Learning Centre

Grief & Loss Counselling

By Mavra Wasim, RP (Qualifying) · 8 min read · Updated November 2026

Grief and loss counselling in Toronto offers a steady place to talk about someone or something you have lost, without being hurried toward feeling better. Grief is not a problem to fix. It is the cost of having loved, and counselling helps you carry it in a way that lets you keep living. That includes losses that are hard to explain to others, such as a death far from where you now live.

What Is Grief, and What Does It Feel Like?

Grief is the whole-person response to losing someone or something that mattered. People often expect sadness and are surprised by everything else: anger, guilt, relief, numbness, panic, forgetfulness, a craving for sleep or an inability to sleep, and a strange sense that the world should have stopped. It can show up in the body as tightness in the chest, exhaustion or loss of appetite.

There is no correct order. The idea of tidy stages is popular, but most people describe something more like weather: long calm stretches interrupted by sudden storms, often triggered by a smell, a song, a date or an ordinary Tuesday at the grocery store. Waves that arrive years later do not mean you are doing grief wrong.

Types of Loss Counselling Can Support

When people hear the word bereavement they think of a death, and that is a major reason people come. But grief follows many kinds of loss, and some of them get little recognition from the people around us.

• The death of a parent, partner, child, sibling, friend or pet
• A miscarriage, stillbirth or pregnancy loss, including losses that were never publicly acknowledged
• A sudden or traumatic death, or a death after a long illness
• The end of a marriage or long relationship
• Estrangement from family, including after coming out or leaving a faith community
• Losing a home, country, language, career or version of your future
• Anticipatory grief, when someone you love is dying or declining

Grief that society does not openly recognize is sometimes called disenfranchised grief. If you have been told it was only a pet, or that you should be over it, or that you were not close enough to be this upset, your reaction still deserves attention.

Grieving From Far Away: Loss in the Diaspora

Many people living in Toronto have parents, grandparents or siblings living in Pakistan, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, Iran, Syria, Jamaica or elsewhere. When someone dies there, grief arrives with extra layers. You may hear the news by phone call or voice note in the middle of a workday. You may not be able to travel in time because of visas, money, work, health or family conflict. You may miss the funeral, the washing and shrouding, the forty days, the gathering of neighbours, the food, the days of sitting together that your culture built so that no one grieves alone.

Imagine someone who learns by text that their grandmother has died overseas, and who is expected back at work the next morning because here a grandparent barely counts as bereavement. They may feel that they have no right to fall apart, and also that they failed her by not being there. That mix of guilt, helplessness and invisibility is very common, and it tends to linger when it is never spoken.

Distance can also mean grieving other things at the same time: a home you cannot return to, a country in conflict, a language your children will not speak, or relatives you may never see again. Counselling can hold all of that together. Sometimes a small ritual of your own is created, such as a recitation, a meal cooked from her recipe, a letter that is never sent or an evening spent looking through photographs, so that your goodbye has a shape. If faith or tradition is part of how you understand death, it is welcome in the room. You can read more in the guide on cultural and faith struggles.

If grief feels unbearable

If you are having thoughts of ending your life, or you feel unable to keep yourself safe, call or text 988 in Canada at any time, or call 911 in an emergency. Therapy is not a crisis service, and a therapist cannot respond between sessions, so please reach for these supports first.

How Can Grief Counselling Help?

Counselling will not remove the pain, and claims that it can should be treated with caution. What it can do is make the pain less lonely and less confusing. In sessions you can say the things that friends are tired of hearing, tell the story of the death as many times as you need, and speak about the person as they were, not only as someone who is gone.

Grief counselling might work on:

• Making sense of reactions that scare you, such as anger at the person who died or relief after a long illness
• Easing guilt about what you said, did not say or could not do
• Finding words for the relationship, including the difficult parts
• Managing waves at work, in social settings or on anniversaries
• Creating rituals and ways of keeping a connection that feel right to you
• Noticing when grief has become tangled with anxiety, depression or past trauma

Therapy Approaches Used for Grief

Grief is not addressed with a single protocol. Grief counselling may draw on a few approaches depending on what you need.

• Narrative therapy helps you tell the fuller story of the person and your relationship, rather than letting the story shrink to the final days or the worst moment.
• Emotion-focused work makes room for feelings that have been held back, including anger, longing and sorrow, and can include speaking to the person who died through an empty chair exercise if you choose.
• Logotherapy looks for meaning and values that continue after a loss, without pretending the loss had a purpose.
• Mindfulness and compassion practices offer ways to stay with a wave of grief and to speak to yourself as you would to a grieving friend.
• Trauma-informed care becomes central if the death was sudden, violent or witnessed, or if images and memories keep intruding.

When Grief Becomes Stuck or Complicated

Most people find that acute grief softens with time and support, though it never fully disappears. Sometimes, though, the intensity stays high for a very long time, and daily life stays out of reach: you cannot stop yearning, you avoid every reminder, you feel that life has no point without the person, or you are unable to accept the death. This is sometimes called prolonged grief. It is not a failure, and it responds to care. If this sounds like you, counselling can help, and speaking with your family doctor may also be suggested, particularly if sleep, eating or your safety are affected. Grief and depression can look similar, and a physician can help tell them apart.

What Grief Counselling Sessions Can Look Like

In the first session, the focus is mostly on listening: who you lost, how it happened, what the days since have been like, who is around you. There is no need to prepare or to be composed. Tears, silences and long rambling stories are all welcome.

1. Sessions start where you are, with whatever is loudest this week.
2. The story of the loss and the relationship is told slowly, at a pace you can tolerate.
3. What the body and emotions do as you speak is noticed, and ways to settle are practised if it becomes too much.
4. Practical pressures, such as work, family expectations and religious or cultural obligations, are looked at, and plans are made for them.
5. How to mark dates and keep the connection that matters to you is decided together.

Some people come for a few months after a death. Others return around anniversaries or a later loss. You can set the pace, with regular check-ins about whether the work is useful.

Frequently Asked Questions About Grief Counselling

Explore Related Guides

Depression Therapy Low mood, low energy, and losing interest in things that used to matter. Read the guide Narrative Therapy Separating yourself from the problem, and retelling your story. Read the guide Trauma-Informed Care Care that puts safety, choice, and pace first. Read the guide