Grief sentence completion worksheet

What is grief therapy?

Grief therapy helps clients process loss and cope with the psychological distress of grief, which may include feelings of anxiety, confusion, fear about the future, yearning, and depression. 

Therapy can also help with challenges related to grief, like self-neglect, suicidal ideation, and prolonged, traumatic, and complicated grief, by helping clients find ways to adjust to a world without the client’s loved one.

Grief therapy may involve several therapeutic approaches, including:

• Cognitive behavioral therapy: CBT may help clients reframe unhelpful thoughts and create coping strategies to manage triggers and overwhelming emotions.

• Interpersonal therapy: A more structured approach, this therapeutic intervention is time-limited and helps individuals navigate the emotional and relational challenges of grief by exploring the impact of grief on relationships, roles, and social functioning.

• Brief dynamic therapy: A psychodynamic approach, this type of therapy seeks to examine and resolve the underlying emotional and relational components of grief, such as past relationships, attachment patterns, unresolved conflicts, and suppressed emotions.

• Expressive therapies: Writing therapy, play therapy, art journaling, and using music can be helpful ways to express emotions and process grief and loss.

• Acceptance and commitment therapy: ACT allows acceptance of difficult emotions while honoring values and working toward a meaningful life.

• Pastoral counseling: Some clients find it helpful to process their grief with a religious or spiritual leader in their community.

• Group therapy: Mutual connection and empathy from others navigating grief in a group therapy setting can be a helpful way to grieve.

• Complicated grief therapy: This is a relatively new type of psychotherapy that addresses symptoms of complicated grief, with roots in attachment theory, interpersonal therapy, CBT, and prolonged exposure.

• Integrated process model: This model explores five dimensions of grief, including physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual domains.

• Languages of grief: A schema that looks at conscious and unconscious languages of grief, like storytelling, metaphor, symbolism, and analysis, and different ways people express their grief (somatically, ritually, verbally, and non-verbally or reflective).