Grief Counseling in Ventura, CA by Licensed Marriage, Family Therapist

I do a lot of grief counseling because life is full of grief. People will always experience losses whether it’s the loss of a job, loved one, house, youth, or children moving out leaving an empty nest. All of these things are losses and are all grieving situations. Sometimes a person can be very stuck in grief and may not be able to move forward if they don’t have help. Sometimes the unresolved losses from the past are adding together with the most recent loss and the person will have a compounded grieving experience that seems to be more difficult than expected. It can be a very difficult time for the person to cope with the loss and people grieve at their own pace. People don’t grieve the same way or at the same rate. There is no one “right” way to grieve. Sometimes I have to work with the family or loved ones of the person grieving to help them to understand, accept and support their loved one through their own process.
Much of the grief counseling I do for people is to go through the stages of grieving and how to come to terms with it. In many cases this may put people into a little bit of a tailspin with their spiritual beliefs. If they don’t have a firm spiritual belief then they can often feel very unsure about things. Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People by David Arnold is a very good book that I recommend to a lot of people. One of the messages in the book is basically “Because they do”. A lot of bad things happen randomly across the world and there is that radical acceptance of things we can not change.