Grief &
Loss
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is the price of having loved — and the work is not to make it stop, but to let it fit inside a life.
There are no five stages
The best-known model of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — was never proposed as a sequence that bereaved people go through, and the research does not support it. The problem is not academic: because everyone knows it, people who grieve feel they are doing it "wrong" when they do not proceed in order.
Grief arrives in waves. Good weeks, and then a day that collapses everything because you found a coat in the wardrobe. That is not a relapse; it is the rule.
Not only death
- The death of someone close — expected or sudden, with very different courses in each case.
- Separation or divorce: grief for a person who still exists, which society recognises far less.
- Loss of health: a diagnosis that ends the life you had planned.
- Loss of a role: retirement, redundancy, children leaving home.
- Perinatal loss and infertility: grief for someone who never became, often with no social ritual at all.
- Anticipatory grief: caring for someone with dementia or terminal illness and losing them gradually while they are still here.
When support is worth it
Grief on its own is not a disorder and does not always need therapy. Support is worth having when it has frozen — months later nothing has moved at all — or, conversely, when there was never any room to express it because you had to be strong for everyone else. Also when it comes with intense guilt, when daily functioning has collapsed for a long period, or when thoughts appear that there is no point continuing.
What we do
First we make room — without the consolations that cancel ("it was for the best", "you're still young"). Then we work with whatever blocks: guilt about what was or was not said, anger that feels improper to feel, the fear that if you stop hurting you will betray them.
The aim is not "getting over it", which does not happen anyway. It is to change the position of the loss: from something that occupies the whole of life, to something that has a place within it — a relationship that continues in another form.
At a glance
- ForAdults
- Duration50 minutes per session
- SettingAt the practice in central Thessaloniki, or online
- ApproachCognitive behavioural (CBT) with EFT elements
- AppointmentsBy phone or through the contact form
- PaceThere is no "normal" length of grief
Frequently asked questions
There is no correct duration. The first year is usually the heaviest, because it contains all the "first times" without that person. But nobody has a deadline, and nobody is doing it wrong because it still hurts.
Yes, and it is among the hardest things to say. Anger at being left, at their choices, at things left unresolved. That someone died does not erase your history with them — and grief includes the whole history, not an idealised version.
That phrase implies leaving someone behind. You do not have to. The relationship is not severed — it changes form: from presence to memory and continuity. The point is not to forget, but to be able to remember without collapsing.
For work with minors around a loss, the most effective setting is usually parent counselling: how to talk to a child about death according to their age, what to expect and what helps. We will look at it together in the first meeting.