Dallas Grief Counseling

02/08/2024

Hanging out with my favorite coworker, Maximus.

02/22/2023

🕰️There's an old saying that time heals all wounds.

❤️‍🩹The hard truth - time does not heal the gaping whole in your heart.

🌊But the waves of grief do get easier to manage with the regular practice of coping skills.

👉Check out my blog post about how coping skills can help ease the pain of grief: https://www.dallasgriefcounseling.com/post/coping-skills-for-grief

02/08/2023

🎆Some people are very emotional in their expression of grief, while others focus more on their thoughts and completing tasks. Most people fall somewhere between the far ends of this continuum, but tend to favor one style over the other.

🎆One style isn’t better or worse than the other. Honor your style of grieving. And if someone else has a different style of grieving, try to honor that too.

🎆If you think you might be a dissonant griever, try to find a space or person where you feel safe to express your thoughts or emotions, such as through journaling or with a trusted confidante like a counselor.

📖For more on this topic, you can read Grieving Beyond Gender by Kenneth Doka and Terry Martin.

02/01/2023

❤️‍🩹We are often unsure of how to support someone who has experienced a major loss.

❤️‍🩹Here are some guidelines on how to interact with someone who is grieving.

👉https://www.dallasgriefcounseling.com/post/how-to-help-someone-who-is-grieving

❤️‍🩹Please note that everyone is different, so not everyone who is grieving will agree with all of these suggestions.

❤️‍🩹However, this is what I’ve learned from my own grieving process and what friends, family, and clients have shared.

01/26/2023

🔴Many of my clients believe that they not only have to manage their own grief, but support everyone else in their grief too.

🟠Ring Theory suggests that the person closest to the loss (in the middle) can have whatever reactions they need to (dumping out) and rely on everyone for support (comfort in).

🟡People in the outer circles should not look to people in the inner circles for support in their grief.

🟢Instead, people in the outer circles should support the people in the rings that are closest to the loss, and be supported by people in the rings that are farther away from the loss.

🔵The person closest to the loss does not have the bandwidth to support others - they are doing their best just to support themselves.

🟣If you’re not receiving the support you need from the outer rings, you may consider contacting a mental health professional in your area.

Image By Valereee - Traced from Ring theory.jpg, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122402625

01/16/2023

✨Without darkness there is no light, and without grief there is no love.

✨Sometimes it seems like the darkness of grief will last forever.

✨But if you work through the grief instead of trying to ignore it, little by little, light seeps through until finally that light begins to shine from within you again.

Photo by Felix Mittermeier

12/27/2022

✅A client once asked me for a checklist for grieving.
✅While grief doesn't really work that way, most of us want to feel like we are actively doing something to ease the pain.
✅Hopefully these tasks can serve as a starting point or provide a map for your mourning process.

12/09/2022

We can choose how our love perseveres when we're grieving. For Wanda, her love initially persevered by preserving the past and creating an idealized future. But when she realized this wasn’t tenable, she chose for her love to persevere as she created a new future. 💖 How will you choose for your love to persevere?

12/05/2022

🎉 Officially EMDR Certified! 🎉
🙏Grateful for the support of these two ladies who provided guidance and consultation along the way

11/30/2022

❤️‍🩹 When someone is grieving, holidays can be a stark reminder of their loss. 🕯️My latest blog post provides some ideas on how to make the holidays more bearable for those in bereavement.



Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Holidays are traditionally a time that you spend with loved ones, so it can be a particularly difficult time when you are grieving. Waves of grief may hit you stronger as you remember the traditions or notice that there is an empty seat at the table. The rush of memories and intense feelings of lone...

11/22/2022

My goal for each blog post is to provide actionable steps ✔️✔️✔️that people can take to live a better life. Check out my favorite 3 posts so far, and stay tuned each month 🗓️ for new blog post topics!

11/20/2022

🛋️Even therapists need therapy sometimes.
🛌After my accident, I was reliant on my husband as my caretaker for a time.
😟I became very afraid of losing him and developed ANTICIPATORY GRIEF - grieving the loss of someone before actually losing them.
💖Going to therapy helped me learn how to cherish every moment together, big and small, and remind myself that while we won't live forever, we are living and loving each other today.