5 Ways to Move Through Grief as a Therapist

In 2021 I had recently completed the practicum portion of my clinical work as a counseling graduate student. 

As summer became fall, I found myself in a new role as a clinical intern with a non-profit organization dedicated to providing counseling and therapeutic services to the queer community. 

Over the following 9 months, I provided individual and couples therapy to clients as I completed the last part of my degree. 

I was getting so close to the finish line. At last, I was about to officially join my field as a trained couples therapist.

Everything changed on September 22. 

Late that evening, I received the worst possible phone call: my brother had unexpectedly died. 

Words fall short when it comes to expressing how much my brother, Lance, means to me. We shared some of the most important parts of life together. 

We were companions, teammates, siblings, and friends. 

Suddenly, he was gone. My entire emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental being was rattled. 

Learning to Live With Grief as a Therapist

As the pain of his loss enveloped me, my clinical supervisor compassionately encouraged me to take the time off that I needed. 

I am still so grateful for the deep empathy and knowing that I was met with at this point in my clinical career: go. Go and be with the grief. 

As an intern, what better message could I have received about radical self-care?

I took a couple of weeks away from providing therapy. 

The unfortunate truth about grief in our society is that we as a collective community often struggle to create the expansive space, time, and mourning that’s necessary to process the meaning of deep loss and find a way forward. 

I think grief pulls the most vulnerable parts of ourselves to the surface. In my own experience with grief, I felt drawn to have something where I could focus my energies, to connect with the humanness of everything. 

A part of me had a pull to just keep moving—I wanted to get those clinical hours so badly and I deeply did not want to feel the pain of losing my brother. 

Another part of me wanted to quit. 

How could I possibly keep pursuing this career when I hurt so much? How could I get through grief as a therapist helping others?

I found myself wondering, “Will it always feel this way?” 

Grieving as a Grief Therapist

Upon my return to meeting with clients, I had to navigate how I showed up as a clinician (and human) with the clients in my care. 

Interestingly, as a queer couples’ therapist, many of the themes that show up in my sessions with clients center around immense grief and loss. 

Whether grieving relationships, grieving changing of identities, grieving the loss of a person, or grieving shifts in family systems—grief is everywhere. 

My clinical program provided plenty of training on family dynamics, relational patterns, and clinical interventions, but very little about a situation like this. 

How do I grieve while working with so much grief in the therapy room? 

Or, asked another way, how do I provide effective grief support while my own grief is so fresh and raw?

Slowly, as I returned to the practice of holding space for others, exploring attachment histories, and providing a secure base for my clients, I found that amidst the chaos of grief at home and grief in the therapy room, I could choose a middle way. 

Perhaps this was a gray area, where I could continue to gain the skills required to be a competent therapist while also allowing myself the space, time, and energy to grieve. 

All therapists are humans. And as humans we must navigate the unsteady waters of loss, hurt, and pain in our own lives. 

Whether losing a loved one, reckoning with a scary medical condition, surviving through the pandemic, or experiencing the end to a relationship, it would be impossible for us to be unscathed from what life brings our way. 

5 Ways for Therapists to Heal Their Own Grief 

So, beyond theories, evidence-based models, and codes of ethics, it’s imperative that therapists (especially new ones–like me) have resources, support, and a road map for working with grief as clinicians while actively moving through our own personal grief journeys. 

While I don’t think there is a clearcut roadmap for every situation, I do believe there are some themes that matter as therapists step into the dual process of grief in their professional and personal contexts. 

Here are some pieces of wisdom that I have learned while processing my brother’s loss and continuing my work as a grief therapist.

1. Embrace Gentle and Slow

In order to build back up your capacity to show up for your clients with congruence and attunement while dealing with your own grief as a therapist, know that going at your previous pace will be nearly impossible. 

Grief brings changes to your physiological, physical, and cognitive functioning and you aren’t able to hold information and engage in activities quite like you did before. 

While these impacts don’t necessarily last forever, they can last for a bit of time, particularly as the shock wears off and you adjust to the realities of the loss you are facing. 

Easing into the number of clients you are seeing will help set a pace that helps you still maintain energy and capacity for processing personal grief experiences outside of the therapy room. 

I found it helpful to schedule time in between sessions for relaxation: to lay down, to enjoy a cup of tea, to read a book, or even to take a midday bath. 

As you proactively create this space for yourself, I also recommend setting extra alarms or notifications for yourself because again, your brain isn’t functioning at full capacity, and it can be easy to forget about something you’ve scheduled. 

Not long after Lance died, I took a hot, relaxing morning bath at 10 am, completely forgetting I had a mid-term evaluation scheduled at the same time (oops). 

Still, these breaks will offer your body extra time for rest which is essential at a time that you may feel particularly exhausted and fatigued. 

2. Create Space Each Day for Your Grief

As therapists, we are witnesses to stories that require emotional engagement, connection, and a great deal of vitality. 

While it might feel tempting to turn off your grief as a therapist (I sometimes wish it was that easy, actually), it may be supportive to create spaces for your feelings, experiences, and hurt to be present or processed each day. 

Consider blocking off 30 minutes for yourself each day. Maybe you take a walk, write in a journal, or cry. Without this space, your grief has nowhere to go. Without expression, you run the risk of it popping up in session without resources to pull back when needed. 

A tool that I found especially valuable when my grief felt really intense was with containment. When I gave myself space for grief, I would imagine taking it out of a safe, protective container. I usually imagined this as an old jewelry box that my grandmother used many years ago.  As I opened it, I allowed whatever to come, to come. Perhaps it was anger, sadness, nostalgia, surprise, or love. 

When I was done and ready to transition back to my day, I would visualize all of the emotions, experiences, memories, songs, and thoughts safely going back into the container. The box would then be put away while in session, available for me to return to it when I was ready. 

3. Orient Yourself to Where You Are in Your Grief Journey 

Your clients won’t necessarily know the ins and outs of what you have experienced.

For me, I didn’t share with my clients that I had lost my brother. Instead, I kept it vague and mentioned that I needed some time away to mourn the loss of someone close to me. 

Acknowledging that a loss had taken place was enough for me to share the humanness of my reality while still maintaining boundaries so that the focus of our time together was not on me. 

It’s now been over a year since Lance’s death, and it’s more integrated in my life story than it was before. I still struggle, but the visceral, paralyzing presence of grief has shifted into a slow, heavy knowing of acceptance. Thus, recognizing where I am on my grief journey has helped serve as a necessary compass for what, how, and when I communicate with clients. 

4. Build Attunement With Lived Experience

As I’ve adjusted back to clinical work within the past year, I’ve noticed that when working on issues connected to grief as a therapist, I can draw from my lived experience to ask the kinds of questions that help with processing. 

I also can use silence in a more comfortable way, knowing that much of grief cannot be expressed in words—it must be felt. 

After reading Megan Devine’s book on grief “It’s OK That You’re Not OK,” I strongly align with the belief that I didn’t need this painful circumstance to happen in order to learn a lesson or have more meaning in my life than before. 

Pain is pain, it hurts, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be part of some larger plan. 

Even pain can teach us, though, and some of my healing in this work as a therapist has been to know that I can uniquely connect with what a client is enduring. No grief is the same, but a shared lived experience can be a reminder that we’re not alone, even if we have to walk the path of grief alone at times. 

Bottom line: your experience can shape the therapeutic relationship beyond what you verbally say. How you ask questions, co-regulate, and respond to your clients can speak volumes about the wisdom you carry from your own process with grief. 

5. Honor and Remember 

Your grief is a symbol and reflection of the love that you had for a person, situation, or experience. Big grief indicates that there was big love. Part of honoring this tenderness might be to find a ritual that gives room to what you miss, what you long for, and what may be ahead. 

One of the ways I honor my brother is by keeping a picture of him close to me when working. 

Between sessions, I might hold the picture, gaze at his sweet smile, and connect with him in the ways that I have available to me now. 

Remembering and rituals help me feel like I’m honoring his story just as I honor the stories of my clients. 

He has space in my life, even still, and that helps me continue to find the strength to get through the day. Whatever your loss has been, consider the ways you can engage in a remembering practice long-term so that you can come back to it, especially when grief shows up in client sessions.

Looking Forward

As another year has passed, I find myself in awe and surprise that it’s been more than a year since Lance died. 

Time moves in bizarre ways, meandering through space at what feels like relentless speed. 

While I’ve learned a lot over the last year as a grief therapist going through such active grief, there’s always so much more to absorb, process, and take in. 

The experience of grief is not a journey I would wish anyone to take, but I suppose that if you live in this world, it’s inevitable.  Grief is a part of the human story. 

May you find gentleness, softness, and care in your grief journey. 

May you find balance and comfort, too. 

You can feel this. You can absorb this. 

You will continue to find yourself again—both as a human and therapist.