Grief that hasn't softened

Carrying more than one loss, or older pain alongside it? See Emotional pain and trauma →

Grief shows up in the body too

Exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch. A tight chest. A heaviness you carry around. A stomach that won't settle. When the shock of a loss is stored by the nervous system as a threat that never finished, the body keeps reacting, long after the funeral and long after people stop asking how you are. In many cases, for decades.

How I work with grief

Grief is deeply personal, and I work with it that way. The first thing to know is that no one should try to make you feel better. We won't be working to make you less sad, to play down your loss, or to get you to forgive or accept. Left alone, grief unfolds in its own time.

What we look at is the nervous system's reaction to the threat it attached to your loss: the activation that keeps firing, and the suffering that goes beyond what you'd expect grief to feel like.

Sessions begin with Havening Techniques®, a gentle psychosensory method using touch to calm the system. The touch is your own hands, the way we first learned we were safe, and I do it alongside you. From there, I use Jentle Soma to work with the shock and charge around the loss.

We're not trying to make you forget, or to stop missing them. We work with the moments that keep pulling you back, and that makes space for whatever connection you want with the love you still have. You don't have to retell anything you don't want to.

What can change

Clients often describe being able to think of what they lost and feel warmth, or a clean sadness, rather than the jolt of shock or despair. The anniversary still matters, but it doesn't knock them off their feet. Life without them is still hard, but it feels bearable. Every loss is different, and I won't promise you an outcome.

Not all grief is for a person

This is profoundly important. Grief isn't only about death, and it isn't only for people. Whatever shape your loss takes, this work uses the same principles, and every grief is taken just as seriously.

You might be grieving:

• A much-loved furry friend. Losing a pet can hit as hard as losing a person, and it often gets far less understanding.
• A future you expected and didn't get. Fertility, a pregnancy, a family, a partner, the life you thought you'd have.
• Your health, your independence, or your body as it was, after an illness, an injury or a diagnosis.
• Your financial security, your work or your home.
• Someone who is still here, but not the person you knew, through estrangement, addiction or dementia. Or a relationship that ended.

Can you grieve something that isn't death?

Yes. Grief is the nervous system's response to losing something it was attached to, whether that's a person, a pet, a role or a future. Some of these losses have names. Ambiguous grief is for someone who is physically here but no longer with you in the way they were. Nonfinite grief is for losses that carry on, like living with a long-term illness. Disenfranchised grief is for losses other people don't recognise, or don't think you're "allowed" to feel this much about.

What is anticipatory grief?

Grief that starts before a loss happens. When someone you love is terminally ill, when you're caring for a parent who is slowly changing, or when you're facing your own death. It's real grief, and it can be worked with too.

Questions people ask about grief

Is this right for you?

There's no right time. Some people come to me with anticipatory grief for what's to come, sometimes when they themselves are dying. Others come immediately or weeks after a loss, and others decades later. We can talk about what's right for you on the discovery call.

If you're in crisis right now, please contact your GP, NHS 111 or the Samaritans on 116 123 first.

Sessions are 90 minutes, in person in Walton-on-Thames or online by Zoom wherever you are in the world. Fees and booking →

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