Counseling for Grief & Loss
in Marietta and Roswell

• Traumatic or Abrupt Grief: This form of grief can occur after a sudden, unexpected, or unnatural loss, such as a death caused by an accident or violence, a death by suicide, or a miscarriage. It can also cause symptoms that look like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including flashbacks, nightmares, insomnia, anxiety, feelings of anger, feelings of excessive guilt, and emotional numbness.
• Complicated Grief: Also known as prolonged grief, this type of grief involves intense and ongoing emotions about the death, excessive thinking about the circumstances or consequences of the death, avoidance of any reminders of the death, and feeling numb.
• Anticipatory Grief: This type of grief involves mourning an impending loss that hasn’t yet occurred, most often occurring in the context of a terminal illness. When experiencing anticipatory grief, people my feel conflicted and have a hard time enjoying the time left with the loved one.
• Ambiguous Loss: This refers to a situation where a loss occurs with no possibility for closure or a full understanding of what happened. It can occur in missing person cases or cases where a person is alive but has lost their memory, such as with Alzheimer’s disease.
• Absent Grief: After experiencing a loss, some people will experience an absence of feeling grief. Individuals might feel numb or may experience denial around the loss.
• Delayed Greif: For some, it may take time for the loss to become a reality. In these instances, delayed grief may be occurring. Therapy can help with moving through the stages of grief, relieving the feeling of being "stuck".

At Awaken Counseling, we understand the complexities of grief and offer tailored therapy approaches to address various forms of grief, including those stemming from miscarriage, job loss, or health issues. We provide support, help process experiences, offer psychoeducation, and provide tools to navigate your journey of grief. Our goal is to support you in finding healing and resilience amidst your pain.

We recognize that grief often involves cycling through various stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It is normal to experience these stages in a non-linear way, and our therapists are here to help you move through them at your own pace. We also help you understand what to expect throughout your grieving process. For instance, we may explain that grief does not have a set time frame and that it may come and go around holidays, anniversaries, and major life events. We will help you prepare for the emotions that may come up around some of these events.