Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is the natural consequence of loving someone and losing them and, for most people, it gradually becomes more bearable over time. Not because the loss diminishes, but because the capacity to carry it alongside life grows.

Sometimes that does not happen. The grief stays acute. It intrudes on sleep, on concentration, on the ability to be present with the people still around you. It gets stuck in loops of guilt, anger, or avoidance. Or it arrives tangled up with trauma — the way the death happened leaving its own separate wound that makes it hard to grieve at all. When grief has become this kind of obstacle, therapy can help.

When Bereavement Therapy Might Be Right for You

Most people find their way through grief with time, their own resources, and the support of people around them. Therapy tends to be most relevant when:

Grief remains intense and unrelenting months after the loss, with little sense of it easing. Daily life is significantly disrupted — sleep, work, relationships, the ability to function. The loss involved traumatic circumstances — sudden death, suicide, accident, violence — and intrusive images, flashbacks, or shock are present alongside the grief. The grief is caught in a loop: guilt that will not settle, anger that has nowhere to go, avoidance of anything associated with the person who died. Depression or anxiety has developed alongside the grief and the two have become entangled.

Seeking therapy does not mean the grief is abnormal or that something has gone wrong with you. It means the difficulty has become more than you should have to navigate alone.

What Grief Can Look and Feel Like

Grief does not follow a predictable sequence and it does not look the same in everyone. Common experiences include:

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• Waves of acute distress. Intense sadness, longing, or pain that arrives without warning — triggered by a place, a sound, a date, or nothing in particular.

• Numbness and disconnection. A feeling of going through the motions, of being cut off from yourself or from other people. Sometimes this alternates with the intensity; sometimes it is the dominant experience.

• Guilt and self-reproach. Replaying what was said or not said, what was done or not done. A persistent sense that something should have been different.

• Anger. At the circumstances, at other people, at the person who died, at yourself. Often accompanied by guilt about the anger.

• Avoidance. Staying away from places, people, or objects associated with the person who died. Keeping busy to avoid the grief surfacing. In some cases, the reverse: an inability to let go of anything associated with them.

• Difficulty imagining the future. A loss of the sense of what life looks like now. Particularly common where the relationship was central to daily life and identity.

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Traumatic Loss

Some losses are not only painful but traumatic. Sudden or unexpected deaths, suicide, accidents, violence, or deaths witnessed under difficult circumstances can produce symptoms alongside the grief — intrusive images, flashbacks, hypervigilance, a mind that keeps returning to how the person died rather than who they were.
 

When this is the case, the trauma and the grief tend to need attention in a particular order. It is difficult to grieve someone when the mind is still caught in the moment of the death. Stabilising the trauma symptoms first creates the conditions for grief to move.

Where trauma is present, I may draw on EMDR alongside CBT and ACT approaches. EMDR is recommended by NICE for post-traumatic stress and works well with traumatic loss specifically, helping to process the intrusive memories of the death so that space opens up to engage with the grief itself. You can read more about EMDR therapy here.

How Therapy Works

Bereavement therapy is not about moving people through grief on a schedule or persuading them to feel something other than what they feel. It begins with making space for the reality of the loss — the person, the relationship, what has been lost — without rushing toward resolution.

From there, the work is shaped by what is actually keeping the grief stuck. That might be avoidance patterns that are preventing natural processing. It might be self-critical or guilt-laden thinking that is maintaining a particular kind of suffering. It might be a loss of direction and meaning that requires work on rebuilding a sense of what life looks like now. Or it might be trauma symptoms that need to be addressed before grief work is possible. The formulation determines the direction.

I draw on CBT, ACT, and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) approaches across this work, and EMDR where trauma is present. The pace is always set by what is appropriate for you.

Format: Weekly 60-minute sessions in Stourbridge or online across the UK.

What Progress Looks Like

Fewer intrusive thoughts and sudden spikes of distress. Sleep beginning to stabilise. The ability to return to places or reconnect with people that had been avoided. We retain the capacity to feel appropriate sadness, because the loss remains, but that no longer dominates every part of daily life. A gradually returning sense of what the future might look like, and a re-engagement with meaningful activities and relationships.

Why Work With Me

I'm Christian Hughes, a BABCP-accredited cognitive behavioural psychotherapist with extensive experience across NHS, military, and private practice settings. I work with bereavement across a wide range of presentations — including traumatic and sudden loss, prolonged grief, grief complicated by difficult or ambivalent relationships, and loss that has triggered or deepened depression or anxiety.

I am trained in EMDR, CBT, ACT, and CFT, and I draw on whichever combination of approaches the formulation indicates is most appropriate for your situation.

I work in person in Stourbridge, West Midlands, and online across the UK via Zoom.

Fees: Individual therapy: £125 per 60-minute session.
Location: Stourbridge (West Midlands) and online across the UK.
Availability: Daytime and limited early evenings.

Frequently Asked Questions

 

• Is grief not just something I have to go through?
  Yes — and therapy does not try to bypass that. It is not about shortcutting grief or being talked out of sadness. It is relevant when grief has become stuck in a way that is significantly affecting your ability to function, or when the circumstances of the loss have added a traumatic dimension that makes natural grieving difficult.

• What if I feel numb rather than sad?
  Numbness is a very common grief response, particularly in the early period after a loss or after traumatic bereavement. It is not the absence of grief — it is often the mind's way of managing an experience that is too large to feel all at once. We work gently from wherever you are, not from where you think you should be.

• What if my feelings about the person who died are complicated?
  This is more common than people tend to admit. Grief after a difficult or ambivalent relationship — or after losses involving conflict, estrangement, or harm — can be particularly hard to make sense of. It does not fit the expected shape and often comes with guilt about what is and is not felt. This is territory therapy can usefully address, without judgement.

• Do you work with traumatic bereavement?
  Yes. Where the loss involved traumatic circumstances, I draw on trauma-focused approaches alongside grief work. The two are addressed in a sequence that makes clinical sense, with the trauma stabilised before intensive grief processing begins.

• How long does therapy take?
  It varies considerably and depends on the nature of the loss, how long the difficulty has been present, and what else is entangled with the grief. Many people feel meaningfully steadier within 12 sessions. More complex or traumatic presentations typically take longer. We review progress regularly throughout.

 

Next Steps

If your grief feels stuck, or you are not sure whether therapy is the right next step, a free 15-minute call is available to talk through your situation before committing to anything.

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