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Originally Posted by leejosepho
Maybe there is where/why the OP did not feel helped by a therapist. Looking at defenses and inconsistencies and getting some "grief support" are entirely different. So, maybe a therapist truly should have redirected the OP toward someone who could empathize and would *not* have been a third-party intrusion or privacy breach in a session.
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You might be right. If OP's grief therapy was working, probably, he wouldn't have the need for something different, but I don't know what exactly is happening in his therapy. He is the only one who can answer this question. But, generally speaking, yes, grief counseling is a special kind of counseling where looking at the client's issues is generally inappropriate and counter-indicated because it contradicts the purpose of processing loss. Grief counseling is normally based on empathizing with the person's experience and accepting them fully at whatever stage of grieving they are at the moment. That's why support groups IMO are well suitable for a grieving person while therapy groups aren't.
I have to say though that whatever the purpose of therapy is, once it starts it's never about one particular issue that you can neatly separate from everything else. One might start therapy in order to process a loss of the loved one, but at any point it can spontaneously turn in a new direction. It's just like life..all mixed up and messy.. We can't organize our life issues by neatly separating them from one another and putting them into labeled boxes..Everything is connected. When you pull out one single thing you want to address, a bunch of others jump at you unexpectedly and you have to deal with them the best you can..whether you want it or not..