Grief Therapy
“Grief is the price we pay for love.” Grief is a normal part of living and a natural response to losing someone or something meaningful. The grief process can affect your emotions, thoughts, relationships, sleep, concentration, and physical health. Although grief and loss do not automatically mean something is wrong, complicated or prolonged grief can sometimes contribute to depression, anxiety, trauma-related symptoms, or other mental health disorders.
Our grief counselors help you understand what you are experiencing, work through the pain of loss, and find ways to continue living while maintaining a meaningful connection to what or whom you have lost. We also provide assessments for grief-related disorders and help clarify grief versus depression when the symptoms are difficult to distinguish.
THE Approach to grief therapy
Grief therapy is not about forcing you to move on, forget, or follow a specific timeline. We help you move through the grief process by making space for painful emotions, strengthening your ability to cope, and addressing thoughts or memories that may be keeping you feeling stuck.
Using practical emotional coping skills and trauma-informed approaches, including DBT and EMDR, we can help you manage intense waves of emotion, reduce avoidance, and process distressing memories surrounding the loss. Treatment is shaped around your needs, whether you are grieving a death, relationship, major life change, loss of health, or another meaningful part of your life.
PACED TO YOU
Grief does not follow a predictable timeline. We meet you where you are and move at a pace that respects your readiness, needs, and relationship with the loss.
Lasting impact
The goal is not to erase grief, but to help it become more manageable. Over time, you can carry the loss with less distress and reconnect with meaning, relationships, and daily life.
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Grief counseling provides a supportive space to process the emotions, memories, and life changes that can follow a significant loss. Grief therapy can help you understand your reactions, cope with painful emotions, adjust to changes in your life, and find ways to stay connected to what or who you lost while continuing to move forward.
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There is no set timeline for grief. One helpful way to understand grief is that the goal is not necessarily for the grief to become smaller or disappear. Instead, over time, you can build more life around the grief. The loss may always remain important, but your life can gradually grow to include new relationships, experiences, meaning, and moments of enjoyment alongside it.
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Complicated grief is a commonly used term for grief that remains especially intense and disruptive over time. Prolonged Grief Disorder is the clinical diagnosis used when grief symptoms persist and significantly interfere with daily life and functioning. Someone may experience intense longing, difficulty accepting the loss, emotional pain, avoidance of reminders, or a sense that life has lost its meaning. Grief therapy can help when mourning feels stuck or difficult to navigate alone.
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Yes. EMDR therapy can be helpful when grief includes painful or distressing memories that continue to feel emotionally overwhelming. EMDR may be especially useful when a loss was sudden, traumatic, or connected to upsetting experiences surrounding the death. It can help reduce the intensity of distressing memories while allowing you to maintain a meaningful connection to the person you lost.
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Your first grief therapy session is primarily an opportunity for you and your therapist to get to know each other and understand what has been most difficult for you. You may discuss the loss, how grief is affecting your daily life, your current symptoms and supports, and what you hope will change through therapy. You do not have to tell the entire story or discuss everything immediately.
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Yes. There is no expiration date on grief, and therapy can be helpful even when a loss happened many years ago. Older grief can sometimes become more noticeable during anniversaries, major life transitions, relationships, or other losses. Grief therapy can help you process what remains painful and develop a healthier way of carrying the loss forward.
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Online grief therapy can provide the same opportunity to process grief, develop coping strategies, and work through difficult memories while meeting with a therapist from home. Telehealth can also make grief counseling easier to access when travel, work schedules, caregiving responsibilities, or emotional exhaustion make attending an office difficult.
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Acorn Mental Health offers online grief therapy throughout Delaware and Maryland, allowing clients to attend therapy from home anywhere in either state. In-person grief therapy is also available in Milford, Delaware. Online services are available to clients in areas including Dover, Newark, Middletown, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. In Maryland it is available in Salisbury, Easton, Columbia, Silver Spring, Frederick, and surrounding communities.
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Insurance coverage for grief therapy depends on the specific benefits and requirements of your plan. Acorn Mental Health accepts Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield of Maryland, Aetna, UnitedHealthcare/Optum, and Cigna. Coverage and out-of-pocket costs can vary based on your individual insurance plan.