How My Grief Journey Guides My Therapy Practice

I tested positive for COVID on Mother’s Day. Four days later, my mom died from cancer. 

In October, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. 

I watched her health decline rapidly, until she lost her battle seven months later in May. 

My blossoming career as a therapist came to a temporary halt to make space for healing. I took time off so I could recenter and feel my way out of the darkest place I have ever been. 

Now, I refer to those two weeks off as “taking a break from life.” 

And that’s exactly what I did. 

I told one of my colleagues all the things that needed to be taken care of during my absence and I turned my email notifications off. She took it from there. 

I knew this loss would hit me hard, so I prepared ahead of time for coverage of my clients. 

I then did exactly what I always tell my grieving clients to do: I felt my feelings. I allowed myself to be a sobbing mess and barely left my couch. This time off didn’t feel good, but it felt right. 

Getting through grief at work

In various roles that I’ve had throughout my social work career, I had been told that we must be martyrs. Anything less is a disgrace to the field. Years ago, while working at one mental health organization, my husband’s aunt passed away. She didn’t have any children and so she treated us like her kids. 

Grateful for bereavement benefits, I spent time with my family to plan for her services. 

The response from HR when I put in for bereavement on my timecard was this: “Who died?”

No condolences. Not a single “I’m sorry.”

It was just “Who died?” 

I was then informed that this type of loss “didn’t count” for bereavement and had to use my vacation time. Unfortunately, I would imagine that a lot of mental health providers have had similar experiences. 

Carrying any stress, including grief, is heavy. When we add that to a job that involves needing to provide so much compassion, it can become too much. After my negative experience with HR, I struggled with sleep. I woke up every morning dreading my day. 

Was I even good enough to be in the field? I had a notion in my mind that I needed to be invincible to be in the helping profession. The need for such perfectionism caused my mental and physical health to decline—until I finally decided to quit that job.

While I was grieving my mom, I reflected on my previous experience with grief and my professional life. 

I knew that there was no way I could possibly provide appropriate services to clients while I was struggling so much myself. 

Grief ignores the boundary between our personal and professional lives, and does not have a prescribed time limit. I knew I needed to honor that as best as I could.   

Even after I returned to work, I continuously made time to check-in with my well-being and engaged in my own therapy. I reminded myself that grief could and would hit me at any moment. I needed to be prepared. I allowed myself to pause and grieve when I needed to. 

By allowing myself the time, space, and patience to take care of my own emotional needs, I discovered that I was able to be more attentive with my clients. 

After seeing my mom dying, my perspective on life changed drastically. I have witnessed the fragility of mortality, which only strengthened my need to realign with my values in life. I remembered that I need quality time with loved ones, appreciating every moment of life, and time to explore my own sense of spirituality. 

Sharing my grief with clients helped clarify my values

By revisiting and becoming more secure in the things that mattered to me, 

I’ve had the clarity to help my clients do the same. 

This allows me to be attentive to the power dynamic in the therapeutic relationship. 

I’ve become more mindful of the privilege and power that comes from my position in the field. 

Clients come to us when they’re vulnerable because we carry the knowledge and resources to provide support.

Holding the knowledge and resources is power, whether we recognize this or not. We can unintentionally become the gatekeeper to resources that could help someone. Instead, it must be a reciprocal relationship in which I view myself as an equal to my clients because we share the human experience, just from different perspectives.

One way to balance the hierarchy of power is through self-disclosure, a highly debated topic. 

I’ve met clinicians who are open to sharing personal anecdotes with clients, and I’ve met clinicians who refuse to share anything at all. I have worked under the perspective that self-disclosure can be a powerful tool to use with clients. 

As with any tool, we must ask ourselves, “Who does this tool benefit?” “How does this tool benefit those involved?” “How can this tool potentially hurt someone?” 

By sharing small snippets of my life, I am showing that I too have experience as a human, not just a therapist. My clients often assume that I handle my emotions perfectly and I’m never stressed. 

We know that emotions are messy and complicated, stress is normal—regardless of whether we’re therapists. 

While I grieved my mom, I shared with my clients that I had experienced a loss. I didn’t haphazardly volunteer information about my loss, but if they asked, I was honest that it was my mom and that she had cancer. Some therapists might frown upon this because that’s “too much” of my personal life to share. 

In my experience though, my clients benefited from this self-disclosure tool because it leveled the dynamic and created a deeper sense of authenticity in my work. I do recognize that this disclosure could be harmful in various ways, including that a client could fear triggering me. But I also recognize that part of a strong clinical relationship is having challenging conversations if or when issues arise. 

Ultimately, this possibility was a risk that I was willing to accept to maintain strong rapport with my clients. 

I chose to share because I can’t imagine having a client ask me about why I was gone for two weeks, then respond by telling them I’m not going to answer and proceed to ask them personal questions. It felt callous to me, and I didn’t want to take that approach. 

Letting my clients in on my grief

My clients expressed sympathy, as well as gratitude that I had let them in. 

Holding the space for those who are grieving is powerful. 

I allowed my clients a piece of my vulnerability, and it showed them that I viewed them as important enough in my life to have that piece. 

Losing a parent at a younger age is like being a part of a club that no one wants membership in. 

My clients who have lost a parent viewed me as someone who “gets it.” We then became members of this awful club together. I do comprehend that pain more now than just a textbook, superficial level. When I respond to them by saying, “I understand,” they know I’m sincere. 

Not only did I let my clients in, but I let my colleagues in as well. To pretend that I was fine when I was aching inside just didn’t seem right to me. I thought it would make me feel like a liar and that I was putting on a mask. 

With the heaviness of grief, the additional weight of wearing that mask just seemed to be too much to carry. I knew that I was modeling to my colleagues that it’s okay to feel when we are hurting. I wanted my colleagues to see that they could be protected from the feeling that I had when I was told my grief “didn’t count.” 

Feeling my pain—but not suffering

Along with sharing, I let others help. 

My colleagues offered support and I accepted it. I let them provide clinical coverage, follow up on billing questions, respond to referral sources, and more. I’ve become more self-aware over the years, which in part includes knowing my own limits.

I knew that I didn’t have enough emotional energy for all the tasks associated with running a private practice. We tell our clients that it’s okay to reach out for help from people in their lives. 

Connecting back to our power dynamics, if I encourage my clients to do something, I should be expected to do the same—otherwise I’m sending the message that I’m above leaning on others for help.

Buddhist philosophy tells us “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not.” 

I know that I can feel the pain but by allowing others into my experience, I don’t have to suffer. 

My grief journey has been bittersweet. While I’m heartbroken as to how I arrived at my membership in this awful club—I recognize that I’ve strengthened my skills as a therapist, too. 

READ NEXT: 5 Ways to Move Through Grief as a Therapist

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