Loss is an inevitable and deeply human experience. Whether through the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, estrangement, or life transitions that bring unexpected goodbyes, grief can unsettle the foundations of one’s inner world. While mourning is a natural process, unresolved or complicated grief often becomes entangled with unconscious conflicts and earlier experiences of separation or abandonment.

Psychoanalysis provides a space to mourn consciously and to explore the hidden meanings that loss awakens. For many, present grief revives older wounds — childhood separations, unmet longings, or unresolved attachments — that continue to shape one’s capacity to love and to let go.

In analytic work, we do not rush mourning or treat it as an obstacle to “move past.” Instead, we make room for the depth and complexity of your feelings — sorrow, anger, guilt, even relief — and help you articulate what often feels unspeakable. This process gradually frees psychic energy once bound by unprocessed grief, allowing for a renewed capacity for connection and aliveness.

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How Grief & Separation May Manifest

• Persistent sadness or numbness long after a loss

• Difficulty accepting the finality of a death or breakup

• Unresolved longing for someone unavailable or gone

• Fear of future attachments due to fear of more loss

• Complicated guilt or self-blame surrounding the loss

• Feeling cut off from others or from life’s vitality

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Mourning within the Therapeutic Relationship

The analytic relationship itself becomes a vessel in which loss can be named, remembered, and worked through. Often, the patient’s experience of separation from the analyst — during breaks, misunderstandings, or endings — reactivates earlier separations. Within a secure analytic frame, these experiences can be understood and symbolized rather than enacted or suppressed.

Over time, this work helps transform grief from something that stifles life to something that can be carried with greater compassion and meaning.