Giving unrecognised grief a place in therapy…

One of the reasons people come to therapy is because they want to be seen, heard and understood, they also want to understand themselves. They may feel lost and fragmented and hope the therapist can piece them back together.

Grief can shatter how you feel you fit in the world, with disenfranchised grief the norms of society, our grieving rules governing how you feel, think and behave exclude the griever and can intensify normal grieving reactions such as guilt, anger, powerlessness, depression, loneliness and numbness.

By its very nature disenfranchised grievers do not receive social support, their grief can become buried. They may have disowned their own grief and feel disconnected.

Therefore, the role of a therapist with a disenfranchised griever is to see them and hear their narrative of their grieving experience and help the disowned griever connect to their grief. Jung said ‘real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling but only from experiencing them to the full’.

By helping the disenfranchised connect to their grief there is the belief and hope that through the pain there will be insight and self compassion.