Counseling for Loss
Have you moved and lost contact with good friends?
Had a major life change and feeling loss of identity?
Is aging stirring up discouraging feelings of lost youth?
Loss is a universal experience. Any significant change in your job, community, health, home, long held hopes and dreams, or sense of your personal skills or capabilities can result in a deep sense of loss.
Yet, except for the death of a loved one, the significant impact of profound loss is commonly overlooked. And that leads to the emotional results of loss getting suppressed and trivialized just when you need empathy and support the most to overcome the stress, anxiety, and depression that loss can provoke.
Sometimes the impact of loss can be confusing. Maybe you were initially excited to relocate to a new country or start a new job. You expected to have changes to your daily routine, or some distance in your friendships, but then you start to miss what your life used to be like.
The more you miss it, combined with new pressures to perform on the new job or fit in socially in a new environment, the more loss you could be experiencing.
You tell youself that it's silly to feel sad, overwhelmed, or anxious when you have so much going for you, but you can't help it. The more you try to deny feeling the loss, the worse it gets.
If that sounds like you, counseling can help.
An Example of Loss: The "Trailing Spouse"
Relocations due to a spouse getting a great job offer in another city or country can be especially hard on the other person in the relationship. In essence the spouse who follows their partner's career advancement often loses their own opportunities, their circle of social support, and their own hard-earned standing in a community or profession.
Trailing spouses can suffer a profound and guilt-producing sense of loss. You are naturally glad for your partner's success, and simultaneously miserable about the disruption to your own. It's difficult to reconcile these conflicting feelings, and you can end up feeling guilty abut not sharing in your partner's happiness as authentically as you'd like to.
When you have children, your loss is compounded by empathizing with their loss of social status and friendships. Your sensitivity to your kids' feelings multiplies your own, potentially making you susceptible to waves of grief, resentment, anxiety, irritability, and deep discouragement. Try as you might to cope with those feelings alone, they can lead to relationship and addiction problems.
It doesn't have to be this way.
Counseling for loss can help you put the changes confronting you into a different perspective. Counseling will help you see new opportunities and make smart, empowering choices.
If you are feeling a sense of loss, I'd like to help. Call 917-334-3530 for an appointment, use the form below to email me, and let's get started.