I am starting a new category on this blog I am tagging "Psychotherapy reflections" which are based on my own musings about my psychotherapy practice. They are personal and have to do with my personal feelings and thoughts about the stories I hear in the consulting room. I am hoping that they may be useful to the reader in some way.
My first reflection is on grief. It seems there is plenty to go around. It is easily misdiagnosed as depression but grief is not depression. It is a normal, appropriate human response to loss. How easily we have misunderstood it, pathologized it, and brought in under the professional gaze.
While professional help can help it is not necessary usually, nor should it be the first attempt to help a person with grief. People benefit much more from the understanding and support of their natural support system.
No human being alive on this planet more than five years has not had to experience grief. It will continue for a life time. We would do better as a society if we recognized it for what it is, accepted its pain and anguish, and learned to travel with it as we go about living.
This is article #1 in a series on Psychotherapy Reflections.
Please leave your comments about what grief has meant to you in your life.
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