Grief is a natural response to losing someone or something important. It can affect your emotions, thoughts, body, sleep, relationships, identity and sense of what the future is supposed to look like.
There is no single correct way to grieve. You may feel intense sadness, but you may also experience anger, guilt, numbness, relief, confusion or moments when you feel almost normal. None of these automatically means you loved the person too little or are grieving incorrectly.
I use hypnotherapy, NLP and practical mind–body techniques to support adults who are struggling with bereavement and loss. The aim is not to remove grief, rush you towards “closure” or make you forget somebody important. It is to help you cope with what you are carrying and gradually find a way to live alongside the loss.
MAIL@THEEXCELPRACTICE.COM OR CALL 07807 540142
What Is Grief?
Bereavement refers specifically to the experience of losing someone through death. Grief is the emotional and psychological response to that loss.
People can also grieve other significant losses, including:
- The end of a relationship
- A serious diagnosis or change in health
- Redundancy, retirement or loss of a role
- Miscarriage or infertility
- A pet dying
- Moving away from a home or community
- A child leaving home
- Loss of ability, independence or an expected future
The intensity of grief is not determined by whether somebody else thinks the loss is important. What matters is the meaning and relationship involved.
Grief Does Not Follow a Neat Timetable
You may have heard about denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as the five stages of grief. These words can describe experiences people have, but they are not a compulsory sequence or a timetable for recovery.
You might feel accepting one day and angry the next. A birthday, song, smell or ordinary journey can bring a powerful wave of grief months or years later. This does not necessarily mean you have gone backwards.
Cruse Bereavement Support explains that the five stages do not happen in a fixed order and that some people do not experience every stage.
Modern grief support is less concerned with completing stages and more concerned with helping somebody adapt to a changed life at their own pace.
How Grief Can Affect You
Grief may involve:
- Shock, disbelief or emotional numbness
- Sadness and crying—or an inability to cry
- Anger at yourself, other people, professionals, circumstances or the person who died
- Guilt and regret
- Replaying final conversations or events
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Anxiety about further loss
- Changes in appetite, energy and motivation
- Insomnia or disturbed dreams
- Physical tension, exhaustion or a heavy feeling in the body
- Withdrawing from other people
- Feeling disconnected from who you were before the loss
Relief can also occur, particularly after a long illness, difficult relationship or extended period of caring. Relief and love can exist together. Feeling one does not cancel the other.
Guilt, Unfinished Conversations and “If Only” Thinking
After a death, the mind often returns to what might have been done differently:
- If only I had visited more
- If only I had noticed something sooner
- I should have said more—or less
- Why did I survive when they did not?
- Did they know how much I cared?
Some regret may point towards something real that needs to be acknowledged. However, grief also encourages hindsight: judging a past decision using information that was only available later.
Work may involve separating genuine responsibility from impossible responsibility, allowing an unfinished thought to be expressed and finding a more balanced way to remember the relationship as a whole—not only its final day or most difficult moment.
Continuing Bonds Rather Than Simply “Moving On”
Moving forward does not require leaving the person behind. Many people maintain an internal connection through memories, values, stories, traditions, photographs or choices influenced by the person who died.
The relationship changes, but its meaning does not have to disappear.
For one person, progress may mean being able to speak about somebody without becoming overwhelmed every time. For another, it may mean returning to an activity while carrying their memory with them. The goal is not forgetting. It is creating enough space for memory, grief and continuing life to coexist.
How Hypnotherapy May Help
Hypnotherapy uses focused attention and guided mental processes to support emotional regulation and change automatic responses around thoughts and memories.
Depending on your experience, sessions may help you:
- Settle overwhelming physical tension and emotional surges
- Reduce repetitive overthinking
- Respond more calmly to reminders and anniversaries
- Process guilt, anger or unfinished emotional material
- Improve relaxation around sleep
- Reconnect with supportive memories as well as painful ones
- Develop a kinder and more constructive inner voice
- Rehearse returning gradually to routines, relationships or meaningful activity
- Build confidence in your ability to experience grief without being destroyed by it
Hypnotherapy cannot change what happened or remove the significance of the person. It should not be used to suppress normal emotion. Its role is to support the way you cope, regulate and adapt.
A Practical and Individual Approach
We begin with your experience rather than deciding how you ought to feel.
We may explore:
- The person or loss and what it means to you
- Which emotions feel hardest to carry
- Particular memories, reminders or unanswered questions
- How grief affects sleep, work, relationships and daily routines
- Whether you feel pressure to be “over it”
- What support you already have
- What a small but meaningful improvement would look like
Some sessions may focus on emotional processing. Others may be more practical: sleeping, managing an anniversary, returning to work or rebuilding a routine. Techniques involving mindfulness may help you allow a feeling without either fighting it or becoming completely absorbed by it.
There is no requirement to visualise during hypnotherapy. If you have aphantasia, we can work through language, understanding, sensation, memory and meaning instead.
Grief, Depression and Traumatic Loss
Grief and depression can overlap, but they are not automatically the same. Grief often moves in waves and remains connected to the loss, whereas depression may create more persistent hopelessness, worthlessness and loss of interest across life.
A sudden, violent or disturbing death may also involve trauma-related symptoms such as intrusive images, nightmares, strong avoidance or feeling constantly unsafe. Specialist trauma or bereavement support may be needed before, instead of or alongside hypnotherapy.
The NHS provides guidance on grief after bereavement or loss, including when to seek further help.
Speak to your GP or an appropriately qualified mental-health professional if grief is severely affecting daily life, you feel unable to cope, symptoms are worsening or you are concerned about depression or prolonged grief.
If you are at immediate risk of harming yourself or cannot keep yourself safe, seek urgent help through emergency services, NHS 111, your GP or a crisis service.
Sessions in Reading, Didcot and Online
Sessions are available in Reading, Didcot and through online hypnotherapy.
You do not need to stop loving or remembering somebody in order to live more fully again. Grief is not a loyalty test, and moments of happiness are not a betrayal.
MAIL@THEEXCELPRACTICE.COM OR CALL 07807 540142
You can also find practical information about sessions in the frequently asked questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can hypnotherapy remove grief?
No. Grief is a natural response to loss. Hypnotherapy may support emotional regulation, sleep, difficult memories and gradual adjustment, but it should not erase normal emotion.
Is there a normal length of time to grieve?
There is no single timetable. The intensity usually changes, but anniversaries and reminders may still bring grief much later. Seek professional support if you feel unable to cope or daily life remains severely affected.
Do I have to let go of the person who died?
No. Many people maintain a healthy continuing connection through memories, values and traditions while still adapting to life after the death.
What if I feel guilty or relieved?
Both are common. Relief may follow a long illness or difficult period and does not mean you did not care. Guilt can be explored to distinguish genuine responsibility from hindsight and impossible expectations.
Is grief the same as depression?
No, although they can overlap. A GP or mental-health professional can help if you are concerned about persistent hopelessness, loss of interest or difficulty functioning.
Can sessions take place online?
Yes. Online sessions can provide calm, private support around grief, sleep, memories and adjusting to changed circumstances.
MAIL@THEEXCELPRACTICE.COM OR CALL 07807 540142
Grief as described by the Grief Recovery Method – HERE