You don’t have to face your grief alone.

Grief isn’t just the loss of a loved one. It’s also the emptiness that you feel you after a break-up. It’s the end of a job, a diagnosis that changes everything, or a friendship that falls apart without reason.

The pain can be so overwhelming that it consumes your every thought, or it lurks beneath the surface, forcing you to go through the motions like a robot. You continue living, but you’re held captive by it and find it difficult to move forward.

As a bereavement counsellor in Nîmes, I offer a safe space where your pain is genuinely understood, where you can share this burden without any judgement. My approach combines cutting-edge neuroscience techniques like Brainspotting with deeply caring, person-centred support. You don’t have to carry this pain alone – there are ways to help you find peace.

What is grief?

Bereavement is fundamentally about having to accept that things will never be the same again. It can affect every aspect of life: family, friends, culture, environment, politics… Today’s world confronts us with multiple and complex losses that our grandparents could never have imagined.

Different types of Grief

Loss of Connection

When we think of grief, we immediately think of the death of a loved one. But in reality, any loss of connection with another person becomes a form of grief: a separation – even when chosen, the end of a friendship, the breakdown of family ties. Every relationship that breaks leaves a void, an absence that echoes and takes up space in your mind and daily life.

Loss of Identity

Who are you outside of your job? After an illness that changes your body, your abilities? When your children grow up and leave, when you grow old and retire? Identity grief affects what defines you as a person. The passage of time, life transitions, the loss of physical or mental abilities… all these are cracked mirrors reflecting back a distorted image of yourself that you don’t recognise.

Loss of Belonging

Moving away, emigrating, watching your neighbourhood change, losing your community: this is grief for the places that define you, for the culture that drives you. Sometimes it’s more subtle: family traditions that disappear, a language you never learnt, a world that’s gradually slipping away. Losing your sense of belonging is a grief difficult to explain and poorly understood.

The grief of unmet expectations

Grief isn’t necessarily about change or loss. Sometimes grief is about what didn’t happen, what could have been, or what should have been. A childless marriage. A career that never takes off. A dream that falls apart. It’s grief for what wasn’t. How do you mourn something that didn’t happen?

Social and Cultural Grief

Political upheavals, environmental disasters, a pandemic that changes everything. Collective grief affect us all, but we often feel alone when we experience it. You mourn the world that was: a simpler, more reassuring world that no longer exists…

Complicated Grief

Sometimes, processing grief can be complex – the pain persists, months pass without relief, and you’re haunted by it day and night.

Traumatic Grief

When loss comes with brutal emotional shock that the nervous system struggles to recover from, the brain remains on high alert, unable to process the intensity of what happened.

Anticipatory Grief

This involves experiencing the loss before it actually happens, such as when caring for a loved one who is dying.

Disenfranchised Grief

These are losses that society doesn’t acknowledge: your pain is real even if it’s not considered legitimate.

Ambiguous Loss

Alzheimer’s, dementia, brain injury… When the essence of our loved ones disappears but they’re still physically present. How do you mourn someone who’s still there? How do you grieve a relationship that no longer exists with someone who’s still alive?

Cumulative Grief

This adds another layer of complexity to the grieving process: you don’t have time to process the first loss before suffering another, then a third or even a fourth. You feel like you’re drowning in pain, gasping for air, being battered by life.

Mixed Emotions in Grief

Behind the scenes of the sadness of grief can lie anger, guilt, or even relief. You might mourn someone whilst also feeling angry with them, experience immense relief at the death of a difficult loved one, or on the contrary feel nothing at all – and then feel guilty about this lack of emotion. These contradictions are normal: you’re not a bad person, you’re just human. My support takes all your feelings into account, even those that seem unmentionable.

When it’s Time to Ask for Help

There’s no “right time” to ask for help with grief. But there are certain signs that might indicate it would be a good idea to seek professional support:

• Your pain has been interfering with your daily life for several months
• You feel stuck in your suffering, unable to move forward
• You avoid anything that reminds you of this loss
• You have traumatic symptoms: flashbacks, nightmares, distress, anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, guilt, intrusive thoughts
• You’re “managing” the pain in unhealthy ways: alcohol, drugs, isolation, risky behaviour
• Those around you are worried about you
• You simply need someone to talk to

Grieving isn’t a weakness, and neither is asking for help.

My Therapeutic Approach

Honouring your grief, not trying to fix it

Some losses are meant to be carried. I’m not here to rush you through it or tell you to “move on” – grief is a deeply human experience that deserves respect. My job is simply to sit with you in it, and to make sure your pain doesn’t overwhelm you.

This being said, I can help ease your suffering and work with any difficult symptoms you’re experiencing. Whatever you need, I’m here to listen and support you through it.

Why trauma-informed grief work?

Sometimes what looks like grief is actually trauma – your nervous system gets stuck because the loss was too much to process all at once. When something happens too suddenly or violently, our brains can’t make sense of it, and we need support to help that processing happen.

That’s why I work with techniques like Brainspotting, which helps your brain process things at a deeper level – not just talking through thoughts, but actually helping your nervous system settle. Rather than focusing on the different “stages” of grief that you’re supposed to go through, this approach works with your own unique experience and helps you process whatever you’re going through.

Exchange link :

https://www.proxibienetre.fr