By Amanda Romero, LMHC

Twin Lakes Counseling is elated to announce that we will be launching The Grief Recovery Method program, an 8-week grief recovery support group, in partnership with Forget-Me-Not, owned and run by Nicole Steinberg. This group begins June 3 and is available for sign ups now!

In this article we will be exploring how to tell if you have grief, what the types of grief are, common myths about grief, and how the Grief Recovery Method helps participants complete their grief.

How do I know if I have grief?

According to John James & Russell Friedman, Authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook (2009), “Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.”

I know from personally experiencing this support group that experiences from our past can still bother us, and that when we look back on them, one or many emotions may still be stirred up. This bothered feeling is the tell tale sign that there is something that is incomplete, unfinished, and still needs addressed. 

What are the types of Grief?

According to James & Friedman (2009), there are dozens of different types of grief, from the more obvious types such as death, divorce, or the loss of a job, to more nuanced and tricky types of grief such as moving, an empty nest, starting or ending school, retirement, the loss of safety, or the loss of someone who is still alive.

One of the few constants in life is change and with that change brings continuous types of losses and grief that we may not even be aware that we are carrying. Steinberg refers to these losses as stones that we carry in a backpack along our life’s journey which if we are not careful can weigh us down to the point of not being able to continue forward. 

The Myths of Grief

While handling life's griefs and trying to lighten the stones that we carry, we are told through our society’s messaging many unhelpful myths about grief that act like thick mud on our journey, getting us stuck and further stopping us from moving forward. 

There is common and false messaging about loss and many people believe that to get over something is to forget; however this limiting belief truly holds us back from healing. A few other myths that can get us stuck are to be strong, don't feel bad, that you need to just give it time, or that it is important to be strong for others. Do any of these sound familiar to you?

How the Grief Recovery Method is Different

The Grief Recovery Method was created as a direct result of John James & Russell Friedman’s personal experience with loss and what they both noticed was helpful, and not helpful to their recovery. They both made grief recovery their life’s work and founded The Grief Recovery Institute, where they continued their research and later published The Grief Recovery Handbook in 1986. Nicole Steinberg, who will be leading Twin Lakes Counseling’s grief program, is an Advanced Grief Recovery Method Specialist who in her words, “Takes your grief that is like a bunch of knotted necklaces, shakes them up, and helps you sort through each one until completion.” 

At the end of the 8-week course, after singling out the loss that was most bothering you, observing it, and processing it, you will reach the point of being complete with that loss in which it no longer bothers and hurts you. 

You now have some idea of what loss can look like, that there are many forms of loss, that myths about loss can further get you stuck, and how The Grief Recovery Method was created to help get you unstuck. 

If this brings to mind one or more losses that are still bothering you and that you find are incomplete, you can find out more information about signing up for The Grief Recovery Method Program by contacting Amanda Romero LMHCA at [email protected].

 

Cited in this article: 

James, J. W., & Friedman, R. (2009). The Grief Recovery Handbook: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses including Health, Career, and Faith. HarperCollins.