Grief Counseling
in Portland, Oregon

What counts as grief?

Have you experienced loss in your life? This includes deaths of loved ones, including pets. That’s usually what we think of when we hear the word “grief.”

I have experienced this type of loss. In the span of six months, both of my dogs and then my father passed away. It was perhaps the hardest time of my life, but working with my own IFS therapist helped me arrive at a place of peace on the other side. That experience had a profound impact on my understanding of grief and the role of therapy, and I have since helped many clients move through similar losses.

But death is not the only thing we can grieve. Loss appears in everyone’s lives, and much more frequently than we might notice. You may have experienced grief over romantic breakups, moving, losing or switching jobs. The grief can appear even when you’re the one who decided to make those changes.

Grief goes even further than that, though. Many of my clients have experienced religious trauma and left the communities in which they were raised. They may enter therapy aware of the loss of community they have experienced. However, as we move through the work together, nearly all of my clients discover a hidden grief: the grief of what could have been.

Grieving what could have been

What would life have been like if one’s parents hadn’t neglected them? Or if they were diagnosed with autism while they were still in grade school, rather than in their late thirties? What if they could have realized all the ways in which they were masking their pain during that time? What if they had felt free to authentically be themselves for all those years? 

The literal answers to these questions may be impossible to determine. As you continue to unpack the effects of trauma on your life, you might fantasize about previous life events going differently. For instance, maybe you imagine high school as a time when you stood up to your parents about going to church, and practiced healthy boundary-setting. But every time you play through this exercise, maybe the scenario turns out a little differently.

I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with playing out scenarios like this in your mind. However, I think real healing can occur when we recognize what’s going on with the part of you that’s conjuring all of these “what-ifs.” Where is this part of you coming from, why does it care so much, and what does it need?

Internal Family Systems in grief counseling

Using Internal Family Systems therapy, our grief work together will consist of you identifying your grieving parts, one at a time. The part of you that fantasizes about the past going differently is likely a “bargaining” part. The word “bargaining” might ring a bell for you in the grief world, as it’s one of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

One thing I often point out to my clients is that, contrary to mainstream perception, the stages of grief are not usually linear. People move back and forth between the stages of grief, and sometimes experience them simultaneously. Another lesser-known fact is that Dr. Kübler-Ross developed this model specifically for patients with terminal illnesses. Acceptance and hope may be considered the “goal” with this model because these patients have limited time, and they essentially know where their story is going.

For other situations, however, life goes on. We think we’ve reached a place of acceptance until one day we encounter a new type of reminder of what or who we’ve lost. All of a sudden, we feel like we’ve backtracked with all of our grieving.

The thing is, we aren’t backtracking. Through an IFS lens, the parts of us that feel sad or angry are simply re-activated, but they never left. Our sadness never truly leaves us. Our anger or our wish that things had gone differently don’t truly leave us. Rather, they can come to a place of resolution until they encounter a new stimulus that they have feelings about. This is okay, and it’s normal, and over time it hopefully happens less frequently and intensely, but it still happens.

The work, then, is to develop positive relationships with these parts of you. That’s what IFS is all about. Perhaps a more helpful version of acceptance is to aim for having acceptance of your feelings. Knowing that the sadness is okay, and how it shows up, and what it needs? That’s where the real transformation happens.

Your grief is important

One way that we reach acceptance of grief is to recognize one of its purposes: Grief shows us what we value. We grieve the loss, sometimes unexpectedly, because what we had mattered to us. You moved away from your friends and family because of your career, and it was the logical decision, but you still miss them! The grief helps you realize that you still need those types of relationships in your lives. When you recognize how your grief is trying to help you, it becomes easier to accept and integrate it into your life.

You may be reluctant to take your grief seriously. But if your grief is pointing out something that mattered to you, then the grief itself matters. In individual counseling, we will make the space for you to safely work with your grief. If you’re hesitant to explore your grief, we can be curious about that too. Whether you choose to work with me or not, I encourage you to notice your grief - whatever it may be - and invite it into your life.

Get help from a Grief Counselor

Dealing with grief takes time, but if you’re an adult willing to take that time in individual counseling, then we might be a good fit. Schedule a free 15-20 minute phone consultation today.