facilitated a thriving grief and loss counseling group that ran for over five years, in which people of all beliefs sought guidance and shared what comforted them in their times of need. Over the years I’ve helped clients cope with grief related to losing partners, parents, and siblings as well as worked with performers and athletes who didn’t qualify for a life-changing opportunity, and others that can no longer perform or compete due to chronic illness, temporary injury, or permanent injury. There is no right or wrong way to grieve and I will support you however I can.
ACCEPTANCE CAN HELP YOU HEAL
Your outlook appears bleak whenever you equate losing something or someone as the end of life as you know it. I utilize Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) in grief work to help you gradually accept life as it is, even when experiencing loss has changed its composition. By helping you discover hope and find silver linings along the way, you will realize that even though you have experienced loss, there is still a reason to get up in the morning.
And if you decide you want to bring faith into the conversation and consider it an important aspect of treatment, then I encourage you to do so. I have a strong spiritual background and believe the mind-body-energy connection plays an important role in healing from grief. I have worked with clients of multiple religions and cultures and can tailor your grief counseling to whatever you may prefer, such as Spiritual, Christian-based, Muslim-based, Jewish-based, etc.
By offering support and assurance that what you’re experiencing is normal, I can help you understand the stages of grief so they no longer overwhelm you. Once you realize that life goes on after suffering a loss, you will rediscover the joy you’ve been missing.
YOU CAN FIND A NEW, HOPEFUL PATH FORWARD AFTER EXPERIENCING LOSS. CONTACT ME TODAY FOR AN APPOINTMENT OR YOUR 15-MINUTE FREE CONSULTATION TO FIND OUT HOW I CAN SUPPORT YOU IN YOUR GRIEF.
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