My name is Dr Emma Gray, and I'm the Lead Clinical Psychologist at the British CBT & Counselling
Service.
And in this video, I'm going to explain how you know if you need bereavement counselling.
Okay, so, the process of grief is a natural and necessary process that we all must move
through when we lose someone in order to move forward with our lives.
However, it is painful beyond words, and it makes us realise how fragile life is, how
vulnerable we are, and it can make life feel, really, quite meaningless.
Everybody needs support during this time, but sometimes we need more support than our
friends and family can give us.
Now, as I said, grieving is a process that we all must move through—but sometimes we
get stuck.
So I'm going to explain what the process is, so you can start to work out if you're stuck.
The process has five stages, but these stages aren't ‘stops’ along a road that you walk
straight down in one direction.
The path that we take is often quite meandering, with us having to revisit stages that we might
have already moved through.
The first stage is denial, and this is always the first thing, the first stage that we experience.
It's, kind of, a survival.
We feel numb; we only allow in as much as we can handle at that point.
As the denial starts to fade, this is a sign that you're getting stronger—that you're
beginning to heal.
Now, often, but not always, the next stage is anger—and there's a reason for this.
We are most used to handling anger, so that's why it's often the first thing we feel, there
are lots of other emotions underneath that anger, but it's more often than not at the
top.
Anger also makes us feel more in control because we can take our anger and direct it at somebody,
or something.
So you might find yourself feeling very angry with a doctor who you feel hasn't given the
right advice or treatment, or an individual who didn't attend the funeral.
And often the intensity of anger reflects the intensity of love that we felt—feel—for
the person that has died.
The next stage, or another stage, in this process is bargaining, and this is a way for
us to stay in the past.
So we'll find ourselves thinking about how we could have done things differently—we
could have prevented the accident, we could have recognised the illness more quickly.
We might be thinking about things we should have said, maybe, to the person who had died,
that would make our experience and their experience different.
The next stage, or another stage, is depression.
And this is where we are moving into the present, and we feel very sad.
And the reason for this is because, when we grieve, we have to work out how we're going
to live our lives without the person that we loved in it.
And to do that, we need to draw our attention inwards.
We need to take that time to work it out, to work out how we're going to live without
them.
So we almost, I suppose, block out other influences so that we can focus on that one important
task.
The final stage is acceptance.
Now, this isn't to say that you feel okay with the loss of that person that you love—you
will never feel okay about that—but you will find a way to live.
And in this stage, you will begin to reconnect with life, you will begin to move forward,
to grow, and evolve, you will start to find some purpose, some meaning, in life—some
hope for the future.
Okay, so now, I'm going to look at signs that you may be stuck somewhere in this process.
So think about these questions.
Does your grief feel as painful as it ever did?
Do you feel frequently, or constantly, hopeless about the future?
Are you finding it difficult to meet your daily responsibilities?
Are you often feeling very anxious or very depressed?
Are you withdrawing, or have you withdrawn, from life and from other people?
Do you feel very alone with your grief?
Are you, maybe, starting to notice some pressure from other people to move on?
Now if you find yourself answering 'yes' to one or more of these questions, it's quite
likely that you would benefit from some bereavement counselling.
Now in the next video, I'm going to look at five ways to help you to deal with grief and
loss.
But in the meantime, on this channel, there are lots of videos about mental health, emotional,
psychological problems, behavioural problems—so if that's something that you're interested
in, please subscribe.
And I will see you soon.