Grief | Loss

The emotional impact of a meaningful loss can be significant. Left unaddressed, prolonged grief reactions can negatively influence one’s functioning and may even evolve into other psychiatric disorders.

Recovery from such a painful experience is often aided by psychotherapy.

Whether it is the expected or untimely death of a loved one, a breakup, the ending of an important time or phase in one’s life, or some other type of loss or transition, grief reactions and the so-called “healing” process are highly personalized and do not necessarily follow a sequence of stages as is commonly believed. Many patients want to know if they are “doing it right,” i.e., grieving in a way that follows the correctset of steps which will reliably lead to resolution. My work with patients has demonstrated that mourning is a highly subjective process.

The quality of the relationship with the person or situation that has been lost, the circumstances of the loved one’s death, and the emotional qualities and predisposition of the grieving person all contribute to components of the loss that can be managed and those that are more difficult to psychologically digest and assimilate into meaning.

Additionally, the mind continues to have an ongoing relationship with a lost loved one. Determined by such factors as unresolved regrets or conflicts the patient had with the departed, and the degree to which ongoing interactions with places or activities associated with the departed persist, the relationship stays alive long after death.

The psychological acceptance of loss may be further obstructed by struggles integrating the death of a loved one with the grieving person’s religious views, beliefs about love and family, and perspectives on life, health and fate. That is, the loss cannot be organized into the griever’s cognitive and emotional frameworks designed to understand the world and make meaning. Failure in integration is viewed by many experts to be the defining element of trauma; for a person who is mourning, if integration is blocked recovery and healing become arrested.

Psychotherapy provides a forum for the patient to explore his or her relationship to the meaning of the loss and its traumatic quality. Often this exploration is facilitated by helping the patient both tolerate increasingly intense emotions, and to simultaneously engage with these emotions, in ways that were likely not possible before. Ultimately, a significant loss can stimulate substantial psychological and emotional growth as the patient learns how to utilize the mourning process for healing. Hopefully, the outcome is the attainment of a perpetual relationship with the departed that is benign and perhaps even edifying, and a reconfigured value system that successfully assimilates the loss.

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15615 Alton Parkway
Suite 450
Irvine, CA 92618

Hours
Monday: 8am - 8pm
Tuesday: 8am - 8pm
Wednesday: 8am - 8pm
Thursday: 8am - 8pm
Friday: 8am - 8pm
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed