Grief Therapy
For adults and teens living with loss, change, and a world that doesn’t feel quite the same anymore.
In Montana and Washington
DYLAN SPRADLIN, MA, MSW, LCSW, LICSW (they/them)
Grief changes more than you expect it to.
Sometimes you know exactly what you are grieving.
Someone died.
A relationship ended.
A diagnosis changed the future you thought you had.
You lost a pregnancy, a home, a career, a community, a friendship, a role, or a person who is still alive but no longer available to you in the way they once were.
And sometimes the loss is harder to name.
You just know that something is gone.
The life before.
The person you were before.
The future you thought you were moving toward.
And the world keeps going as though you should be able to keep going with it.
There is no particularly tidy way to do this.
Grief can look like crying every day.
It can also look like not crying at all.
It can be anger. Numbness. Relief. Guilt. Brain fog. Restlessness. Exhaustion. Forgetfulness. Irritability. A sudden inability to tolerate things you used to manage just fine.
You may be functioning beautifully at work and falling apart when you get home.
You may be surrounded by people who care about you and still feel profoundly alone.
You may even wonder whether you are grieving “correctly.”
There is no correct version.
Not every loss gets recognized as grief.
Some losses come with rituals, casseroles, sympathy cards, and people checking in.
Others barely get named.
You may be grieving:
The death of someone you love
Anticipated or impending loss
Divorce or the end of a relationship
Estrangement
A relationship with someone who is still living
Pregnancy or reproductive loss
Changes in health or ability
A career or identity you can no longer inhabit
A move or loss of home and community
A friendship
The family you needed but did not have
A future you expected to live
The years you spent trying to be someone you were not
A loss does not have to be publicly understood to matter.
Loss rarely arrives in an empty room.
A death now may touch an earlier death.
A relationship ending may stir older experiences of abandonment.
Becoming a caregiver may awaken grief about what you did or did not receive when you needed care yourself.
And sometimes what looks like “too much” grief makes considerably more sense when we understand everything it is carrying with it.
My work is depth-oriented and relational.
We can stay with what is happening now while also getting curious about what else has been touched.
Not because everything needs to be traced back to childhood.
But because human beings have histories.
Our nervous systems remember.
Sometimes a new grief wakes up an old one.
Grief does not need to be fixed.
I am not trying to get you through the stages faster, in reality, those five stages aren't very helpful.
I am not going to help you “move on.”
And I am not particularly interested in measuring whether you should be doing better by now.
Therapy can instead become a place where the loss is allowed to be real.
Where you can say the thing everyone else is tired of hearing.
Where you do not have to protect anyone from how angry, devastated, confused, relieved, or changed you actually are.
Over time, the work becomes less about getting rid of grief and more about making enough room around it that you can live again.
Not the same life.
Your life now.
Grief therapy may help when:
The loss still feels unreal
You feel stuck between functioning and falling apart
Everyone else seems to have moved on
Your grief feels bigger or more complicated than you expected
You feel angry, numb, guilty, relieved, or all of the above
A recent loss has stirred much older pain
You have lost your sense of who you are
You are grieving something other people do not fully understand
You are tired of trying to be okay for everyone else
You are beginning to wonder who you are now
You do not have to drive home after a hard session.
You can sit in your own chair. Wrap yourself in a blanket. Have the dog nearby. Make tea. Go quiet for a minute without worrying that someone is waiting for the office.
Sometimes being in your own space actually makes it easier to let down.
Online grief therapy is available to teens and adults throughout Washington and Montana.
And yes, we can do deep grief work online.
You just need somewhere to bring it.
We can start there.
You do not need to be ready to “work on” your grief.
Ready to begin?
Start with a free virtual consultation.
We’ll talk about what has happened, what feels hardest right now, and whether working together feels like a good fit.
You do not need to know what you need before we talk.
