Grief & Loss Therapy In San Antonio
Grief Therapy
When Loss Reshapes Life, It’s Hard to Recognize Yourself in It
Grief has a way of rearranging the air around you and coloring your world.
Ordinary moments feel foreign. Time stretches, then collapses. It crashes in at random times.
In the grocery store aisle, at red lights, or when the house finally goes quiet. It leaves you disoriented, aching, and unsure if life will ever feel familiar again, because life doesn’t feel like it fits anymore.
When You’ve Lost Someone You Love
The death of a child, partner, parent, or someone who held a piece of your heart shatters life in a way that nothing else does. The smallest rituals feel hollow now. Even your body carries the ache, heavy, restless, or jolted awake in the night.
This kind of grief doesn’t move in neat stages. It tears through your nervous system, rewrites your identity, and leaves you unsure of who you are without them.
Your grief is real even, if no one else can see it.
Grief Beyond Death
But grief isn’t always about death. Sometimes it’s about bonds that never formed the way you longed for, the childhood you needed but didn’t get, a relationship that ended without closure, the dream you built your life around that dissolved, or even the body you once trusted but no longer can.
These forms of grief can be just as consuming, even when the world doesn’t recognize them. Whether it’s the heartbreak of losing someone or the ache of a dream that never lived, grief is about attachment. It’s about an attachment break, and that break reverberates through your relationships, your nervous system, and your sense of self.
When Grief Leaves You Changed
Grief doesn’t arrive politely. It barges in, rewrites the rules, and leaves you standing in a life you hardly recognize.
It isn’t just about death. Grief can come from losing someone, but also from endings that blindsided you, the parts of yourself you had to leave behind, or changes that shook the life you once trusted.
It doesn’t follow rules or keep a schedule. It reshapes you without asking permission.
No matter its shape, grief can feel like:
Waves of loss hitting without warning.
The world racing on while you remain suspended in sorrow.
Guilt, regret, unspoken words, and “what ifs” that refuse to settle.
Being surrounded by people yet feeling profoundly alone.
Confusion because you “should” be further along by now.
Longing for connection with who or what you’ve lost.
Wondering who you are without them.
A body that feels depleted, restless, or worn down by the ache.
Conflict with people you love because the grief is so raw.
Loving so fiercely it hurts.
Grief has no finish line. It weaves itself into who you’re becoming. Sometimes quietly, sometimes in ways you never expected.
What Begins to Shift in Grief Therapy
In the beginning, grief can feel like it swallows the air. You wake up already heavy. You hold it together in public, then collapse in private. Some days you wonder if you’re moving forward, other days it feels like you’ve slid backwards.
The what ifs, should haves, if onlys run on repeat. The silence is deafening. The world looks the same, but you don’t feel like yourself in it anymore.
Therapy doesn’t erase grief. It doesn’t hand you tidy timelines or quick fixes. Instead, it offers a place to set the weight down, even for an hour, and to begin carrying it in a different way. Over time, grief softens just enough that you can take a full breath again.
In time, you may begin to notice shifts like:
Moments of calm when the waves don’t knock you flat.
Memories that bring comfort instead of only pain.
Permission to feel joy and connection without guilt.
A nervous system that eases, less hijacked by triggers and exhaustion.
A sense of self that re-emerges, no longer swallowed by absence and loss.
Grief doesn’t vanish. But it stops being the only lens through which your life is lived.
My Approach to Grief Work
As an attachment-focused trauma therapist, I see grief as more than sadness. It’s the breaking of a bond, and when that bond is with a child, partner, parent, or someone who carried a piece of your heart, the rupture reverberates everywhere. It floods the nervous system, shakes your sense of safety, and leaves you unsure of who you are without them.
But grief also shows up in quieter, often unrecognized ways. Ambiguous or disenfranchised losses, relationships that ended without closure - the tenderness you needed but never received, the dream you built life around that dissolved, the body you once trusted but can no longer count on - carry their own weight.
These forms of grief are just as valid, just as disorienting, and just as deserving of care.
In our work together, we don’t try to “fix” grief or rush it away. Instead, we:
Make space for love and pain to sit side by side, without rushing one away for the other.
Explore how grief collides with old attachment wounds, amplifying feelings of abandonment, rejection, old wounds, or not-”enoughness.”
Use somatic and nervous system tools to support your body and come down from the flood, instead of being carried away by it.
Shape meaning and a new sense of ground, a way of carrying grief that doesn’t erase your person, and doesn’t erase you.
Grief is always about attachment. It’s love interrupted.
When Loss Rearranges Everything, Therapy Gives You Space to Re-Enter Life
Grief doesn’t need to be silenced, explained away, or rushed. Here, it can be honored for what it truly is: evidence of love, evidence of what mattered, evidence of your humanity.
Together, we can create space for your grief to breathe, until life begins to feel possible again, not the same as before, but still profoundly yours.
You're allowed to carry both the ache and the moments of joy.
FAQ : Grief Therapy in San Antonio
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Grief doesn’t run on a calendar. Some days you’ll feel like you’ve made progress, others like you’ve been knocked backwards. Therapy isn’t about a finish line, it’s about creating enough space for you to keep breathing, keep living, and eventually notice moments that feel less heavy.
The goal isn’t to rush the process but to help you carry grief in a way that doesn’t consume your whole life.
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It’s a common fear. Many people worry that if they open the floodgates, they’ll never stop crying or won’t be able to function. In reality, grief is already there, shaping your days in quiet or overwhelming ways. Talking doesn’t create grief, it gives it somewhere to go. In therapy, you don’t drown in it. You learn how to let it move through you without being consumed.
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Not at all. Therapy is not about closure, forgetting, “moving on,” or “getting over it.” It’s about learning how to carry both your grief and your love in a way that allows you to still have a life.
You don’t have to choose between honoring the person (or the dream, or the version of yourself you lost) and living fully in the present. Both can coexist.
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Grief isn’t always clear-cut. Sometimes it’s a parent you never really had, a body that changed, a relationship that never had the chance to be what you hoped.
Ambiguous losses still ache, even if no one else recognizes them. In therapy, your grief doesn’t need a neat label to be valid. We start exactly where you are, with whatever shape your loss has taken.
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Grief and depression can look similar from the outside, both can bring sadness, exhaustion, and a loss of interest in life.
But grief is anchored to loss: it comes in waves, often tied to memories or reminders, and it usually carries love alongside the pain.
Depression, on the other hand, feels more like a fog that settles over everything, flattening both joy and sorrow. In therapy, we can sort through what’s grief, what may also be depression, and how to support you in both.
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Therapy can’t change the reality of your loss, and it isn’t meant to. What it can do is help you carry grief differently. Instead of feeling consumed or alone with it, therapy gives you a place to set it down, to untangle guilt and regret, and to let love remain without being drowned by pain.
You don’t stop missing them. But you begin to find ways of living that include the loss without being swallowed by it.
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It’s painful when the people you hope will support you don’t know how, or when their words feel minimizing, rushed, or dismissive. This is especially true with grief that isn’t “socially recognized,” like the end of a complicated relationship, estrangement, infertility, or other losses without clear rituals.
Therapy gives you a place where your grief doesn’t have to be justified, explained away, or compared. Here, it’s honored simply because it matters to you.
Ready to Begin Grief Therapy in San Antonio?
Grief will always be part of your story, but it doesn’t have to define the whole of it.
If you’re ready to have a space where your grief is honored, your nervous system supported, and your life given room to take shape again, book a free consult to take the next step toward living a life that holds both your love and your loss.
Ready to Get Started?
Let’s Work Together