Traumatic Grief Therapy in Newport Beach, CA
When you're grieving who you lost and living with how you lost them.
Compassionate bereavement care for adults navigating grief and trauma after the death of a baby, child, family member, or someone deeply important to you.
What Is Traumatic Grief?
Grief and trauma can exist at the same time.
All grief can be profound. It can change your relationships, your routines, your sense of yourself, and the way you imagined your life would look.
Traumatic grief describes something more specific: when you're grieving someone you love while also coping with trauma connected to their death or the circumstances surrounding it.
You may miss them terribly while also finding yourself pulled back into what happened. There may be memories or images you can't get away from, fear, anger, guilt, questions about what could have happened differently, or a body that still reacts as though something terrible is happening.
The grief and the trauma don't always arrive separately.
Therapy doesn't require you to separate them before we begin.
Therapy After the Death of a Baby or Child
There is no way to make this loss small.
The death of a baby or child can affect nearly every part of life. Your relationships. Your body. Your sense of safety. Your identity. The future you thought you were going to have.
And when the death itself was traumatic, there can be another experience happening alongside the grief.
There is room here to talk about your baby or child as someone you love, not simply as something that happened to you.
You can say their name. You can tell me about them. We can talk about what you miss, what you're angry about, what you remember, and what you wish other people understood.
And when you're ready, we can also care for the traumatic parts of what happened.
Compassionate Bereavement Care for Traumatic Loss
You don't need to grieve according to someone else's timeline.
My work with traumatic grief is informed by specialized training in Compassionate Bereavement Care®, an approach developed specifically for providers supporting people after traumatic loss.
This approach recognizes that grief isn't simply a collection of symptoms to eliminate. A significant death can affect you emotionally, physically, relationally, and in the way you understand yourself and the world around you.
Our work can make room for all of that.
I'm not here to measure how well you're grieving or decide when you should be “moving on.” I'm here to get to know you, understand the person you lost and what happened, and help with the parts that are making life especially difficult now.
EMDR Therapy for Traumatic Grief
We can care for the trauma without taking away from the grief.
After a traumatic death, the circumstances surrounding the loss can sometimes become difficult to separate from the person who died.
Your mind may keep returning to a hospital room, a phone call, an accident, something you witnessed, decisions that had to be made, or the moment you realized what was happening.
As a Certified EMDR Therapist, I can incorporate EMDR when traumatic memories or experiences surrounding a death continue to feel intensely present.
EMDR isn't intended to erase grief, change how much you love someone, or make their absence matter less. It can help us work with the trauma that has become intertwined with the loss.
We'll talk about what we're doing before we do it. You'll have a say in the pace. And nothing needs to happen before you're ready.
Therapy for Pregnancy, Infant & Child Loss
Some losses hold grief for the person you loved and the future you expected.
Pregnancy loss, stillbirth, infant loss, and the death of a child can carry layers that aren't always understood by the people around you.
There may be grief for your baby or child alongside medical trauma, a difficult birth, frightening decisions, physical recovery, changes in your relationship, or questions that don't have satisfying answers.
My work in this area is informed by training in both traumatic bereavement and perinatal mental health.
You don't need to minimize what happened because someone else doesn't know what to say about it. And you don't need to make your grief easier for anyone else to understand here.
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Pregnancy and infant loss can carry grief for your baby alongside the physical and emotional experience of what happened.
I work with women following miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal loss, and other pregnancy-related losses. There may also be medical trauma, a frightening birth or hospitalization, difficult decisions, or the painful experience of leaving a hospital without the baby you expected to bring home.
Whatever your experience looked like, you don't have to minimize the relationship you had with your baby or explain why this loss matters so much.
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The death of a baby or child can change the way you understand your family, yourself, and the future you thought you were going to have.
I support parents following sudden and unexpected deaths as well as losses involving illness, medical complexity, accidents, or other traumatic circumstances.
There is room here for your child as a whole person- not only for the circumstances of their death. We can talk about who they were, what you love about them, what you miss, and the memories you want to keep close while also caring for the parts of their death that remain traumatic.
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When someone dies without warning, there may be very little time for your mind and body to understand what is happening.
Alongside missing the person you lost, you may find yourself returning to the moment you found out, replaying the last conversation you had, wondering what you missed, or struggling with how quickly life changed.
Therapy can make room for the shock and trauma of what happened alongside the grief for the person who is no longer here.
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Knowing that someone is ill doesn't necessarily mean you were prepared for their death- and an expected death can still involve traumatic experiences.
Hospitalizations, medical emergencies, witnessing someone suffer, caregiving, difficult treatment decisions, or being present during a death can stay with you long afterward.
We can talk about those experiences without allowing the final days, weeks, or months of someone's life to become the only way you remember them.
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A violent or traumatic death can leave grief tangled with shock, fear, anger, unanswered questions, guilt, or distressing details about what happened.
After suicide or homicide in particular, there can also be complicated reactions from other people, investigations or legal processes, stigma, and questions that may never receive complete answers.
You don't have to make any of those feelings more acceptable before bringing them into therapy. We can work with what happened while continuing to make room for the person you knew and loved.
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Sometimes it isn't easy to put a loss into a particular category. What stands out is simply that certain parts of what happened won't leave you alone.
A memory, image, phone call, hospital room, conversation, or moment surrounding the death may continue to feel intensely present. Your body may react to reminders before you've even had time to think about why.
Types of Traumatic Loss I Support
There are many ways grief and trauma can become intertwined.
I work with adults following traumatic and deeply distressing losses, including:
Frequently Asked Questions About Traumatic Grief Therapy
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All grief can be deeply painful and life-changing. Traumatic grief refers specifically to situations where trauma connected to the death or its circumstances is present alongside bereavement.
Someone experiencing traumatic grief may be coping with both the absence of the person they love and traumatic memories, fear, physical reactions, or other responses related to how the loss occurred.
The distinction isn't about one kind of grief being more serious or deserving of care than another. It helps us understand what may need attention in therapy.
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No. Traumatic grief and prolonged grief disorder are not interchangeable terms.
Traumatic grief describes the intersection of grief and trauma following a loss. Prolonged grief disorder is a specific mental health diagnosis with defined clinical criteria.
Experiencing intense or traumatic grief does not automatically mean you have a mental health disorder.
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EMDR may be helpful when distressing memories or traumatic experiences surrounding a death continue to feel intensely present.
The purpose isn't to make you stop grieving or disconnect you from the person who died. EMDR can help address aspects of trauma that have become intertwined with the loss.
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Yes. I work with women following pregnancy and infant loss, and my approach is informed by specialized training in maternal mental health, traumatic bereavement, trauma, and EMDR.
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Yes. Supporting parents after the death of a baby or child is an important part of my work with traumatic grief and bereavement.
Therapy can include both your relationship with your child and the circumstances surrounding their death.
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Yes. Trauma can also be connected to experiences surrounding illness, medical treatment, caregiving, hospitalization, witnessing suffering, or the circumstances leading up to a death.
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You don't need to figure that out before reaching out.
Grief and trauma can overlap, and part of my role is helping us understand what you're experiencing and what kind of support may be useful.
Traumatic Grief Support Starts With a Conversation
You can tell me about them.
You don't have to reduce someone you love to “the loss.”
Tell me who they were. Tell me what happened. Tell me what you miss. Tell me what you're having the hardest time carrying.
We'll start there.