Grief has been my ever-present companion since I lost my grandma in January 2023. At first, it was an overwhelming presence, an unrelenting storm I couldn’t escape. To survive, I tried to ignore it, pushing it aside as though it could be quieted by will alone. But grief doesn’t work that way. It eventually demanded my attention, breaking me down to my emotional core. Now, it feels chaotic—a companion that is sometimes settled and quiet, yet other times rises up with intensity, bringing me to my knees and leaving me bewildered. What does it want from me? What am I supposed to do with it? These questions linger, unanswered, as grief continues to shape my days.
As a counsellor, grief feels particularly troublesome. It’s not just me and my client in the room anymore. It’s me, my grief, and my client. Sometimes, grief offers its gifts, lighting up to bring compassion and understanding to those who are grieving too. Other times, it becomes chaotic, knocking me off my core. It demands attention at inconvenient moments, but it cannot take center stage; it’s not its turn. In those moments, I do my best to ground myself, to quiet the agitation, hoping it isn’t visible so I can return to being present for my client. And then, when the session ends, it’s just me and my grief again—along with the other friends it has invited in: anxiety, frustration, despair, anger, confusion, exhaustion. They swirl around in a storm of chaos, and I freeze, unsure what they want or what to do with them. This has been my journey ever since.
I share this because being a counsellor who is grieving is beyond difficult. A friend in another client-focused profession once said, “In our work, we can’t always show how we’re feeling.” And this is very true. There is little discussion about how to navigate working while grieving in my professional circles, and I felt called to write about it. Grief touches everything, and for Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) who are also counsellors, it can soften the defenses we’ve carefully cultivated to thrive in our roles. As HSPs, we bring profound empathy and intuition to our work—beautiful strengths that can also make us more susceptible to the impacts of loss. Below, I share how grief has impacted me as a counsellor, exploring some of the ways it softens our defenses and how we can navigate this tender reality with self-compassion.
Weakened Empathic Boundaries
HSP counsellors naturally absorb the emotional energy of others. Our ability to maintain empathic boundaries allows us to connect deeply while protecting ourselves from being overwhelmed. However, grief can erode this skill, leaving us more exposed to the emotions of our clients. The usual capacity to “be present without taking on” becomes harder to access, and this can manifest in different ways. For me, it created two distinct experiences:
In some sessions, the emotions my clients brought in felt like too much, as though their pain mirrored my own grief too closely. I found myself wanting to distance not only from their struggles but also from them as people. This mirrored my avoidance of my own grief—a protective instinct to numb and shield myself from emotional overwhelm. But the cost of this avoidance was steep: I noticed that in trying to distance myself from my grief, I began to build walls. Those walls didn’t just keep my pain at bay; they also made it harder for me to access the deep empathy that I value in my work. I wasn’t showing up as my most empathetic self, and that awareness only deepened my sense of disconnection.
On other days, the lack of boundaries swung in the opposite direction. I absorbed my clients’ emotions so intensely that I left sessions feeling completely depleted, unable to differentiate between their pain and my own. This is a precarious place for any counsellor, but for an HSP, it can feel particularly overwhelming—like carrying the weight of two worlds at once.
This erosion of boundaries also made me more vulnerable to vicarious trauma. Stories of loss, pain, and trauma from clients began to resonate more deeply, making it harder to detach from their experiences. I carried their pain with me long after sessions ended, compounding my own grief and increasing the risk of emotional exhaustion. This was not a reflection of my clients but rather the rawness of my emotional state. Grief had lowered the defenses that usually allow me to support my clients while maintaining my own well-being.
This constant tug-of-war between over-connection and disconnection became a delicate balancing act, shaped by the ebb and flow of my grief. It reminded me that grief does not only live in quiet moments of reflection; it shows up in the work, in the spaces between client and counsellor, challenging the boundaries we hold so carefully. I share this to say: If you have felt this push and pull in your work while grieving, you are not alone. Grief changes how we connect—to ourselves, to others, and to the work we love so deeply.
Reduced Capacity to Hold Space
Holding emotional space for clients is a cornerstone of counselling. It requires an open heart and mind, a willingness to sit with their pain without being overwhelmed by it. But when grief enters the picture, this capacity can feel diminished. I noticed that my ability to see several clients in a day became increasingly difficult. After just one session—especially with clients navigating significant emotional turbulence—I often felt emotionally done, as though my reserves were completely depleted.
As an HSP, part of our strength as counsellors lies in our ability to feel into our clients’ energy, to attune to their emotional states in a way that fosters deep connection and understanding. But grief blurs the lines between their energy and ours. There were moments when I couldn’t tell if the heaviness I was feeling was mine or theirs. This blending of emotions created a sense of inner conflict, a confusion that left me feeling ungrounded and overwhelmed.
In the past, I could easily separate my emotions from my clients’, maintaining a clear boundary that allowed me to hold space effectively. This skill had always been second nature to me, but grief altered that rhythm completely. The emotions seemed to merge, and I struggled to find where my grief ended and their pain began. It was as if the container I had always relied on to hold their emotions had cracked, and everything was spilling over.
The difficulty in maintaining these boundaries also led to moments where professional detachment faltered. I found myself over-identifying with clients who were navigating grief or loss, their stories bringing up unresolved feelings of my own. This over-identification made it harder to maintain objectivity and sometimes blurred the therapeutic relationship. Grief had heightened my sensitivity to such an extent that my usual ability to balance empathy with professional detachment felt out of reach.
This experience of blurred emotional boundaries is both disorienting and exhausting. It’s a reminder that grief doesn’t just sit quietly in the background; it shows up in the work, reshaping how we connect with our clients and ourselves. For those of us who are highly sensitive, this can feel like an especially heavy burden, but it is also a testament to the depth of our care and humanity. If you’ve felt this too, know that it’s okay to acknowledge the struggle. Grief changes the way we hold space, but it doesn’t diminish the value of the space we hold.
Impaired Ability to Compartmentalize
As counsellors, compartmentalization becomes a vital skill, allowing us to leave our personal struggles at the door so we can focus fully on our clients. But grief often dismantles this ability, blurring the boundaries between personal and professional worlds. For me, this came into sharp focus during a session with a client navigating a loss. I hadn’t been actively seeing anyone experiencing grief for some time, and when this client arrived—unbeknownst to me beforehand—the presence of their grief was like a wave crashing into the room. It wasn’t their words or their pain alone that impacted me; it was the undeniable energy of grief itself.
In that moment, I froze. It was as though my skills as a counsellor had vanished. I couldn’t think, couldn’t act, and felt completely unprepared to hold space for their pain. Grief—even someone else’s—had entered the room, and I didn’t know how to respond. Thankfully, I was able to ground myself and return to being present, but that moment stayed with me. After the session, I reflected deeply. Was I truly ready to hold space for someone else’s grief when my own was so easily activated?
This experience reinforced the importance of supervision and personal therapy. Supervision offers a space to explore these moments without judgment, to process the impact grief has on your work and seek guidance on navigating its challenges. Personal therapy, too, becomes a sanctuary for your own emotions, a place to tend to your grief so it doesn’t spill over into the therapeutic space with clients. For HSP counsellors, this dual support—professional and personal—is not just helpful; it’s essential. If you’ve ever felt this freeze, this moment where your grief and your client’s pain collide, know that you’re not alone. These moments are part of the journey, and they remind us of the profound humanity we bring to our work.
Lowered Resilience and Depleted Emotional Reserves
Grief occupies so much emotional bandwidth that it can leave you feeling more easily triggered by your clients’ stories. For example, a client discussing loss or family conflict might hit closer to home than expected, stirring up feelings of emotional rawness. In my experience, this heightened sensitivity wasn’t limited to significant issues. Compassion fatigue set in at an all-time high, and I found myself reacting internally to even the smallest complaints from clients. A client expressed frustration over what I felt was a minor inconvenience, and I was instantly filled with rage. On the inside, I wanted to scream, “There are people going through so much more! Like me!” Of course, I never expressed these feelings, but they were there, undeniable and unsettling.
Initially, it was small things I couldn’t tolerate. Over time, the lack of emotional bandwidth expanded, and I felt myself not caring about much at all. This indifference—something that felt entirely out of character—brought new waves of guilt and shame. As counsellors, we are taught that we should always care, no matter what. But this expectation is impossible and unrealistic, especially when grieving.
This lack of resilience didn’t just affect my clients; it seeped into my relationships with colleagues. These were people I loved and respected, but even so, I found it harder to attune to what they were saying or to offer them the support I once did so naturally. This disconnection was the final straw for me. It was then I realized I could no longer carry the emotional weight of my grief alongside the demands of my job, and I made the difficult decision to take a leave of absence.
For anyone navigating grief while trying to hold space for others, know that these feelings are not a reflection of your worth or ability as a counsellor. They are a testament to the immense emotional load you are carrying. It is okay to step back, to acknowledge the limits of your emotional reserves, and to prioritize your own healing.
Grief changes the way we hold space
but it doesn’t diminish the value of the space we hold
Weakened Reflective Practice
HSPs are deeply familiar with reflective practices. It’s part of our depth of processing—the natural ability to analyze, connect, and integrate experiences, often spending hours reflecting on ourselves and others. As a counsellor, reflective practice is essential for maintaining objectivity, growth, and insight in our work. But grief can cloud this process, turning a strength into something inaccessible.
When my grief was at its rawest, I wanted nothing to do with reflection. Instead, I turned to distraction, numbing, and avoidance. Reflection felt like a door I couldn’t open, because on the other side was a flood of pain I wasn’t ready to face. The funny thing about grief is that when we cut off one part of ourselves—like the ability to reflect in our personal lives—it often extends to other areas. For me, this meant I lost my ability to reflect effectively in my practice as well.
In session, I’ve always relied on my ability to hold clients’ stories in my head, piecing them together like a puzzle to uncover patterns, insights, and connections. But during this time, my mind felt foggy, and the clarity I once had was gone. I struggled to see connections, to process the deeper layers of what my clients were sharing. It felt like I was only skimming the surface, and that realization was both frustrating and disheartening.
Reflective practice requires emotional energy and mental clarity, and grief took both of these from me. It left me questioning my responses in session, second-guessing whether I was truly present or capable of providing the guidance my clients needed. It felt like grief had disrupted the foundation of how I worked, and in doing so, it made me doubt myself in ways I never had before.
If you’ve experienced this loss of reflective capacity, know that it’s not a failure on your part. It’s a natural response to the weight of grief, a signal of the emotional load you’re carrying. As HSPs and counsellors, our depth of processing is one of our greatest strengths, but it’s also one that requires space, time, and care to nurture when we’re hurting.
Reduced Problem-Solving and Creativity
The cognitive fog that accompanies grief can affect your ability to think on your feet during sessions. As a Registered Clinical Counsellor and Registered Art Therapist, I’ve always worked intuitively. When something arises in a session, I can usually sense the exact intervention needed, trusting the flow of my intuition to guide me. But grief knocked me out of this flow.
In moments of heightened grief, I found myself freezing in sessions. My mind, usually agile and ready to adapt to a client’s needs, felt slow and heavy. The creative interventions I once generated with ease seemed out of reach. Grief made everything feel harder, dulling the sharpness of my instincts and clouding my ability to connect with my intuition. It was as though the part of me that could sense what was needed had gone silent, leaving me feeling lost in moments when I would normally feel deeply connected and present.
Creativity is such a vital part of the therapeutic process, especially in art therapy, where interventions often arise spontaneously from what a client brings into the session. Losing that connection to creativity felt like losing a part of myself. I couldn’t reach the interventions or ideas that were usually right at my fingertips. This loss was frustrating, but more than that, it felt like grief was pulling me further away from the heart of my work.
If you’ve experienced this, know that you are not alone. Grief has a way of disrupting even the parts of ourselves we value most. It’s not a reflection of your ability or worth as a counsellor. It’s a testament to the weight you’re carrying and a reminder that even the most intuitive and creative among us need space to heal and reconnect with ourselves.
Emotional Dysregulation
For me, emotional dysregulation has been the most lasting and pervasive effect of grief. My nervous system hasn’t found its baseline since my grandma passed. There are moments when it settles, or at least it seems like it’s not actively lashing out, but then there are other moments when it becomes highly activated. As an HSP, my nervous system is deeply connected to how I experience the world. I’m always absorbing information, always attuned to the energy around me. But grief pushed me to a point of sensory overload, especially when I was already at capacity.
Finding a baseline has been one of the most challenging aspects of my grief journey. Everyone asks what I need, and the truth is, I’m not sure. I know that walking, yoga, and massages are lovely, but they don’t feel lasting. In my blog post The Journey Up: How Grief and Growth Became My Mountain, I wrote about the art of noticing. Noticing has become a cornerstone for me. It’s through noticing that I’m slowly becoming aware of what I need—and it’s still a work in progress.
Dysregulation is all-consuming, arriving seemingly out of nowhere and demanding my attention. During sessions, I would sometimes experience a zooming effect, as if the client’s energy was expanding, filling the room, and making it feel small and suffocating. Their words suddenly became too loud, too overwhelming, and I felt an urgent need to escape—but couldn’t. Then it would escalate further: my thoughts would start racing, convincing me something was wrong, which activated my nervous system’s fight, flight, or freeze response, taking over completely. Chaotic sensations would flood my body—my head would swirl, my limbs buzz, my hearing muffled as though I were underwater, and my body would alternately feel hot or cold. All of this would happen within seconds, with no warning, and once it started, it was almost impossible to stop.
These episodes didn’t happen with every client, and I couldn’t identify any clear catalyst or pattern. But when they did occur, I learned to act at the first sign of the zooming feeling by grounding myself: pressing my feet firmly into the floor, sipping water, using my grounding ring, or discreetly releasing the peppermint scent from my incense necklace. Despite these tools, becoming dysregulated in session was utterly excruciating, leaving me feeling as though I was being torn apart internally. Outwardly, I appeared fine—part of me was still listening and responding—but inside, a storm was raging, completely hidden from the client. Each workday, I carried a quiet anxiety, fearing the sensations would return without warning.
This dysregulation didn’t stay confined to sessions; it started showing up in other areas of my life, and that concerned me deeply. For years, I had been able to regulate my emotions effectively. This new, unpredictable dysregulation felt like a step backward. It was troubling, but recently with the help of my own grief counsellor, I’ve come to understand it as a part of myself longing for a calm center—a calm center that requires time and care to nurture. I’ve realized that this isn’t something I can rush. Building that calm center is a daily practice, a habit I’m cultivating so that, over time, I can tap into it more easily when I need it.
If you’ve experienced this level of emotional dysregulation, know that you’re not alone. It’s not a failure or a sign that you’ve lost control; it’s a natural response to the immense emotional and sensory load that grief places on us. Each step you take toward noticing, grounding, and nurturing your calm center is a step toward healing, even if it feels small.
The Quiet Pain of Unacknowledged Grief
One of the most disheartening aspects of grief is the way it becomes invisible over time. When my grandma first passed, friends and colleagues asked how I was doing, offered their presence, and created space for my emotions. But as weeks turned to months, and now nearly two years, those questions and acknowledgments have stopped. It’s as though the world has moved on, and with it, the expectation that I should have moved on too.
But grief doesn’t work that way. It never leaves; it changes, evolves, and remains a part of who we are. While the rawness may soften, the impact of loss lingers, shaping how we experience the world and ourselves. The societal message is often one of dismissal, quietly saying, “It’s been long enough. It’s time to move on.” For those of us who have loved and lost, we know this isn’t true. We don’t move on from grief; we move forward with it.
When people stop asking how you’re doing, it adds another layer to the grief—a quiet ache that’s hard to explain. Just because my grief isn’t visible doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It’s still present, still impacting me, and the lack of acknowledgment can feel isolating. For anyone carrying this invisible weight, know that your grief is valid, even if the world around you no longer sees it.
Conclusion: Navigating Grief with Compassion and Care
As HSP counsellors, we are uniquely attuned to the emotional world—both our own and others’. While this sensitivity is a strength, it also means that grief touches us more deeply, softening our defenses in ways that profoundly impact our work. Acknowledging these effects with honesty and self-compassion is not just necessary; it is a vital part of navigating grief while continuing to show up meaningfully for ourselves and our clients.
This has been my path with grief as an HSP counsellor. There are no easy answers, no universal remedies, because grief is deeply personal. As we know as counsellors, what works for one may not work for another. But what I can offer is validation, kindness, compassion, and love if you, too, are walking this path. Take it one step at a time. Surround yourself with people who are kind and supportive of you. Engage in practices that help your heart and nervous system settle, whether that’s walking, journaling, or simply sitting in quiet reflection. And remember that this is hard—so hard—but you are not alone.
As a counsellor, I value transparency and work relationally, so I shared with all my clients that I took time off because my grandma had passed. I understand that every counsellor has a different comfort level with self-disclosure, but I believe there is value in showing up as authentically as we are able. It reminds clients that we, too, are human—navigating the complexities of life, including grief, beyond the safety of the therapeutic space. This authenticity allows clients to see that no one is immune to the human experience or its consequences, encouraging them to embrace their own vulnerabilities with greater compassion. This doesn’t mean we share everything, but instead find a balance that feels genuine and aligns with our professional integrity. Balance is key.
I also urge others to take a significant amount of time off after a loss if they can. I was fortunate to be in a job that was very supportive, and I am grateful to have had the space and means to care for myself. However, I recognize that not everyone has the financial flexibility or workplace support to take extended time away. If this is your reality, prioritizing small, meaningful moments of self-care during your workday can still make a difference. This might look like taking intentional breaks, finding quiet moments to ground yourself, or seeking out supportive connections where you can process your grief. If you’re navigating this, know it’s okay to prioritize your needs in ways that feel right for you.
Grief is not a weakness; it is a reflection of your capacity to love and connect—the very qualities that make you a remarkable counsellor. It’s okay to ask for help, to take time to heal, and to lean into the community around you. As you move forward, know that each moment of self-compassion is a step toward carrying your grief with tenderness, honoring the depth of your love and the path it has carved within you.
Wishing you moments of compassion, connection, and calm.