Grief & Loss Counselling in Melbourne

Grief is the natural response to loss — and loss takes many forms beyond the death of someone close to us. The end of a relationship, a miscarriage, the loss of a job or a sense of purpose, moving away from a place you loved, the loss of a version of your life you’d imagined — all of these are real losses, and all can call for genuine grieving. Grief doesn’t follow a tidy sequence of stages. It’s non-linear, often surprising, and sometimes the things that hit hardest are unexpected. In Australia, bereavement following suicide alone affects an estimated 65,000 people each year, and grief-related presentations are among the most common reasons people seek counselling.

When should you seek grief counselling?

There is no right or wrong time. Some people seek help in the immediate aftermath of a loss; others come years or decades later, when grief resurfaces or when they realise it was never fully processed. At my practice in Carlton, Melbourne, I work with people in all stages of grief — including:

• Anticipatory grief — grieving before a loss has occurred, such as when someone you love is dying
• Complicated grief — where the mourning process has become stuck and the loss blocks daily functioning
• Disenfranchised grief — losses that aren’t socially recognised, such as miscarriage, estrangement, or the loss of a pet
• Ambiguous loss — when someone is missing or when grief lacks clarity or closure
• Cumulative grief — multiple losses occurring close together, each compounding the weight of the others
• Delayed grief — grief that was suppressed at the time and emerges later, sometimes triggered by an unrelated event

What happens in grief counselling sessions?

Therapy doesn’t ask you to ‘get over it’. It gives you a space to feel what you feel, at the pace you need, without anyone watching the clock. The goal is to find a way to carry your loss as a part of your life rather than having it block your life entirely.

I draw on Lacanian psychoanalytic understandings of mourning — including Freud’s foundational distinction between mourning and melancholia. In healthy mourning, we gradually withdraw emotional energy from what has been lost and reinvest it in life. In melancholia (or what we might now call complicated grief), that process becomes stuck — often because the relationship with the lost person was more complex, ambivalent, or unresolved than a simple narrative of love and loss would suggest.

Understanding this complexity is not disrespectful to the person who died or the thing that was lost. It is, in fact, a more honest and complete way of honouring the full reality of the relationship. Grief work often involves making space for contradictory feelings: love and anger, relief and guilt, sadness and freedom. Holding these together, rather than choosing between them, is part of what therapy can offer.

I see clients online via secure video call across Melbourne and Australia, and in person at 96 Elgin Street, Carlton in inner Melbourne. Sessions are self-funded at $120. No referral is needed. Message me on WhatsApp or book online.