I think that when a person can’t overcome the grief then grief counseling or a group is the best way to go.
Grief is a lot like trauma, in some ways, in that it’s usually better to get the jump on it. If someone has progressed past normal grief into prolonged/profound grief? That’s an entirely different set of issues, and a helluva lot harder to deal with. Generally looking at
years of specialized therapy, instead of a few months of bereavement. Similar to how If trauma therapists can get to people right in the wake of a disaster they can often times help prevent people from developing PTSD, if grief therapists can get to people at the beginning of a bereavement they can often times help prevent years of unnecessary hardship. Not always. Some people truly want to punish themselves for someone’s death, and destroying their own life is the only way they feel rises to the occasion, but that’s very much different than the work they normally do, helping people with raw grief in the wake of recent loss. It’s a very small subset of the population.
One of my best friends is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in death and dying... they actually try to get to people in advance as much as possible (whilst their loved one is still going through cancer treatment or in hospice or before the still birth or etc.), before the death actually happens, because starting the process early helps to prevent so many suicides, lost jobs, & ruined lives due to prolonged and profound grief.
Grief counseling isn’t about
not grieving, nor putting it behind one / to bed, it’s an entirely different paradigm than trauma... it’s really... pretty. Profoundly beautiful might even be better/closer description. Not quite sure how to conceptualize it. Honoring both people. Those passed and those still here.
I’ve spent a lot of time -professionally- around trauma therapists, and a lot of time -professionally & socially- around grief therapists. Two toooooootally different groups of people. They hand off clients between each other an awful lot, because neither tends to be any good at what the other group does so well.
