Let’s be frank from the outset. The process of grief cannot be cut short.

As the children’s book, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ tells us: “You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You have to go through it.“

Whether facing the death of a close family member, friend or partner, the end of a relationship or any other significant loss, we are going to grieve. Grieving is painful, normal and necessary.

We know we will need all the strength, resilience, support, and comfort we can. Especially if we are carrying additional stresses. It’s sometimes helpful to be supported through the process.

I am Jane Pendry from Sense-Ability Hypnotherapy & Coaching and I have faced my fare share of grief. I have drawn together different Solution Focused therapies to create a tailored support package to help you manage and process deep feelings of sadness, regret, shame, blame, anger, overwhelm, depression, anxiety and anger that make up the Seven Stages of Grief which are detailed below.

Trigger warning

This article includes a detailed story of using Rewind Trauma to help resolve profound trauma linked to the sudden loss of a loved due to illness - Helen’s Story - that may make painful reading for some. The cycles of grief are elaborated after this narrative for those that prefer to skip past it.

What is Grief?

Grief is usually thought to mean the reaction to the death of a loved one. However, you may experience grief and loss when a long standing or intense relationship ends, you lose your job for any reason, or experience another major life transition. Moving house, redundancy, children moving away from home or a best friend getting married might also leave you with a sense of overwhelming loss.

Grief has seven stages include shock and disbelief; denial, guilt and shame; anger and bargaining; depression, loneliness and reflection; reconstruction or working through; and finally acceptance.

Part of the process of grief, in time, is exploring who we are in our new circumstances. We become someone different.

Grief is natural and necessary

Solution Focused Hypnotherapist and Grief expert, Dipti Tait explains how we can ‘surf’ the waves of grief, “Often, we cannot change our experiences, especially ones surrounding grief, loss or change, but we can change our thought processes around these experiences. Grief isn’t something we can simply ‘fix’ with a tool or a principle but it is certainly something we can learn to identify, be aware of and learn to manage.”

Dipti goes on to explain that we can learn to manage the thoughts around the experience of grieving. If you are grieving right now this may seem counter-intuitive at best, and absurd and impossible at worst. How can you possibly change your thinking when you are overwhelmed, feeling broken and empty? Even the idea might make you feel angry and upset.

Please bear with me as I explain.

Feelings & Thoughts

Thoughts affect our feelings; feelings impact on our thinking.

Being present with our feelings, and accepting them, helps us move through them. We adapt and begin to change the way we think about our overwhelming feelings. By being present and alive to the process of grieving we can grow, develop and eventually transform through the process.

Why not just bury the pain and carry on?

Ignoring the pain or burying grief doesn’t seem to lessen our grief or sense of loss. Healing only comes with time.

We can become stuck in grief

The more we ignore the process of grieving, the more likely it is that we become stuck in grief and can’t find a way out. When we can’t heal, we can develop deep-seated feelings of heartache, despair and depression that totally overwhelm and paralyze us for very long periods of time. Sometimes there’s trauma linked to the grief too; and trauma can block our ability to feel fully and move forward.

Finding someone self to guide us through

If you are overwhelmed by grief, then you might need support from someone safe and gentle to help you through your hopelessness and fear.

Support networks

The natural thing to do when we suffer a significant loss, is to turn to family or friends to support us. However, we may worry about becoming a burden. We be aware that other people don’t have the mental head-space to offer appropriate support. Sometimes we just don’t have someone close enough to us who can support us. Or the people we are closest too are grieving too.

Knowing what to say

When people are grieving, family and friends often don’t know what to do or say.

When we are deep in grief, we rarely want anyone to do anything. We just want someone to listen; or be present with our grief. Often people don’t know what to say and they offer platitudes and meaningless phrases that cause more harm so we withdraw more. This article, What to Say to Someone who is Grieving in Psychology Today offers very practical suggestions about what we can do or say when someone is grieving, or indeed how we can ask for support when we are grieving.

Small things can make a difference. One simple way we can ask for support is to ask our family and friends to do practical things. They will want to help and won’t know how. Ask them to do the shopping, pick up the kids, or make the tea. They will feel useful and it takes some burden off you as you deal with overwhelming feelings.

You will have some powerful emotions to process - some of which you don’t want to share with your family and friends. You may feel that your emotions aren’t entirely rational or perhaps you are aware they are grieving too and just can’t provide the support you need. That’s when you might look for professional support and help.

Why choose a Solution Focused therapist?

You certainly won’t want someone chivvying you along or pushing you to be positive when you feel that everything is dark and pointless. However, Solution Focused language is not toxic positivity. In fact, it’s quite the reverse.

Resources and skills

Solution Focused questions encourage clients to think about their resources and skills. By helping you explore all the strengths you are using to cope with your emotions, while reassuring you that the waves of emotions are normal, can be helpful. Usually we ask things like, “What’s good, or what’s better” - this would sound trite and unhelpful when you are grieving.

When supporting someone through grief, I might ask, “What has been challenging but you saw signs of coping better”, or “How did you get through this week?”and “What emotions have you experienced this week; and how did you cope with those powerful feelings? What helped you? Who helped you? What else do you think you need to help you through this week?”

Feelings of sadness and hopelessness are not negative emotions when you are grieving. They are just emotions. It’s important to be allowed to feel them. Fully. And to be heard.

Holding the space

Early Sense-Ability Solution Focused sessions are just about listening or as counselors often say, “holding the space” – meaning being fully available and not saying too much to allow someone to express themselves without judgement.

Soothing meditations and hypnotherapy

The important element of these early sessions are the guided meditations and hypnotherapy suggestions. I tailor these to be where the client is now. Lots of joyful visions of the future would be jarring and unhelpful. I focus on creating beautiful imaginary healing spaces and suggestions around strength, resilience, peace, stability and sleep.

How Hypnotherapy helps

Hypnotherapy alone induces an alpha brain wave state: a natural trance-like state where you are alert, but relaxed, calm but aware. The alpha brainwave state eases in to the theta brainwave state, which we experience when we are meditating or in a light sleep or dreaming. Accessing these tranquil states reduces feelings of guilt and blame, and helps give you the strength, resource and resilience to cope better with the waves of emotions as they come.

Grief and Trauma

Grief is a form of trauma; but when our loss is dramatic, sudden or the result of violence, we are dealing with a whole other level of trauma and grief.

Stuck in trauma

When we are stuck in trauma, there may be a need to tell and retell the story over and over again. This is perfectly normal for a while. However, there comes a point where the grief or trauma feels ‘stuck’. Retelling the story brings no resolution or relief. Friends and family lose patience or become frustrated because they can’t help.

For my client Helen, retelling the trauma of the sudden loss of her husband, who died in dramatic and unexpected circumstances, did not help to heal it. The dramatic story of her husband’s death hijacked her daily, sometimes hourly. She was overwhelmed by shock and trauma and unable to move on. She became anxious and fearful.

Until this trauma was shifted, it was very hard for Helen to access and process the emotions of grief that lay beneath the overwhelming intense trauma or, when the overwhelm became too great, her dissociated and disconnected state.

Once the trauma was shifted with Rewind Trauma Therapy, Helen was able to begin grieving. Instead of feeling intense overwhelming pain, her deep sadness began to subtly shift. Soon she was able to sort out her late husband’s belongings and to remember happier times with him without retelling the story of his sudden death. Slowly she was able to rebuild a sense of a hopeful future without him and to begin to explore who she was as an individual.

When grief is prolonged

When grief is prolonged and disproportionately painful support is particularly important.

Researchers Wenn, O’Conner and Bremen (2019) state that “Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) is a debilitating condition experienced by approximately 7% of the bereaved population.”The researchers go on to explain that these bereaved people, “… find it difficult to come to terms with the loss, lose their sense of purpose in life, avoid reminders of the loss, become preoccupied with thoughts of the deceased and experience an intense yearning for the deceased that does not remit with time.”

This was largely Helen’s experience. Her husband was her soul mate and her greatest love. They had a young child together. And the loss was so sudden and painful. Her grief was just overwhelming and prolonged.

Prigerson et al (1997) propose that ‘traumatic grief’ predicts prolonged distress. Shear et al (2005) rename this concept ‘complicated grief’, identifiable within six months of the loss by “… a sense of disbelief regarding the death; anger and bitterness over the death; recurrent pangs of painful emotions, with intense yearning and longing for the deceased; and preoccupation with thoughts of the loved one, often including distressing intrusive thoughts related to the death”.

Protracted grief might result when the relationship was very happy and fulfilling, or when the client is carrying early trauma or has attachment issues, or there was a high degree of co-dependency.

Rewind Trauma Therapy

Rewind Trauma Therapy or RTT can painlessly help us shift us out of the state of shock and ‘stucknesss’. In Rewind, the client creates a film of their trauma – and this might be what she or he imagined might have happen as well as what really happened – and then we ask the client to the Rewind the film at speed, ‘looking through their own eyes’. To find out more about the process, see Hypnotherapy & Rewind for Trauma.

When and if it’s appropriate to use Rewind takes some reflection and experience but it can bring great relief for those traumatised by their loss, allowing the emotions that need expressing to flow. Rewind works very well when the loss is the break up of a relationship where their were elements of coercive control, abuse or violence too.

Where there is trauma linked to grief, RTT can help shift traumatic associations or memories out of the flight, fight, fright part of the mind (the amygdala) to the part of the mind that stores narrative memories (the hippocampus). The neuroscience of transforming memories is a little more complex than that of course and involves the vagus nerve - the long nerve that runs down from the head to the gut and spreads - but the Rewind Trauma Therapy process is hugely helpful where trauma is involved -  a terrible accident, an explosion or death due to unexpected illness such as Covid-19.

Kindly note, the Sense-Ability approach is all about giving the client back ‘personal agency’ or control over their own thoughts, actions and lives. The client has a good instinct for what is helpful to them so once I explain the therapies I deliver, the client has the agency to decide what, if anything, might be helpful. As I am not a diagnostician, I do not suggest a given therapy; nor do I try to ‘sell’ my services. I explain and invite my client to consider whether any approach - Solution Focused Brief Therapy with or without hypnotherapy, or Rewind Trauma Therapy - might be helpful.

Helen’s story

Helen explained how Rewind helped her grieve more fully. She said, “Now, I find myself winding back to the pot of daffodils and the pork pie I bought for my husband just before he died. The last time things felt okay and hopeful. Following the Rewinds, I no longer feel ambushed by feelings of overwhelming grief. Nor do I have to repeat the story of his death, which never left my consciousness. It means I can get on with my life and also start grieving fully.”

Helen subsequently was able to access her grief and move forward from the state of overwhelm and being stuck that flooded her most of her waking hours paralyzing her with anxiety and fear.

A safe place to tell your story

Many people do need to talk and talk when they are grieving. That’s absolutely normal. They need to express their pain, loneliness, anger and anxiety; to tell the story and to process just what has happened.

Other people just need silence and someone to be present. A healing guided meditation with a soothing voice might allow them a little respite from the roller-coaster in that moment.

We grieve differently

We all need to grieve in our own way – to laugh or cry or be angry without judgement. Expressing the full range of emotions helps us process and understand our loss, and to deal with those emotions arising from it. That’s sometimes easier with a therapist with the prescribed time-frame of the session.

A range of emotions

Many people feel guilt over things they did or did not say or do; feelings of anger, blame and shame are common. Sometimes this leads to increased anxiety and stress. 

You may also suffer anxiety about how you will cope without the person you have lost, about your health, about financial insecurity, or the loss of your place in the world. These are all thoughts and interpretations. Learning to take control of our thinking, and changing our interpretations, helps us reframe our thoughts and understand our feelings better.

When we are grieving, the seat of our emotions is our primitive mind, not our intellectual mind. And when we are stuck in our primitive mind, we inevitably no longer easily access the part of our mind that thinks clearly, solves problems and plans forward. We may ruminate, we may obsess, we may procrastinate.

Getting back in control

Once we express how we feel, and we are heard and validated, we may need to actively learn to stop ruminating, to stop punishing ourselves and to stop worrying about the future. We may need to learn to once again be calm and in control, in spite of our grief. Then we will have more energy to cope with the tidal waves of emotion that can suddenly sweep us of our feet. 

It means taking one day at a time and focusing on the small things.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy helps us gently, incrementally and steadily learn to stay present so we stop obsessive thinking and ruminating, and start taking positive actions that move us forward. These can be very small things: getting dressed, going for a walk, eating properly, calling a friend or hoovering. I help you notice the incrementally small actions that show you are anchoring yourself in the present and showing small signs of healing and progress.

Focusing on now and the future

When you are grieving, you may lose confidence and self-esteem, or develop a fear of loneliness. When the time is right - and it may be a few weeks or months - Solution Focused Brief Therapy can help you focus on now and the future, helping you to envisage a future under the new circumstances without your loved one.

Of course your grieving process will be very different depending on whether you have lost a child, or the life partner you have had for 30 years, your soul mate, your best friend, your parent or your ex husband; or whether your loss is due to redundancy, the betrayal of a partner or friend, or another change of circumstance. There is no judgement on how long it takes, or the depth and complexity of your emotions.

You need to grieve your own way; and there is no wrong way.

Seeing a future

You may not believe it yet, but you do still have a future. As you explore all your innate skills and resources, you discover strengths you never knew you had, and abilities that may have lain dormant for many years. You begin to feel Hope. And Hope is at the heart of Solution Focused work.

Coping with physical symptoms

You may also experience physical symptoms of grief – loss of appetite, weight loss or weight gain, sickness, fatigue or sleeplessness. When that happens, you might fall in to a cycle of anxiety and despair. You may start to believe you are physically ill too.

Gently calming the central nervous system and our whirring minds with hypnotherapy, frees our minds to be able to think, react and interact in new ways. Combined with Solution Focused Brief Therapy, hypnotherapy helps us resolve any irrational thinking around our grief so we can steadily and gently move through the powerful emotions which may return in loops and with different levels of intensity. The aim is for you to find the strength and energy to face the raw feelings beneath the fog of irrational thinking.

Focusing gently on the present moment gives us mental space to begin to appreciate small things in the present, and to steadily envisage and create a new future.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy gently supports you, at your pace. Appropriately tailored suggestions following soothing guided meditations, and when you are in a deep state of relaxation, helping to ease anxiety, insomnia, deep sadness and depression, and other symptoms of grieving.

The Seven Stages of Grief 

There are, famously, seven stages of grief so I’ll explore these and how the Sense-Ability approach helps you through each stage. Of course these are not linear stages. The states overlap. We may go backwards and forwards. Upwards and downwards. But all these stages are likely to be experienced during the grieving process which may take months. 

Recognizing the grieving stages can help you manage them.

The First Five Stages

Grief is not a fixed process. Experts conclude, grief comes and goes for a variable length of time, with recurrences that may be just as painful as the first time, although perhaps less prolonged.  

1. Shock & Denial 

Sometimes we have lived with a sense of the grief for years, as in the case of Alzheimer’s or other degenerative diseases. Sometimes death comes suddenly as with an unexpected heart attack, Covid or an accident. Whatever the circumstances, there is still a period shock and denial. We struggle to process that the person we have loved is just no longer there.  

Often the reaction is numbed disbelief. Denying the loss protects us from the pain. Shock protects us from being overwhelmed. We might be quiet during this phase. We may appear to be coping quite well but the truth is we just not ready to process our loss. This phase might last for a few days or weeks. 

It’s likely that we would not seek support at this time.

2. Pain & Guilt

As the shock wears off, it is replaced with unbelievable pain. Although the pain is almost unbearable, in order to grieve fully it is important that the pain is experienced fully. Trying to avoid it or escape from it with alcohol or drugs won’t help in the long rung. But it’s natural you will need support to cope.

During this phase you may experience regret, remorse and guilt. There’s often a period of wondering “If only I had done such and such... if only I had said this or that”. Suddenly the emotions are overwhelming and the sense of loss and loneliness is acute. 

At the right time, Solution Focused conversations can help us re-frame our thoughts gently or process the regret and shame. To be kinder to ourselves. These thoughts are usually out of proportion but they need to be expressed but gently questioned.

Solution Focused Hypnotherapy helps to ease the sense of overwhelming loss by calming the central nervous system and toning the vagus nerve sufficiently that people better manage the pain, which comes often in waves. If I was working with a client through this phase, I would not aim to do much ‘solution focused’ work but would be “holding the space” so grief can be expressed fully before delivering a soothing and calming guided meditation when that felt appropriate and accessible.  

Sometimes people invite the person that has died into their guided meditation where they can say what they need to say. This happens spontaneously and may bring tears but a sense of peace too.

Francesca was stuck in grief because she had not been able to see her grandmother before she died. Within a hypnosis session, Francesca revisited her grandmother and expressed how much she loved her and missed her, and how she was so sorry she hadn’t been able to say goodbye. She reported feeling a huge release and experiencing her grandmother’s reassurance and love, which brought her great comfort, and helped her heal and move on from regret and shame.

3. Anger & Bargaining

When we are suffering loss we can become angry at the unfairness of that loss, particularly where the death of someone we love has been sudden, linked to illness or took place under traumatic circumstances. During this stage, grief spills in to frustration, anger and even rage. We might blame others or have irrational outbursts. Our own behaviour can damage our current relationships and increase our isolation and despair. 

Anger is not a bad emotion. It is a human emotion. But we recognise outbursts of irrational anger can be damaging. We need to express our anger. I may ask, “What is making you angry? Who are you angry with? How is your anger helpful to you now? If you could say what you wanted to say to your loved one, what would you say?”

Expressing anger in a safe space enables helps us to transform it. Clients can say the unthinkable to a therapist. The thoughts and feelings don’t need to be suppressed. And when they are expressed we feel unburdened somehow.

Once the anger has been expressed questions like, “If you weren’t angry all the time any more, what would you be noticing about how your feelings had changed? What difference would it make if your anger subsided by just one point, what would you notice? Tell me about times you aren’t angry?”

When Barbara’s husband died of a heart attack suddenly, she knew her anger was irrational but she felt it all the same. Barbara said, “I was angry the ambulance took twenty minutes to get there. Angry he hadn’t taken his pills as regularly as he should. I was angry he wasn’t there anymore. I was angry with God which was strange because I didn’t know I believed in him enough to be angry with him.” Then she laughed. She could see her anger wasn’t rooted in logic but expressing it was a relief. And I could reassure her that it was also normal. Importantly, I wasn’t making judgments or analyzing her responses.

Laughter can be appropriate too. When my brother died in a military accident aged 22 we laughed that he would be “chatting up the angels”. It was a dark, painful humour that we shared as a family. We saw him in ‘another place’ his personality intact with all the absurdity that involved. It’s the humour of trauma doctors and soldiers, and it can be part of processing our fears during that shock phase. This humour is often a hop and a skip away from anger. People feel uncomfortable laughing, as if that makes their grief less real. It does not. Laughing like expressing anger is okay.

4. Rumination, Regret and Obsessing

Ruminating and regretting things that were said, or left unsaid, is very common and begins in the pain and guilt phase.

You may experience shame, guilt and deep sadness because of what you said, or didn’t say before your loved one passed away. You may begin to obsess over what could have been, might have been, should have been.

The range of intense emotions linked to regret, although painful are a necessary and normal phase of grief. Some gentle solution focused work that focuses on the very near future, combined with Hypnotherapy can ease rumination, regret or obsessing.  

It may be that the client needs to just talk and that’s okay too. A calming guided meditation to ease the hurt, anger and pain and to just ‘empty the stress bucket’ can just enable the client to have enough resilience to cope. 

At this stage, we are firmly rooted in our primitive minds. We may rail against fate.. the gods... someone else close to us. We may start to ‘bargain’ with the ‘powers that be’ to bring back the person we’ve lost. We may make all sorts of irrational promises to change our behaviour to bring back our loved one.

It’s no good saying that’s irrational. The anger is profound and we need to express it and be soothed.

At times like this we don’t want to be ‘reasoned with’. We just want to be heard. 

5. Depression, Reflection & Loneliness

This can be the time friends start to lose a little patience - unless they have experienced intense grief themselves. 

Just when your friends think you should be getting on with your life, you may fall into a long period of sad reflection. This is another normal stage of grief, not to be "talked out of" by well-meaning friends. Now, you need time to reflect, remember and process.

At this time ‘resource talk’ is particularly helpful. Questions such as. “What gave you the strength to keep going? How did you manage to organise the funeral? What strengths did you find that you didn’t even know you had?”. It is also helpful if people encourage you to share your reflections and remembrances now you are ready to share them. Sometimes, again, listening is all that’s needed.

The answers bring back some sense of control and a recognition that, even though it feels like life is falling apart, there are glimmers of resilience, strength and hope for the future. There is also a sense that there were good memories, precious times past and happy recollections.

It is probably not the time for imagining a preferred future just yet however.

The tailored hypnosis session may incorporate your spiritual beliefs and hopes, and just allow you that quiet healing time where your busy mind can rest.   

During this time, you finally realize the true magnitude of your loss. You may be very sad or depressed and withdraw and isolate yourself. It’s natural to start reflecting and remembering things you did with the person that had died. All sorts of memories might pop up, leaving you feeling empty, even despairing.

Reconstruction and working through

Stage 6 in the Stages of Grief

There comes a time when there are glimmers of hope.

As we begin to make peace with our grief, we start to feel more in control. The sense of overwhelm starts to lift. The physical symptoms ease: aches, pains, physical exhaustion, despair, depression and loneliness begin to lift for periods. There are shards of sunlight breaking through.

Now you may be feel stronger and it’s time to begin to envisage your preferred future. Not long term.

Places you might go. Tasks you might complete. People you might like to see. You may be ready to return to work or go on holiday with a friend or relative. 

Now there are more moments and days of clarity than moments of sadness, depression and pain.

You begin to think more clearly. You are more able to shift from resource talk focused on coping, to thinking about the present. You have more capacity to explore possible realistic solutions to practical issues and problems and increasingly begin to take control again. You will feel less passive and more active and engaged. Now, you are ready to face your life as a different person. An independent person.

You are ready to begin reconstructing your life and your whole being.  

Now Solution Focused questions shift to the preferred future.

You may start to explore possible short to medium goals or best hopes - downsizing, moving closer to a son or daughter, resuming charity work or training, getting back to full time work, or just a creative healing hobby.

I would ask questions like, “Now you are beginning to imagine a future, what can imagine doing that you have always wanted to do but not had the time? Who might you be seeing? What might you notice about your morning routine now? What small thing would show you you are thinking about the future more than the past?”

Now your Guided Meditation and hypnosis sessions are focused on your future and how you will feel now you have a vision of the future. This vision might be very short term… what you will be noticing tomorrow or next week… or longer term. The work is always at your pace and you retain full personal agency - that is you make the decisions when and if you are ready.

The healing and soothing continues. Grief is not linear but complex and multi-layered.  

Finally, Acceptance and Hope

Stage 7 of the Grieving Process 

The final stage of the seven stages in this grief model, are when you have finally accepted, absorbed and reconciled with your change in circumstances and are now actively able to deal with the reality of your situation. 

Acceptance does not imply happiness necessarily. You may be just noticing glimmers and slivers of light.

You may still feel the hurt and pain in waves, the loss is likely to be felt in many ways still. However, you are able to envisage a way forward and to incrementally and steadily build new routines,

Now you are looking forward and making plans.  Now you can imagine a time when you will be able to remember the person you lived without intense pain, wrenching grief and overwhelming loss. You may remember and share good times or better memories. You may be able to laugh again.

Now is the time to imagine better times ahead, and to begin to create vivid and hopeful visions of the future.

Grieving is never quite done. Just this week something reminded me of the death of my brother, and still the pangs and pain are there. But they don’t dominate my life. My life continues without him and has done for many years. And although the grief is always there, ready to make itself known at odd times, I can assure you, you do have a life and a future.

And you have Hope.

As Solution Focused Hypnotherapist and Grief expert Dipti Tait says, now you can “transform your own grief into good grief”.

References/ For further information

• Psychology Today: What Not to Say to Someone Who’s Grieving  

• Cruse Bereavement Care: How to support someone who is grieving

• Good Grief by Dipti Tait published by Balboa Press

Jane Pendry
Sense-Ability Hypnotherapy & Coaching
jane@sense-ability.co.uk
+44 (0) 7843 813 883
www.sense-ability.co.uk

Online across the UK & Europe