What Happens in Grief Counselling? What to Expect in Ottawa

Grief counselling is a private, paced conversation about a loss and what it has changed in your life, with a therapist who will not rush you toward being "over it." In the first sessions you talk about what happened, how you are sleeping and coping, and what feels unfinished, and together you decide what the work should focus on.

If you are in Ottawa and wondering whether grief counselling is worth booking, or what you would actually be walking into, this is what the process with me looks like.

When People Usually Reach Out

There is no wrong time to start. Some people call within weeks of a death. Others call a year or more later, when everyone else seems to have moved on and they have not. The Canadian Mental Health Association puts it simply: "Everyone reacts differently to a loss and there is no normal grieving period."

People also come for losses that are not a death: a separation, a miscarriage, a diagnosis, the end of a career, or years of caregiving that ended suddenly. Common reasons to call include:

• the loss was sudden, violent or frightening
• guilt or anger keeps circling back
• sleep, work or parenting is slipping
• faith feels shaken, or the questions feel too big to bring anywhere else
• you are holding everyone else together and have no place to fall apart yourself

You do not need a diagnosis or a referral to start.

Your First Grief Counselling Session

The first session is mostly listening. I will ask what happened, what changed afterward, who is around you, and where you feel pressure to stay strong or move on faster than you can. You decide how much detail to share. A few sentences is enough at first.

We also check practical things: sleep, appetite, drinking, and how you are managing work and family. If anything points to a safety concern, we talk about that first. By the end of the session you should have a sense of whether this is the right fit and what we would work on.

What the Sessions Actually Involve

Grief counselling is not a scripted program. The sessions move between memory, sadness, anger, guilt, family reactions, anniversaries and the practical weight of carrying on.

Depending on what you need, the work can draw on trauma-informed therapy, especially after a sudden or distressing death, and cognitive behavioural therapy for the thoughts that keep replaying, such as "I should have seen it coming."

The aim is not to forget the person or stop missing them. It is for the grief to become something you can carry, so that it no longer swallows every part of the day.

Faith, Language and Family

Grief often raises questions of faith: why this happened, what you believe about death, whether you can still pray. If faith matters to you, it can be part of the conversation, through Catholic psychotherapy or simply as part of your story. If it does not, it never needs to come up.

Sessions are available in English or French. Some people find a loss easier to talk about in their first language, and it helps to be able to switch when you need to.

Cost, Format and Getting Started

Sessions are $250 an hour. Psychotherapy with a Registered Psychotherapist is not covered by OHIP, but most extended health benefits and employee assistance programs cover it. I do not bill insurers directly; you receive a receipt with my registration details to submit for reimbursement. A limited number of sliding-scale spots are available for financial hardship. The fees page has the details.

You can meet in person at 854 Wingate Dr in Ottawa, or by secure video where clinically appropriate, which helps if you live in Orleans, Barrhaven, Almonte or elsewhere in the Ottawa Valley.

How to Choose a Grief Counsellor

Whoever you see, a few questions help:

• Are they registered with a regulatory college, such as the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO)?
• Do they work with your kind of loss, including sudden, traumatic or complicated grief?
• Can they include faith, culture or language if those matter to you?
• Will they let you set the pace, rather than following a fixed number of steps?

A short phone call is usually enough to tell whether someone feels right.

If You Need Help Right Now

If you are having thoughts of suicide or feel unsafe, call or text 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, at any hour. In an emergency, call 9-1-1.

Grief Counselling in Ottawa

I offer grief counselling in Ottawa for people carrying a death, a separation or another loss that changed their life, in English or French.

If grief has slid into constant low mood, depression counselling may also help, and if the loss was traumatic, see trauma counselling. For more on how grief changes over time, read how long grief lasts.

Call (613) 859-8740 or use the contact page to ask about a first session.