What is the Grief Recovery Method®?

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Asma Rehman, LPC

Asma Rehman is a Licensed Professional Counselor and a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist. Most of her clinical experience has been in community settings, including Bo’s Place, Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, and psychiatric hospitals. She also has experience in the private practice setting. She enjoys working with adults and families to navigate the challenges of life, whether they are personal, with family, or with peers. Areas of interest include grief and loss, depression, anxiety, trauma, stress management, relationship issues, and family communication.

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Did you know that a lot of the common understanding about grief recovery is actually incorrect?

We hear a lot as a culture about the five stages of “grief”, but even these are typically misunderstood. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed the 5 stages we commonly attribute to grief to understand the experiences that dying folks go through at the end of life. These stages are Anger, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. While there is a lot of overlap between grief and the experiences of the dying, they’re not one and the same, and when people miss that distinction they can feel like something is wrong with them for the way they’re grieving.

Everyone is different, and so everyone grieves differently. Everyone’s experience of grief will be different, so it doesn’t make sense to apply the same exact framework to every griever. Instead, the Grief Recovery Method^® is an action-focused approach to healing the pain of loss.

How does grief recovery actually work?

Grief doesn’t go away with time. Grief only goes away when we take action to move through it. The distress we feel when grieving comes from pain and unfinished emotions. When we take time to discover what these unfinished emotions are and take actions to complete them, we experience real relief from grief. This is the basis of the Grief Recovery Method®, and time and time again people who go through the program feel that their quality of life has improved.

Researchers have studied the Grief Recovery Method^® and have found that not only is it effective, it’s also evidence based. The evidence shows it works! No other grief program has been shown to be evidence based through research.

How is the Grief Recovery Method^® different from other grief therapy approaches?

Actionable steps

Talking is helpful, but it doesn’t always get to the root of the cause of grief, which is unfinished emotions. Grief is emotional and natural, and it can’t be intellectualized away. It’s not logical, but rather emotional, and needs to be treated with that in mind. We need education but more importantly action to move through grief. The Grief Recovery Method^® gives you a guide through grief by taking actionable steps to process the emotions that are causing you pain. In this program, we focus on processing the emotions that are causing distress instead of trying to wait them out.

Empowering for future grief

The Grief Recovery Method^® gives you a roadmap and builds a sense of safety and trust in your own ability to manage grief. We all experience loss and grief, often multiple times in a lifetime. Learning how to effectively recover from grief instead of being trapped in it gives you skills that you can use over and over again throughout your life. No loss is going to be easy, but knowing you have helpful coping skills to work with and a map of actions to take can help you feel more empowered and secure when grieving in the future.

All losses are welcome

Some grief therapy options are limited to certain types of grief, like pregnancy loss or the death of a loved one. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because some people have more experience with a certain type of loss than others and feel more qualified to help with what they know. The Grief Recovery Method^®, on the other hand, can help with anything that causes you grief – from moving to a new city to losing a pet. Whatever you’re going through, the Grief Recovery Method^®can help.

Time bound

Grief is such a massive emotional experience that it can be hard to imagine feeling this way forever. We often hear that grief lasts a lifetime, we just learn how to adapt to it, but that’s not entirely true. Recovery from grief is possible, and it’s possible to improve your quality of life to the point where grief doesn’t define it anymore. A helpful aspect of the Grief Recovery Method^® is that it happens in a specific timeframe. Instead of being open ended, like most talk therapy options, the Grief Recovery Method^® happens in a set window of time, like 90 days. This is because it’s more action oriented – going through the steps doesn’t take forever.

If you or someone you love is experiencing grief, know that recovery is possible and you won’t always feel the pain you are feeling right now. Our expert grief therapists are trained in the Grief Recovery Method^® to help you not only recover, but improve your quality of life. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our Grief Recovery Program.