Grief Counselling in Fife • Edinburgh • Scotland • UK
ONLINE AND IN-PERSON
Therapy for Grief & the Impact of Loss
The loss of someone or something we love deeply can turn our life upside down and inside out. Suddenly, we feel more vulnerable and afraid than ever before. Our minds are full of fog. We’re lost for words. Nothing feels ordinary anymore, and we can’t see where we’re going.
I provide compassionate, experienced, trauma-informed grief therapy for anyone living with the impact of a major loss. Grief therapy can help you feel less alone and less burdened…
When Grief Feels Too Much To Carry Alone
It can happen so suddenly: in the middle of the supermarket, in your car, in your bathroom, or at your desk…the powerfully weighty realisation that the grief you’ve been carrying for goodness knows how long can’t be carried alone by you any further.
Strange as this may seem, this can be a good point to come to. It’s the moment when the isolation and loneliness which have bound us so tightly begin to break open. All the sorrow, the missing, difficult feelings, the what-if’s and if-only’s surface, find their voice, to be heard and taken seriously.
Your Grief is Unique
I specialise in helping grieving people gain understanding and insight into the grief they carry, how it affects them uniquely, and how they can learn to live with it constructively.
Alongside deep, intuitive listening, I provide a wide range of practical and psychological resources designed to help you navigate your life and your grief, both during therapy and when the therapy door finally closes.
How Grief Counselling Can Help
Many of my clients tell me how relieved they are finally to have found someone with whom they can talk openly about their grief, their loss and about the very person, pet, place, or role whose absence from their life has caused such chaos.
Grief does cause chaos. It disrupts our sleep, spending and eating habits. It affects concentration, relationships, our work, and, crucially, our sense of who we are. Much of the time we may feel overwhelmed, exhausted, frightened, and lost to ourselves.
Grief and loss aren’t rational, and don’t conform to tidiness. We don’t ‘move on’ from grief. We move with it, as grief moves with us as we learn how to live with its permanent presence in our lives.
Meanwhile the world around us may seem to carry on as normal, while our own lives feel at a standstill.
Grief therapy can help us understand these wildly different and wild experiences more fully, helping us to feel less alone and less burdened by it all. Importantly, grief therapy also helps us to rediscover ourselves and slowly begin to imagine a future once more.
Bereavement Counselling, Grief Therapy & Support After Loss
If you’ve experienced the loss of a significant person in your life, a beloved pet, an important role, or a place which once meant everything to you, then you’re in the right place.
If you’re living with losses for which there’s no neat description or easy name, you’re also in the right place.
I help people who bring all manner of grief and loss. Sometimes, like a set of Russian dolls, there are losses within losses within losses. There’s no hierarchy for the losses we can experience or the grief they bring us.
What kind of grief can I bring?
People come into grief therapy with me after the death of a partner, a lover, a child, a sibling, a parent, a close friend, a pet. Other people are living with anticipatory grief, trying to get a handle on what their life may be like when someone they’re caring for eventually dies.
Some grief overwhelms us and brings us to our knees. Other grief is more like a slow burn until, one day, we realise that we can’t carry it any longer.
Whatever form your grief takes, and whatever weight of it you carry, you’re welcome to bring it here.
Working with Susan
Over many years, I’ve been with people at some of the most awful times of their lives: in hospital ICU departments, Maternity Wards, A&E resus rooms, family sitting rooms, and bedrooms in the middle of the night, when lives have suddenly changed forever.
My training in Psychodynamic Therapy forms the foundation of all my therapeutic work. Alongside this, many years of supporting people through immeasurably profound loss and grief have deepened and enriched my capacity to work at depth with people whose lives have been shattered by loss.
What Happens in Sessions?
I offer a free 15-minute introductory phone or video call for people who’d like to know more about how I can help them.
I offer in-person therapy here in Fife and online therapy in Edinburgh, Scotland, and across the UK.
Please don’t worry about what to say when you begin. We start from where we are, and from whatever it is you bring into the room that day.
Alongside talking therapy, increasing numbers of clients are curious about the resources of Shamanic Healing and how these may help with their grief. Any Shamanic Healing is only offered following full discussion, and with clear informed consent
Frequently Asked Questions - FAQs
Grief counselling vs bereavement counselling
There’s no difference between grief counselling and bereavement counselling. Grief is the umbrella term for all the physical, emotional, psychological and practical upheavals we can experience when we lose someone or something precious to us.
Bereavement describes the fact of that loss. But in counselling, we use the terms to mean much the same thing. There isn’t a big distinction between them
Can I have grief counselling online?
Most of my clients work with me online from Fife, Edinburgh, across Scotland and the UK
Do you work with clients in Edinburgh?
I often work online with clients from Edinburgh. I don’t currently have a therapy space in Edinburgh for in-person work.
Do I need a grief psychologist?
Different therapists work in different ways, bringing different resources to help and support grieving people. My own work is rooted in psychodynamic therapy, with many years of experience supporting and helping grieving people through some of the most terrible times of their lives.
Is my grief too old/too complicated/not serious enough?
No grief is too old, too complicated or not serious enough. People often carry grief for many years because they believe, or have been told, that their loss isn’t important enough, that it’s too old, or that they should have moved on by now. None of this is true. Grief deserves careful and compassionate attention, no matter how old it is, how complicated it feels, or whether we believe it’s worthy of attention at all.
How soon after a bereavement can I start counselling?
There’s no right or wrong time to begin grief therapy after a bereavement. Some people start grief counselling within weeks of a death because they’re deeply traumatised and shocked by what has happened. Other people carry grief for a long time until they feel they can carry it no longer. Often, people reach out for grief therapy when they’ve run out of ideas, feel completely stuck or realise that they can’t manage the weight of grief by themselves any more.
Can therapy help if I feel numb, angry or stuck?
Grief therapy can certainly help when people feel numb, angry or stuck. These experiences can feel deeply uncomfortable when they occur and are some of the key characteristics of grief.
