Denver Grief and Loss & Caregiver Counseling

You want to get through this. You have to. But how? How do you get back to yourself—to your life?

The stress, vicarious trauma, burnout and compassion fatigue that can accompany caregiving is very different from grieving someone who has died. The loss of someone to death has finality. The grief experienced while caregiving, particularly when you are caring for a loved one with a terminal or chronic illness, is often long and winding. But there are intersections between these experiences. Whether you are grieving someone who has died or your own life that seems to have drifted away from you, there are a hundred thousand little losses cutting a path in front of you.

The experience of loss, like the experience of caregiving, can be isolating, frightening, maddening, fraught with questions and guilt, and full of sorrow.

I help clients who are struggling with grief and loss in many forms.

My Background

Aside from my personal experiences with grief and loss, the time I spent working in the senior living industry was instrumental in my journey toward becoming a counselor. During my time working in assisted living and memory care communities across the country, I sat with families as they came to the decision they could no longer care for their loved one with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in the home. I was with adult children as they tried to negotiate strained relationships with siblings in order to help their parents. And I tried to give voice to the older adults in the room when conversations about their futures seemed to ignore them. I found that being with others in their dark moments was something I could do. Something I felt honored to do.

That being said: the truth is that no one can 100% know what you’re going through. No one can know your relationship with your loved one the way you do. No one has your memories, your joys, your sorrows.

But, if we are lucky enough to live long lives, eventually, we will all know grief well and we will know what it is to be a caregiver. My mission is to take what I have learned about grief and loss and to be here with you in it. To help you find your way—not back to yourself, because that person is gone—but back to life, and to a way forward in grief; with grief. With the knowledge that you are living in a new reality due to illness, death or hitting rock bottom as a burned out caregiver. What composes this new reality? We will find out together.

Existential Therapy

The goal of Existential Therapy is to work together to understand how you see the world; to confront the vastness of our human experience: death, isolation, meaning and purpose. I will help you learn coping skills for surviving loss. We’ll uncover all the things you have already been doing to survive and look for ways to build on those. I can help you navigate tough conversations you want to have with others. I’ll help you work out ways to ask for help when you need it. You will need it. You will not leave each therapy session feeling great and hopeful because therapy is not easy. And grief is not something with a finite end. But sometimes you will feel good and sometimes you will feel hopeful. You will gain confidence in your ability to survive these losses. You will start to accept yourself: the love, warmth, humor, and compassion in you as well as the exhausted, worn to the bone, angry and irritable parts of you. You’ll learn the ways in which those “bad” parts of you are actually working as hard to protect and keep you as the “good” parts.

Mindfulness Practice

I often draw from mindfulness teachings in my work with clients. Many of us find that we are going through our lives feeling propelled by our emotions, even controlled by them. We drive places and don’t remember how we got there as our thoughts were elsewhere in the past or future. There have been times in my life when I would have rather lived anywhere but in the present, but when I started practicing mindfulness, I found that the present wasn’t such a scary place. In fact, it’s really all we have. We can learn from the past, yes, and we can dream about the future, but if we live only in those places, we miss our lives. There probably isn’t a more frightening present than one in which you’re grieving. It’s a time when your brain will want you to be anywhere but here. And yet, here is where you must be. At least most of the time. Check out this comprehensive article about the science behind Mindfulness to learn a bit more. Or read my blog post about the benefits of the practice.

If you’re like I was, and are sick of feeling alone and adrift in your grief or you’re overwhelmed by your day to day life and responsibilities, you know it’s time to reach out.

You can call me at my Denver office line, 970-279-3285 or click below to schedule a free, 15-minute consultation.