Bereavement counselling in London
Grief does not follow the sequence of stages that the popular frameworks describe. It is more irregular than that, present and then absent, acute and then apparently resolved, returning in unexpected forms long after the period others consider appropriate for mourning has passed.
And it is not only the death of a person. The loss of a relationship, a role, a version of the future, a part of oneself, all of these carry grief, and all of them bring people to therapy.
Bereavement counselling here works with grief in its full range: the acute phase immediately after a significant loss, the complicated grief that does not resolve over time, the grief never properly mourned because circumstances did not allow it, and the grief entangled with anger, guilt or ambivalence in ways that make it particularly difficult to process.
Who you would see
Bereavement work here is offered by a BACP registered psychodynamic psychotherapist, working under Dr Jacquet’s clinical supervision. Every therapist at the practice is in regular supervision with him, and the practice takes collective responsibility for the standard of the work.
You are told who you would be seeing, and on what basis, before you book anything.
The frame is psychodynamic. All of us carry wounds, from childhood, from family, from later losses, and we develop strategies to manage them. Those strategies work until they stop working, and the moment they stop is usually what brings someone here. That moment is treated as an opening rather than a failure.
Why grief and drinking so often arrive together
Addiction is the other principal specialism of the therapist who does this work, and the overlap is not a coincidence.
Alcohol is the most widely available anaesthetic for grief, and it is socially permitted in exactly the period when grief is most acute. Nobody questions the bereaved man who is drinking more. By the time anyone does, six or twelve months later, two problems exist where there was one, and each is holding the other in place.
The same is true of work, of sudden intense exercise, of a new relationship begun too quickly. Grief is unbearable and the mind is resourceful.
Treating the drinking without touching the loss tends to produce relapse, because the thing the drinking was for is still there. Treating the loss while the drinking continues tends to go nowhere, because the feeling never fully arrives in the room. Having one practitioner who works with both means neither gets handed on.
What makes grief complicated
Uncomplicated grief, if there is such a thing, moves through a natural process of mourning over time, eventually integrating the loss without eliminating it.
Complicated grief is grief that has become stuck. The person cannot move through the loss, cannot integrate it, and cannot find their way back to the capacity for life that preceded it.
That tends to happen in recognisable circumstances. When the loss was sudden or traumatic. When the relationship was ambivalent or unresolved, so that mourning means mourning something difficult rather than something good. When there was no adequate support during the mourning period, or no permission to grieve openly. And when the loss touched older unprocessed losses that were waiting beneath the surface, so that one death reopens three.
Therapy in these cases is not simply about processing the immediate loss. It is about understanding what the grief is carrying: which previous losses it has reactivated, what the relationship actually meant, and what part of the person died alongside the person or situation that was lost.
The losses nobody calls grief
A significant part of this work involves losses that are never given the name.
The end of a marriage. A diagnosis that removes a future. Infertility, or a miscarriage that others treated as a medical event. A career that ended, or a business that failed. Leaving a country and the person you were there. A parent who is alive but no longer recognises you. A child who has grown up and gone, which you are supposed to be glad about.
These attract no rituals, no bereavement leave and few condolences, and that absence of recognition is often exactly why they do not resolve. Part of what therapy offers is somewhere the loss is treated as a loss.
What the work is actually like
Weekly, fifty minutes, open-ended rather than a fixed number of sessions.
Early on, much of it is simply saying it to somebody whose life is not affected by it. People are careful with their families, protective of their friends, and aware that there is a period after which others would prefer them to be better. None of that applies here.
Later the work usually moves to what the relationship held, including the parts that were difficult, and what has to be rebuilt now. The aim is not to stop missing the person. It is to be able to carry the loss rather than be organised around it.
There is no expectation about what you should be feeling by now.
Where sessions happen
In person at Harley Street W1 and at 45 Fitzroy Street in Fitzrovia, and online by secure video. Evening appointments are available.
Also offered in Bermondsey SE16 and in Colchester.
Where the loss was traumatic, or where the death itself is intruding as images rather than memories, EMDR may be used within the wider work.
Starting
A first appointment is confidential and usually available within two days. Write to the practice and say briefly what has happened. The first reply will tell you whether this is the right place.
Dr Philippe Jacquet is a UKCP registered psychotherapist, a Jungian analyst and an HCPC registered art psychotherapist, with twenty-five years of clinical practice. His Professional Doctorate in Analytical Psychology at the University of Essex examined male eating disorders from the perspective of analytical psychology. Registration can be checked on either public register.
Common questions
How long should grief last before I seek help?
There is no correct duration, and the question is usually the wrong one. What matters more is whether the grief is moving. Grief that changes shape over months, even slowly, is doing what grief does. Grief that is exactly where it was a year ago, or that has been sealed off and never begun, is the kind that tends to need help. People also come early, in the first weeks, simply because there is nobody else they can say it to, and that is a good enough reason.
Who would I see for bereavement counselling?
Bereavement work here is offered by a BACP registered psychodynamic psychotherapist working under Dr Jacquet's clinical supervision, for whom bereavement is a principal specialism alongside addiction. Every therapist at the practice is in regular supervision with Dr Jacquet, and the practice takes collective responsibility for the standard of the work. You will be told who you would be seeing before you book.
Is it still bereavement if nobody died?
Yes, and a good deal of the work here is exactly that. The end of a marriage, a diagnosis, a career that stopped, a miscarriage, leaving a country, a child growing up and away, the version of the future you had assumed. These losses carry real grief and are frequently not treated as grief by the people around you, which is part of why they get stuck.
What if I feel relief, or anger, rather than sadness?
That is common and it is not a failure of feeling. Relief after a long illness, anger at someone for dying, or grief for a relationship that was difficult rather than loving, all of these are harder to mourn precisely because they are not the feelings grief is supposed to involve. Ambivalent loss is one of the most reliable reasons grief does not resolve on its own.
Where do sessions take place?
In person at Harley Street W1 and at 45 Fitzroy Street in Fitzrovia, and online by secure video anywhere. Sessions are fifty minutes, usually weekly. Evening appointments are available.