Grief & Loss
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is not a phase to be moved through as efficiently as possible, or a set of stages to be ticked off in the right order. It is the price of love — and it is one of the most profound and disorienting experiences a human being can go through.
If you are here, you already know that.
What grief actually is.
Grief is the natural response to loss. And loss is broader than most people allow themselves to acknowledge. Yes, it includes the death of someone you love. But it also includes the end of a relationship, the loss of a life you thought you were going to have, a diagnosis that changes everything, the slow fade of a friendship, a miscarriage, estrangement from family, the loss of a role or identity that once defined you. The loss of who you were before something happened.
Grief does not require a death certificate. It requires only that something that mattered is gone.
Why grief doesn't follow a timetable
One of the most unhelpful things our culture does with grief is put a clock on it. The expectation that by a certain point — a few weeks, a few months, a year — you should be moving on. Getting back to normal. Feeling better.
Grief does not work this way. It moves in waves, not in a straight line. It can be quiet for months and then arrive with full force at a birthday, a smell, a song heard in a supermarket. It can feel manageable and then, without warning, completely unbearable. This is not a sign that something is wrong with how you are grieving. It is a sign that you loved something deeply.
What grief can look like
Grief is not always tears. It can look like anger — at the person who died, at the universe, at people who are still living their ordinary lives while yours has been upended. It can look like numbness, or a strange flatness, or going through the motions with a hollow quality to everything. It can look like relief, followed immediately by guilt about the relief. It can look like bargaining, or obsessive replaying of what could have been different, or a complete restructuring of who you thought you were and what you thought your life meant.
It can also look like depression — and sometimes it becomes depression, particularly when grief is prolonged, when the loss was traumatic, or when there are complications: ambivalence about the relationship that was lost, unfinished business, things that were never said.
Grief that gets complicated
Not all grief moves through in its own time. Complicated grief — sometimes called prolonged grief disorder — is what occurs when the natural grieving process becomes stuck. When the intensity does not diminish, when daily functioning remains significantly impaired, when the loss continues to feel as raw and present as it did in the earliest days. This is not weakness. It is grief that needs more support than time alone can provide.
You don't have to wait until it gets complicated
Long after the casseroles have stopped coming, whether you are moving through this as well as anyone could or finding yourself more stuck than you expected — this is not a journey you were meant to undertake alone. Your loss will inevitably be a private and painful experience. But we were never designed to grieve behind closed doors, cut off from one another. Community, permission, and someone sitting across from you — witnessing the full weight of love and the pain of loss — is not just helpful. It is some of the most important work we do as human beings.
What treatment looks like.
Grief therapy is not about fixing grief or making it go away. It is about creating the conditions in which grief can be fully felt, fully witnessed, and gradually integrated into a life that continues — changed, but continuing.
A space that is entirely yours
One of the things that makes grief so isolating is the sense that other people — even people who love you — reach a point where they don't quite know what to do with it anymore. The conversation moves on. The subject gets changed. There is a subtle pressure to be further along than you are. Therapy offers something different: a space with no agenda, no timetable, and no discomfort with the depth of what you are carrying. You can say the things that feel unsayable. You can be exactly where you are.
Making meaning
One of the most significant tasks of grief is meaning-making — the slow, non-linear process of integrating a loss into your understanding of yourself and your life. This is not about finding a silver lining or arriving at acceptance on cue. It is about rebuilding a relationship with a world that looks different from the one you were living in before. Narrative therapy, ACT, and existential approaches are all useful here — frameworks that work with identity, values, and what it means to carry a loss forward rather than leave it behind.
When grief and trauma overlap
Some losses are traumatic — sudden deaths, suicide, accidents, losses that came with violence or shock. When grief and trauma are present together, the work addresses both. The traumatic elements need to be processed — through EMDR or somatic approaches — before the grief itself can move. Trying to grieve a traumatic loss without addressing the trauma first is like trying to heal a wound that hasn't yet been cleaned.
Complicated grief
Where grief has become stuck — where the intensity has not diminished and daily life remains significantly affected — a more structured therapeutic approach helps create movement. This is not about accelerating grief or pushing it through. It is about gently identifying what is keeping it frozen, and working with that carefully and at pace.
The relationship that was lost
Sometimes what makes grief complicated is not simply that the person or thing is gone — it is the nature of what was lost. A relationship that was difficult. A parent who was absent or harmful. A loss that comes with relief, or anger, or ambivalence, or all three at once. These are the griefs that often go unacknowledged — because they don't fit the clean narrative of loss. They are no less real. And they deserve the same careful attention.
If grief is affecting your daily life, a Mental Health Care Plan from your GP provides access to Medicare-rebated sessions with a clinical psychologist.
You don't have to carry this alone.
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