Is grieving the death of a parent, partner, or child affecting you more than you can bear? Do you feel that others don’t understand you, or that your grief is isolating you from friends and family? If you are grieving, your experience of loss may be different from other people in your family.
Losing a family member or loved one is one of the most difficult experiences. Most people move through a cycle of bereavement, with periods of sorrow, numbness, guilt, anger, and other emotions. Most people experience a gradual drop in the intensity of these feelings, enabling acceptance of the loss and moving forward.
You may need help if your feelings of loss are debilitating and persist over a long period of time. This is known as complicated grief, sometimes called persistent complex bereavement disorder. In complicated grief, you experience emotions that are so severe and persistent that you have trouble functioning.
A caring space to work through grief
During the mourning period, it is normal to experience a mixture of painful feelings including sadness, loneliness, guilt, anger, and irritability. Therapy with Dr. Franco provides a safe, caring therapeutic space to work through your feelings. You can learn to lessen the intensity of your pain and better manage your feelings.
Dr. Franco provides a warm, accepting, and therapeutic presence that can help you move towards healing and growth. Dr. Franco’s approach is tailored to your individual circumstances. Therapy with Dr. Franco focuses on how your unique experiences affect you. Dr. Franco works with you to leverage your strengths to rebuild and recover after loss.
Nurturing your relationships while you heal
The way that you cope with grief is likely to be different than how your spouse or siblings cope. At the time that you most need close relationships and support, these differences in coping can drive a wedge between you and the people that you need the most. With Dr. Franco, you can learn to acknowledge the intensely personal experiences of your grief while keeping your important family and friends close to you.
Therapy can help you heal
In therapy with Dr. Franco you can gain understanding of how grief is affecting you and how it affects your most important relationships. As part of your healing, you can learn to honor and connect with the positive elements of the person that you lost, while learning to accept the loss.
Complicated grief therapy, a therapeutic approach for complicated grief, is similar to techniques used for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). During therapy you can learn to communicate and connect in new ways.