Individual therapy after bereavement and loss
Bereavement and Grief Counselling in Enfield and Online
Grief changes not only your relationship with the person who died, but your relationship with yourself, other people and the life continuing around the loss.
The world carries on in ways that can feel almost offensive. Messages arrive. People return to work. Somebody asks how you are and you have to decide how much truth they can bear.
You may get through an ordinary day and then be undone by a familiar phrase, a photograph or the instinct to tell the person something before remembering they are gone.
Perhaps you have become skilled at offering a version of your grief that other people can manage.
Therapy can provide somewhere the loss does not need to be made smaller, neater or easier for somebody else.
Grief does not follow an orderly path
You may feel sadness, anger, numbness, guilt, relief or nothing that matches what you expected.
Some days the loss feels close and unbearable. On others, you function almost normally and then question what that says about how much the person mattered.
The feelings can return, change shape or become more powerful at moments that seem unrelated. A family event, birthday, new relationship or major decision can make the absence present again.
Therapy does not require grief to move through a series of stages or according to a fixed timetable.
The relationship mattered.
Your grief does not have to look the way other people expect.
When other people begin expecting you to be better
Support can be intense at first. People call, bring food and ask what you need. Later, their lives return to normal while yours may still feel altered.
You may stop speaking because you do not want to repeat yourself, make somebody uncomfortable or hear another attempt to reassure you that the person would want you to be happy.
The question “How are you?” can become difficult to answer when the honest response feels too large for the conversation.
Therapy offers a place where the loss can remain speakable after other people have stopped asking.
When the loss changes who you are and how you imagine the future
You may have lost the person who remembered your history, understood your family or knew a version of you that nobody else did.
If you cared for them, the loss may also remove a role that organised much of your life. Time once filled with appointments, worry or practical responsibility can suddenly feel empty.
A death can change your place within a family. You may become the person expected to organise, care for others or preserve traditions while having little room for your own grief.
The future changes too. New relationships, achievements or family events may feel wrong because the person is not there to witness them. Moving towards life can feel like moving away from them.
Continuing does not have to mean forgetting. The relationship can remain part of you while more of life gradually becomes available again.
Death does not simplify what was difficult in life
You may have loved the person and also felt angry with them. Perhaps the relationship was distant, conflictual or marked by things that were never said.
You might be grieving the relationship you had, the relationship you wanted or the possibility that things might one day have changed.
Other people may speak about the person in ways that leave little room for your more complicated experience. You may feel guilty for remembering hurt, resentment or disappointment when everybody else appears focused on love.
Therapy can hold affection and anger together without requiring one to cancel the other.
When grief includes feelings that are difficult to admit
Guilt may return you to what you did, failed to do or could not prevent. Some of it may relate to real regret. Some may be the mind’s attempt to create control where there was helplessness.
Anger can be directed towards doctors, family, faith, the person who died or people whose lives continue unchanged. It may carry something about the unfairness of the loss or the things left unfinished.
Relief can also be present, particularly after illness, conflict or a long period of caring. It may say something about how difficult the final period was, not how little the person mattered.
Love, anger, guilt, exhaustion and relief can exist together. Therapy does not need to turn grief into a simpler story before these feelings can be understood.
Family, faith and culture can shape how grief is held
Families may have different expectations about how grief should be expressed, who takes responsibility and what should happen to belongings, money or family roles.
One person may want to speak about the death repeatedly while another becomes practical or silent. These differences can be mistaken for caring more, caring less or grieving incorrectly.
Faith and culture may offer rituals, language and a sense of continuity. They may also create pressure to accept the death, remain strong or avoid expressing anger and doubt.
Therapy can make room for the importance of family, faith and culture while allowing your own experience to be different from what others expect.
When the death was sudden or traumatic
A sudden death can leave little time to prepare for what has happened. Your mind may return to the circumstances, the phone call or images connected to the person’s death.
The way somebody died can begin taking up more space than the life they lived.
We can think together about the person and the circumstances of the death. Where traumatic reactions are intense or persistent, specialist trauma or medical support may also be important.
When the loss is not fully recognised
The person may have been an ex-partner, a friend, an estranged relative or somebody whose importance was not widely known.
Pregnancy loss can also leave grief that other people struggle to recognise or speak about. There may be no shared ritual or public role that reflects what the relationship or hoped-for future meant to you.
You may feel that you have no clear right to grieve. Therapy can provide somewhere for the loss to exist without requiring you to justify its importance.
Grief can change the body
Sleep, appetite, concentration and energy may change. Your body can feel heavy, restless or strangely alert.
Ordinary tasks require more effort because part of your attention remains with what has happened. At other times, you keep moving because stopping would bring the loss too close.
Therapy does not remove the physical reality of grief, but it can offer a place to think about what your body has been living through.
How I work with bereavement and grief
I work relationally and psychodynamically. We can think about the person you lost, the relationship you shared and what the bereavement has changed in your sense of yourself and other people.
There is no pressure to move on, find closure or create a positive meaning from what happened.
I may notice when you protect other people from your grief, become critical of yourself for not coping differently or struggle to allow anger, relief or need into the room. Earlier losses may also become newly present.
The work is not about ending your connection to the person. It can help make more room for the loss alongside the rest of your emotional life.
Beginning individual therapy
The first consultation is a meeting, not a commitment to ongoing therapy. It gives you space to say more about the person, the loss and what has been most difficult since.
- First consultation
- 50 minutes, £50
- Ongoing sessions
- 50 minutes, £80
- Frequency
- Usually weekly, at the same time each week
- Location
- Online, Enfield Town, Enfield Chase or Winchmore Hill
- Length of therapy
- Agreed together and reviewed as the work develops
You can begin soon after a bereavement or years later. There is no correct point at which grief becomes appropriate for therapy.
Frequently asked questions
Is it too soon to begin grief counselling?
There is no fixed timetable. Some people want support soon after a death, while others need time before they can speak. We can begin with what feels possible.
What if the person died a long time ago?
An old loss can become newly present during another bereavement, anniversary, relationship change or stage of life. There is no point at which you should no longer be affected.
Is it normal to feel relief after somebody dies?
Yes, particularly after illness, conflict or a long period of caring. Relief does not mean that you did not love the person.
What if the relationship was difficult?
You can grieve somebody with whom the relationship was painful, distant or unresolved. Death can leave fewer opportunities to repair what happened, which may make the grief more complicated.
Will therapy help me move on?
I would not frame grief as something you must leave behind. Therapy can help make room for the loss while allowing more of life to become available again.
Continuing does not have to mean forgetting
You do not need to know what you want to say about the person or the loss. We can begin with what feels most present now.
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