A time to grieve Sylvia Thompson

My Working Day: Patricia Hannan, bereavement counsellor with the HSE North Western Region, believes people need to work through…

My Working Day:Patricia Hannan, bereavement counsellor with the HSE North Western Region, believes people need to work through their grief at their own pace

I was appointed in 2003 as a full-time bereavement counsellor servicing Leitrim, Sligo and west Cavan. I am based in the primary care centre in Sligo town. I also travel to other health centres and do home visits, particularly for people who can't access the towns, such as older people and parents with young children.

My work is mainly focused on one-to-one clinical work but I also provide training on bereavement issues to community groups. I see three to four clients per day and each session lasts for one to one-and-a-half hours. People are referred to me through all the frontline services and I also accept self-referrals.

I am a trained psychotherapist and member of the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. My core orientation is Rogerian which is a patient-centred approach. A deep sense of empathy is essential to my work and to do this job, I realise that I need to have worked through any losses (deaths, divorces, separations) in my own life. As I am the only bereavement counsellor in this area, my caseload is more or less limited to complicated cases of grieving such as those following a suicide or a road traffic accident. I also see people who are stuck in the grieving process.

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Bereavement is part of the human experience and people grieve in their own way, and at their own pace. There are no rules. I use Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grief as a map to inform myself about where that person might be. The first stage of grief is denial and numbness which often happens in the first few months of grief. People often say they don't know how they got through these first few months. The next stages are anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It's a very jagged journey and people go in and out of these stages several times.

Grieving is as unique to each individual as the relationship to the deceased was unique. Today's society is fast and furious. There is little time for grieving and people often say to me that they don't feel heard and that their pain is not acknowledged.

Personally, I think we have never been taught about grief and how to be comfortable with the feelings that go with grief. We don't recognise that the feelings of pain, sadness and loneliness are normal and need to be felt, expressed and worked through.

A lot of my clients feel a great relief when I normalise these feelings for them and assure them that they are not going mad. I would like to dispel the myth that people feel they should be over their grief. You never get over your grief, you just work through it. Bereavement counselling is a way of helping people deal with the different experiences of grief and loss through gentle exploration in a warm, caring environment. It is very confidential work. I really enjoy my work and believe that it is important.