Both Therapy and coaching are very essential in our grieving journey. So, how do they differ and how can they help us in dealing with child loss?
In this episode, we are going to know their importance, difference , and how they affect us in healing and moving forward.
Episode Pointers:
Most therapists are a place for you to go and talk, to get out the stuff that's coming up inside, to get the words out of your mind. And that feeling is amazing when you are walking with grief and you just need a space to go over your experience.
If a therapist doesn’t understand grief, they are not the right therapist for you specifically for losing a child. Truly, not everyone is a good fit for everyone. It’s a human to human relationship and sometimes you just don’t click with someone.
Therapy also tends to focus only on top down processing. This is where you talk only, and don’t get into the sensations of feelings in your body.
Therapy is an amazing resource, but something can easily happen. That you begin to develop a dependency relationship of sorts with your therapist. That you need to go to therapy for years and years.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn't’ ever talk about your experience, but there is a difference in cycling and suffering over and over again, and processing and learning to carry your grief.
This is why I believe coaching is so powerful. While therapy can easily become a place you continue on for years and years and rehash the past over and over again. Coaching is for someone who wants to learn tools to move forward. Not to get out of the past, but to honor their experiences, honor their child, remember them, never forget and carry them forward with them in their life.
As a coach, I want my clients to learn the tools to be able to not need me. That is my goal, that my clients’ lives would be so deeply changed, that they would not need me for grief coaching anymore.
There is this difference. Some therapists do give tools to move forward, to process emotions, a lot of them are a sounding board, a place to talk, a place to vent, a place to get everything out.
And with coaching, I combine both the talking, but not just talking, not just venting, but when you talk, then we dive deeper. As a coach, I help guide you through experiencing emotion and learning to sit with emotion.
"I like the different tools you have to offer, and you always come prepared. You always know what to say, even if it's uncomfortable. I feel like you are open and listen. This work is an uncomfortable thing, and you make it more comfortable."
That there is nothing wrong with you for feeling depression. Sadness. Anger. Anxiety. Fear. These are all emotions that come with grief, but we don’t have to just leave it at that. . Sit with it. Feel it. Truly experience it until the energy of the emotion flows out. Then- you can begin to look at behind it, what are the thoughts that were bringing up that emotion? Do I want to keep them and keep going in this cycle or not? What do I want to do?
So- this is how coaching goes deeper than just talking about it.
Grief is not a mental illness. There is nothing wrong with you. You are experiencing a normal response to loss, that yes, can lead to very negative paths if not supported, but in the end it’s still grief, and there is a way to process it.
The biggest thing I would offer to you as you look in your own life, is the person, whether a therapist or a coach you are working with helping you. Do you feel connected to them? Do you feel hope every time you leave?
The two biggest things to notice, is do you feel connected to the person you are working with? And at the end of your sessions do you have hope?
That is the feeling I try to leave my clients with, every time we end a call. The way I end the session is important, and usually they are in a state of calm and peace.
And then- the honest truth is this. What do you want? Do you want to learn how to move forward and build a beautiful life after such a devastating experience, all while holding your child and experience as part of your life, or do you want to stay exactly where you are, even feeling like you are going backwards? This is all up to you. You get to decide. And only you. You get to make the choice.
If you want to apply for a spot for 1:1 Grief Coaching, go to www.meganhillukka.com/griefcoaching
If you are a grieving mother and looking for others who know the pain of child loss, come join my free Grieving Moms Community Facebook group: www.meganhillukka.com/community
