What It Feels Like
What Grief Can Feel Like
Grief does not always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like functioning perfectly at work while feeling hollow at home. Sometimes it looks like irritability, numbness, or a strange sense of relief that then turns into guilt for feeling relieved at all.
What Is Grief?
Grief Counseling in Culver City & Torrance
Grief is not a problem to be fixed. It is what love looks like once the person, the role, or the future it was attached to is gone.
For some people grief moves through in waves that soften with time. For others it settles in and stops moving altogether. Both are real. Both deserve support.
The emotional, cognitive, and physiological response to loss, most often the death of someone close, though also to the loss of a relationship, role, identity, or future that was expected. Grief can affect memory, sleep, appetite, concentration, and the nervous system's baseline sense of safety, and its intensity and duration vary widely across individuals and cultures.
Key Takeaways
- Grief is a natural response to loss, not a disorder. Most people move through it without needing a clinical diagnosis.
- For a smaller group, grief does not ease with time and becomes Prolonged Grief Disorder, a diagnosis added to the DSM-5-TR in 2022.
- Shakti treats grief at the root: identity, attachment, culture, and the nervous system, not just the timeline of "moving on."
- Approaches include Complicated Grief Treatment, somatic therapy, IFS, narrative reconstruction, DBT skills, and holistic care, matched to the person, not a fixed protocol.
- Available in-person in Culver City and Torrance, or virtually across California.
Grief is universal. Getting stuck in it is more common than most people realize.
Everyone who loves will eventually grieve. That part is not a clinical issue. What is a clinical issue, for a meaningful minority of people, is grief that does not soften over time and instead disrupts daily functioning for months or years.
Prolonged grief is real, but it is not the same as depression, anxiety, or trauma, though it frequently overlaps with all three, along with substance use and, in more severe cases, suicidal thoughts. Risk is higher after deaths that were sudden, violent, or stigmatized, such as suicide, homicide, or overdose, where the nervous system is often processing grief and trauma at the same time.
California is the most populous state in the country, with roughly 39 million residents, which means even ordinary annual mortality represents a very large number of newly bereaved people every year. I want to be upfront that I could not independently verify the precise annual death count for California from a source I could pull exact figures from during this research; CDPH does publish this data through its Statewide Death Profiles dataset, and it should be confirmed there before this specific number goes on the page.
Virtual
Understanding Grief at the Root
Grief counseling helps you carry loss differently, not erase it. We do not work from the assumption that grief has a fixed timeline or a finish line called "closure." We look at what the loss actually took from you: a person, an identity, a role, a future you had already started building around someone.
At Shakti Therapy, grief work is never generic. For clients navigating culturally specific mourning practices, family expectations around grief, or the particular weight of being "the strong one" while everyone else falls apart, we build treatment around your actual relationship to the loss, not a stage model that assumes grief looks the same for everyone.
Our grief therapists support clients in Culver City, Torrance, and virtually throughout California.
Grief can show up as
- Waves of sadness that arrive without warning
- Numbness or a sense of disbelief
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Guilt, including guilt over how you grieved or didn't
- Anger at the loss, at others, or at the person who died
- Yearning or preoccupation with the person or what was lost
- Changes in sleep or appetite
- Avoiding reminders of the loss, or seeking them out compulsively
- Feeling like part of your identity is missing
- Difficulty imagining a future without what was lost
- Relief followed by shame about feeling relieved
- Functioning outwardly while feeling hollow internally
- Strained relationships with people who "don't get it"
- Physical symptoms: fatigue, tension, a heavy chest
- Difficulty being around others' happiness or milestones
- A sense that time has stopped moving forward
Types of Loss
What Kinds of Loss Bring People to Grief Counseling?
Grief is not only about death, though death is often the most acute form of it. At Shakti Therapy, we work with the full range of loss, including the kinds that rarely get acknowledged as grief at all.
01
Death of a Loved One
A parent, partner, child, sibling, or close friend. The nature of the death, sudden, prolonged, violent, or expected, shapes how grief unfolds and what support is needed.
02
Disenfranchised Grief
Loss that others don’t recognize or validate: a miscarriage, an ex-partner, a pet, an estranged parent, a friendship that ended without closure. The grief is real even when it isn’t socially acknowledged.
03
Anticipatory Grief
Grieving a loss that hasn’t happened yet, often during a loved one’s terminal illness or cognitive decline. This grief runs alongside caregiving, which makes it easy to ignore until it becomes overwhelming.
04
Ambiguous Loss
Loss without a clear ending: estrangement, addiction, dementia, a parent who is physically present but emotionally gone. There is no funeral for this kind of grief, which can make it harder to name.
05
Identity and Role Loss
Divorce, infertility, a career ending, immigration, the loss of a future you had planned around. Grief for a version of your life that will not happen.
06
Cultural and Intergenerational Grief
Loss connected to displacement, migration, family separation, or grief that was never allowed space in a family or culture that prized stoicism or “moving on.”
Types of Grief We Treat
At Shakti Therapy, we support clients through many forms of grief. Each requires a different understanding of what was lost and what support actually helps.
Prolonged Grief Disorder
Intense, persistent grief lasting beyond a year that significantly disrupts daily functioning. A formally recognized diagnosis as of the DSM-5-TR (2022).
Acute or Uncomplicated Grief
The natural, often intense response to loss that most people move through with time, support, and space to feel it.
Disenfranchised Grief
Grief that isn't socially recognized or validated, which can leave people feeling isolated in their mourning.
Anticipatory Grief
Grieving a loss before it happens, common during terminal illness, caregiving, or watching a loved one decline.
Traumatic Grief
Grief compounded by the sudden, violent, or traumatic nature of a death, where trauma symptoms and grief symptoms intertwine.
Ambiguous Loss
Grief without closure, connected to estrangement, addiction, or a loved one who is present but changed.
Perinatal and Reproductive Loss
Miscarriage, stillbirth, infertility, and loss connected to the path to parenthood.
Intergenerational and Cultural Grief
Loss shaped by migration, family separation, or grief that was never given space to be felt.
Complicated Bereavement in Caregivers
Grief layered with exhaustion and relief after years of caregiving for a chronically or terminally ill loved one.
"Grief is not something to get over. It is something you learn to carry differently."
Treatment Approaches
How Grief Counseling Works at Shakti
Grief counseling is not about rushing anyone toward acceptance. At Shakti Therapy, we help you build a relationship with the loss that lets you keep living, working, and connecting with others, without needing to pretend it doesn’t still hurt.
Grief-Specific Protocol
Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT)
CGT is a structured, 16-session therapy developed specifically for prolonged and complicated grief. It combines elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy with attachment-focused work, helping you process the reality of the loss while rebuilding a life that includes it.
Body-Based
Somatic Therapy
Grief lives in the body as tension, exhaustion, a held breath, a chest that won’t fully release. Somatic therapy helps regulate the nervous system so you are not just thinking about the loss, but processing it physiologically.
Meaning-Making
Narrative Reconstruction Therapy
Narrative reconstruction helps you write and re-narrate the story of the loss in detail, alongside its meaning for your life, so the memory becomes something you carry rather than something that keeps interrupting you.
Emotion Regulation
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) Skills
DBT skills, emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and mindfulness, can help when grief brings waves of emotion that feel too intense to move through safely, especially alongside suicidal thoughts or self-harm urges that sometimes accompany severe grief.
Parts-Based
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS helps you work with the different parts of you activated by loss: the part that wants to fall apart, the part that has to keep functioning, the part that feels guilty for healing. Instead of forcing one part to win, we help them coexist.
Medically Screened
Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)
For some clients, when grief has become entrenched and resistant to standard treatment, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy may help create enough distance from the pain to process it differently. It requires medical screening and is embedded in a full therapeutic framework, never offered in isolation.
Research and Outcomes
How Effective Is Grief Counseling?
Most people move through grief without needing formal treatment. Grief counseling is most clearly indicated when grief has stopped moving: when it is disrupting work, relationships, and daily functioning for a sustained period.
Well-Established Evidence Base
Complicated Grief Treatment produces meaningfully higher and faster treatment response than standard interpersonal psychotherapy for Prolonged Grief Disorder (Shear et al., JAMA, 2005; Shear et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2014, older adults).
Promising, Small Pilot Study
A pilot study of Narrative Reconstruction therapy found a large reduction in Prolonged Grief Disorder symptoms after 16 sessions (Elinger et al., European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2021, n = 10, no control group). Too small a sample to generalize from confidently.
Limited Evidence, Single Case Study
DBT skills training has been documented as effective for one client meeting criteria for Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder (Barrett, Tolle & Salsman, Clinical Case Studies).
Well-Established, Descriptive
The majority of bereaved individuals do not develop a diagnosable grief disorder and adapt over time with natural support, though a meaningful minority, an estimated 4-15%, do not (American Psychiatric Association; meta-analyses of PGD prevalence).
Limited Evidence, Case-Level Only
Ketamine-assisted approaches for grief specifically are supported mainly by case reports and clinical observation, not controlled trials. Any strong claims about ketamine’s effectiveness for grief should be treated with caution until better-controlled research exists.
Effect Sizes for Grief-Focused Approaches
These two bars are not directly comparable to each other or to the CGT response-rate findings above; they come from different outcome measures entirely. The Narrative Reconstruction figure (Cohen’s d = 2.73) is from a single pilot study of 10 people with no control group, an unusually large effect size that should be read as an early signal, not a settled finding. *The Somatic Therapy figure is not grief-specific at all; it is borrowed from a PTSD trial (Brom et al., 2017) because no randomized study of somatic therapy for grief currently exists. This bar represents PTSD evidence being applied to grief by clinical reasoning, not grief research itself.
Grief vs. Prolonged Grief Disorder
Not everyone who grieves needs therapy. Understanding the difference helps you know when additional support is warranted.
Grief often feels like
Intense pain, sadness, and disruption that gradually softens over time, even while it never fully disappears. People move through it with support from family, community, and time.
Prolonged Grief Disorder often feels like
Intense grief that persists beyond a year (or six months for children, per some diagnostic criteria), with significant identity disruption, disbelief, and impairment in daily functioning that does not ease with time.
Grief duration and expression vary widely across individuals and cultures. Whether grief becomes prolonged depends on many factors: the nature of the death, prior mental health history, social support, and attachment history. Both deserve care, even when only one meets criteria for a formal diagnosis.
When Should You Seek Grief Counseling?
- It has been over a year and the intensity of your grief has not eased
- You feel unable to imagine or invest in a future
- Daily functioning, work, relationships, or basic self-care, has broken down
- You feel disconnected from your identity since the loss
- You are avoiding all reminders of the person or the loss
- You feel intense guilt, anger, or shame connected to the death
- People around you have stopped acknowledging your grief, but you haven't
- You are grieving something others don't recognize as a real loss
- You are caregiving for someone who is dying and already grieving them
- You are ready to stop carrying this without support
You do not have to wait until grief takes over your life.
Therapy can help whether your loss happened last month or many years ago. There is no expiration date on needing support for something that changed your life.
You do not need to prove that your loss was significant enough to deserve care. If it changed you, that is enough reason to get support.
Why Choose Shakti Therapy for Grief Counseling?
Culturally Responsive Care
We understand grief shaped by cultural mourning practices, family expectations, immigration, and the pressure to stay strong for everyone else. You do not have to explain the cultural layers from scratch.
Nervous-System-Based Healing
We work with the body, not just the story, because grief is held physiologically, not only mentally. Talking about the loss is often not enough on its own.
Evidence-Based and Integrative
Our grief work may include Complicated Grief Treatment, somatic therapy, IFS, narrative reconstruction, DBT skills, and holistic care when clinically appropriate. Modalities that serve the person, not a fixed protocol.
Local and Accessible
In-person in Culver City and Torrance, or virtual anywhere in California. Sessions start at $199. Superbills available for out-of-network reimbursement.
No Timeline Imposed
We do not measure your grief against an arbitrary calendar. Whether your loss was recent or decades ago, the work meets you where you actually are.
Trusted Team
Over 11,000 sessions delivered. 6,000 lives impacted. 7 languages spoken. 75+ five-star reviews. A multilingual, multicultural team trained in the complexity of grief.
A team that actually gets it.
Our therapists are multilingual, multicultural, and trained in the complexity of grief across different cultural mourning traditions and family systems. You should not have to explain your background to your therapist.
Start Grief Counseling in Culver City or Torrance
You do not have to carry this loss alone or on a timeline that doesn't fit. At Shakti Therapy, we help you process what happened, reconnect with your body and identity, and build a life that includes the loss without being consumed by it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions people bring when first exploring grief counseling at Shakti.
Grief counseling helps you process loss, whether from death, a relationship ending, or another major life change. It is not about "getting over" the loss but about building a sustainable relationship to it.
Grief is a natural response to loss that most people move through with time and support. Prolonged Grief Disorder is a specific diagnosis, added to the DSM-5-TR in 2022, involving intense grief that persists beyond a year and significantly disrupts daily functioning.
You may benefit from grief counseling if the loss is disrupting your ability to function, if you feel stuck rather than gradually adapting, or if you are grieving something others don't recognize as a legitimate loss. You do not need a formal diagnosis to benefit from support.
Complicated Grief Treatment (CGT) is a 16-session, evidence-based therapy developed specifically for prolonged grief. Randomized controlled trials found it produced significantly higher treatment response rates than standard talk therapy.
No. Grief duration varies enormously across individuals, relationships, and cultures. Clinical concern arises less from how long grief lasts and more from whether it is easing over time or has become stuck and functionally disabling.
Yes. Disenfranchised grief, loss that isn't socially validated, such as a miscarriage, a pet, an estranged relationship, or an ex-partner, is real grief and is something we treat directly.
Yes. Shakti Therapy offers grief counseling in Culver City at 4230 Overland Ave for clients seeking holistic, culturally responsive, and evidence-based care.
Yes. Shakti Therapy offers grief counseling in Torrance and supports clients throughout the South Bay. Virtual sessions are also available anywhere in California.
Yes. Shakti Therapy offers virtual grief counseling for clients throughout California. Same clinical depth, accessible wherever you are.
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy may be considered for some clients whose grief has become entrenched and resistant to standard treatment, particularly when depressive symptoms are also present. The evidence for ketamine specifically in grief is still limited to case reports rather than controlled trials, so we discuss this honestly with clients before recommending it.
You do not have to carry this loss alone.
Grief is love with nowhere left to go. Therapy can help you find somewhere to put it.
