How Online Grief Counseling Can Help You Cope With Loss

Grief does not follow a schedule, and it rarely announces itself at a convenient hour.

It arrives on a Tuesday afternoon in a grocery aisle. It shows up three months after the funeral, when everyone else has returned to their routines and the casseroles have stopped. It surfaces on a birthday that nobody else remembers.

Online grief counseling exists partly because grief works this way. Support that is easier to reach is support people actually use.

Grief counseling is a structured therapeutic space for working through loss with a licensed therapist or counselor. It is not advice about moving on, and it does not aim to shorten grief.

Most sessions focus on a few things. Making sense of what happened. Managing the practical disruption a death causes. Finding a way to carry the relationship forward rather than sealing it off. And addressing the parts of grief that have become stuck.

Loss also extends beyond death. People seek grief support after divorce, after a miscarriage, after a diagnosis that changes the future they expected, after estrangement, and after the slow loss that comes with a parent dementia. That last category has a name professionals use, ambiguous loss, and it describes grieving someone who is still present.

Almost everyone has heard that grief comes in five stages. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

That model came from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and it was drawn from observations of people facing their own terminal illness rather than from people who had been bereaved. Kubler-Ross herself pushed back on how it came to be used, noting there is no typical response to loss because there is no typical loss.

Psychiatrists today work with a broader set of ideas.

The dual process model

Developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, it describes grief as an oscillation. People move back and forth between confronting the loss and attending to the practical business of rebuilding a life. Neither state is avoidance. The movement between them is the work.

Continuing bonds

This perspective holds that a healthy outcome is not detachment from the person who died but a changed and enduring relationship with their memory.

None of this is academic. It changes what happens in the room. A therapist working from these models will not ask which stage you are in. They will ask what the last two weeks have actually looked like.

This distinction matters, because it changes what kind of help is appropriate.

The American Psychiatric Association describes the difference in practical terms. In grief, painful feelings tend to come in waves, often mixed with positive memories of the person. In depression, mood and thinking are more consistently negative. In grief, self-esteem is usually intact. In depression, feelings of worthlessness and self-criticism are common.

The two also coexist. Bereavement can trigger a depressive episode, and a psychiatrist job includes noticing when that has happened rather than assuming everything is grief.

Most grief, however painful, does not require formal treatment. Some does.

In 2022, prolonged grief disorder was added to the DSM-5-TR. It describes grief that remains intensely disruptive well past the point where it would usually begin to shift. The criteria include a loss that occurred at least twelve months ago for adults, or at least six months ago for children and adolescents, along with persistent symptoms nearly every day for at least the last month. Estimates suggest it affects somewhere between four and fifteen percent of bereaved adults.

Symptoms include identity disruption, disbelief, intense emotional pain, avoidance of reminders, emotional numbness, a sense that life has become meaningless, and difficulty re-engaging with the world.

The reason this diagnosis exists is that it responds to specific treatment. Complicated grief treatment, a structured sixteen-session approach developed by Katherine Shear, produced a response rate of around eighty-three percent in a multi-site trial.

A rough self-check, and not a substitute for assessment:

Grief has features that make remote care a good fit.

It is unpredictable. Sessions from home mean a hard week does not require getting dressed, driving, and composing yourself in a waiting room afterward.

It is exhausting. Bereavement disrupts sleep, appetite, and concentration. Removing travel from the equation lowers the cost of attending.

It is disruptive to logistics. Estates, paperwork, funeral arrangements, and caring for other family members consume the calendar. Flexible scheduling keeps counseling from becoming the thing that gets dropped.

And crying is easier in your own space than in an unfamiliar office.

At 24/7 DCT, grief therapy is delivered by licensed therapists who work with clients across Ohio, Illinois, and Alabama.

Nobody is asked to narrate the loss in detail on day one.

A first session usually covers who died and when, what your life looked like before, what has changed since, how you are sleeping and eating, who is supporting you, and what you want from counseling. The psychiatrist will also ask about your safety.

You are allowed to cry. You are allowed to stop. Sessions are typically weekly at first, and the number depends entirely on what you are working with.

Ohio requires health plans to cover telehealth on the same basis as in-person care, and cost sharing cannot be higher for a video visit.

One practical thing worth knowing. Insurance claims are processed against diagnostic codes, and uncomplicated bereavement is not always treated as a billable condition on its own. When grief is accompanied by depression, anxiety, or prolonged grief disorder, coverage is usually more straightforward. This is a question worth asking before the first appointment rather than after.

If the death occurred while your family member was in hospice care, bereavement support is generally available through that hospice for a period after the death, at no cost. Many families do not know this.

24/7 DCT accepts most major insurance plans, including Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Healthcare, and Cigna.

Professional support can be complemented by trusted educational material. The National Institute of Mental Health publishes information on grief, depression, and when to seek care, and Medicare and Medicaid resources explain what mental health coverage includes.

Readers looking for further reading on grief, adjustment, and emotional healing may also find value in our Grief Therapy resources.

Grief does not get resolved. It gets carried differently.

The purpose of counseling is not to speed that up. It is to make sure the weight is shared, that stuck points get addressed, and that a treatable depression or a prolonged grief reaction does not go unrecognized for years.

If you are grieving and want support that fits around everything else you are carrying, book a session or contact us to learn more about online grief counseling.

Dr. Amanda Slaten is a sound leader with 23 years of experience in Behavioral Health. She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology, a master’s degree in Social Work, and maintains two master’s level clinical license(s) of Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Licensed Clinical Addictions Counselor (LCAC). In addition, Dr. Slaten obtained a PhD in Business Psychology to affirm her commitment to leadership within the Behavioral Healthcare industry. She is a compassionate leader that has dedicated her professional career towards advancing service delivery for treatment of mental health and addiction.