Still grieving

My clients come to therapy because they are grieving.  They feel confused, numb, angry, sad, frustrated.   They want to be who they used to be, but that person feels gone.  They have a hard time concentrating and therefore are avoiding tasks. They are sleeping too much, but still feel tired.  They are struggling to enjoy the things they used to enjoy. They feel lonely, but they struggle to reach out to family and friends. There are things they cannot say to their people. When asked how they’re doing, they have their script, their pat response: “making it”  “doing okay” , but on the inside it’s not really how they feel.

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It feels like everything and everyone has gone back to normal. But for my clients that word just doesn’t fit anymore. While their loved one dying was hard, living without them is worse. It feels like there will never be “normal” again. They feel like maybe they need to change something, but they don’t really want to or know how. They still want, no need, to talk about their loved one, what happened, and how they’re coping. But they feel like everyone around them is tired of hearing about it or that they are being repetitive. They feel like their in a fog, going through the motions and aren’t sure how to move forward.

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Before coming to therapy, my clients thought they were going to just be repeating what they already knew. What’s the point? Nothing is going to change. They didn’t see how talking about it would make it better. And they thought it would probably just make it worse. They want to feel good again, but they don’t want to leave behind their loved one. Like my clients, you deserve to enjoy your life. Keeping your loved one close and living a full life at the same time is not out of reach.