Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Cognitive-Behavioral Perspective.

This document applies the Cognitive-Behavioral Approach to grief counseling and grief therapy. Although most people are able to work through their grief with support from family and friends, some people may not want to burden loved ones with their loss. Grief counseling or grief therapy is best used by those individuals who need the opportunity to talk confidentially and who want help while working through the stages of grief. Grief counseling emphasizes the need to increase the reality of loss, to help the client deal with expressed and latent affect and overcome various impediments to readjustment, and to encourage the client to make a healthy emotional withdrawal from the deceased and feel comfortable reinvesting in another relationship. Grief therapy, on the other hand, strives to identify and resolve conflicts of separation which preclude completion of the mourning tasks. Grief therapy is often used when a client fails to grieve or has trouble resolving feelings. It emphasizes the therapeutic goal of achieving emotional wellness after the loss of a significant other through the grieving process. Specific cognitive-behavioral techniques for both grief counseling and grief therapy are available. In grief therapy and grief counseling, there may be a tendency to overlook or disregard unconscious processes, view feelings as entities to be controlled, and have a judgmental differentiation between therapist and client. Therefore, cognitive-behavioral approaches to grief may not be well suited for all clients. (BHK)