Grief Counselling

Name: Safe Place Therapy
Price range: $$

We offer supportive and effective therapy for grief

Grief counselling and loss counselling by experienced Melbourne psychologists and counsellors who will support you.

When we lose someone important to us or when something horrible happens and something is lost, grief occurs.

People experiencing grief feel like they can’t talk to the people around them as they are also grieving. They may also feel that they should ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’. By doing this we carry the grief and nothing changes and we continue to feel low.

Grief happens to everyone and it is an important part of being human. We want to support you with grief counselling but also to inform you about grief.

Talking about grief and loss

In Australia, talking about grief and knowing how to support someone can feel difficult. Someone grieving is often left alone as people don’t know what to say. Or they feel that giving them ‘space’ is the best answer.

Grief is also seen as a very short period culturally, with people expected back to work after a short time. These assumptions and pressures can leave the grieving person feeling isolated from others and judging themselves.

Our specialists are here to sit with you in your grief and loss but also to explore how life looks now and what the future holds. We want to support you by informing you more about grief counselling and encourage you to reach out to our service.

A couple of things to know about grief

Grief is personal

How you personally grieve is different from others. The common ‘cycle of grief’ is mentioned by many but this cycle often misses what grief looks like individually. The stages of shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a very linear and concrete way to look at grief.

A person may be judged based on their behaviours by people saying ‘oh, you’re in the angry stage’. This can leave a grieving person feeling more unheard.

It is better to look at grief using the dual process of grief. This view sees that a person can have times of being ‘loss oriented’ and ‘restorative orientated’. Meaning they can have times of focusing on their life, doing new things or focusing on self, and then have times of missing the deceased person and feeling low.

There is no ‘one’ way of grieving. Culturally there are differences, too. But this does not mean that everyone in that culture grieves in the same way.

Grief isn't just about death

We can grieve about many different things throughout our life. We can grieve the loss of a partner through a divorce, we can grieve the loss of driving or being independent after a serious accident.

We can also grieve for a loss of a role like being a dad or the change in a relationship when a child grows up and leaves the family home. We can actually miss this kind of grief as we battle through a change like a divorce.

It is important to work through these emotions as the process can help move the person towards moving forward and celebrating new roles they may not have thought of.

Our approach to grief counselling

Losing someone close to you or grieving a big change in your life can be a very deeply emotional time. The loss can be sudden and unexpected or a long enduring journey with someone experiencing a terminal illness.

A person’s grief and loss are personal and intimate and support around the person should respect this. No one grieves in the same way and at Safe Place Therapy we make every effort to sit with the person’s emotional pain.

Prolonged grief can also be connected with some issues like ‘unfinished business’ or processing emotional trauma attached to the loss that needs to be worked through.

At Safe Place Therapy we make every effort to sit with the person’s emotional pain.

We create a safe space for you. Talking about the person or thing you have lost can be very hard and so you need to find a grief counsellor that will support you.

Finding the right support for grief can feel difficult. Help is here, just reach out for it. At Safe Place Therapy our grief treatment is effective. We are here to help you.