People rarely come to see me the week after a funeral. They come eight months later, or two years later, at the point where everyone around them has quietly moved on and they have not. They usually open with an apology. They tell me they should be past this by now.
I have been doing this work for more than twenty years, in Montclair and across New Jersey, and I want to say plainly what I say in that first session: grief does not run on a schedule, and being still in it is not evidence that you are doing it wrong.
The short version
Grief has no correct duration. It moves in waves rather than stages, it can be triggered by losses that involve no death at all, and it can stall when there was never room to feel it in the first place. Grief counseling is not a way to speed that up or shut it off. It is a place to put down what you have been carrying, look at it honestly, and figure out how to keep living alongside it. I offer that in person in Montclair and by telehealth anywhere in New Jersey, starting with a free 15-minute call.
What actually counts as grief?
Most people arrive assuming grief counseling is only for bereavement, and it certainly is that. But a good share of the loss I sit with never involved a death.
- The end of a marriage or a long relationship
- A diagnosis, yours or someone's you love
- Estrangement from a family member who is still alive and still not speaking to you
- A job, a role, or an identity you had built a life around
- Infertility, or a pregnancy that did not continue
- The gap between the life you expected and the one you actually got
There is a term for the kind of loss nobody sends a casserole for: disenfranchised grief, meaning grief that a person's community does not fully recognize or make space to mourn. I mention it because naming it helps. People carrying that kind of loss often feel they have no standing to be as wrecked as they are, and that lack of standing is its own second injury.
If something has been quietly changing how you sleep, how you concentrate, or how you show up for the people around you, it is worth attention. It does not have to qualify as a tragedy first.
Why does grief get stuck?
Grief is not a straight line and it is not a project you complete. Most of it does soften on its own, in an uneven, two-steps-forward way. But sometimes it stops moving, and in my experience there are a handful of reasons why.
| What got in the way | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| There was never room to feel it | Life did not pause. There was an estate to settle, kids to get to school, a job that expected you back on Monday. Grief postponed is not grief avoided. It waits. |
| The loss was complicated | Relief and sadness at once. Anger sitting right next to love. Grieving a person who also hurt you. Feelings that do not fit the story other people expect you to tell, so you tell theirs instead and keep yours private. |
| You are holding it for everyone else | You are the strong one, the planner, the one who handled the arrangements. Everyone leaned on you and nobody asked. Your own grief is still in line behind theirs. |
| It reached your faith | For some people, loss raises real questions about God, meaning, and why suffering is distributed the way it is. Those questions can feel unwelcome in church and out of place in a therapist's office, so they get raised nowhere. |
None of these mean something is wrong with you. They mean grief has not had anywhere to go.
I will add one clinical note, carefully. There is a smaller group for whom grief stays acutely intense and disabling well past the first year, in a way that keeps them from functioning. That has a name and it has specific treatment. If that sounds like your situation, it is worth saying so directly to a licensed clinician, whether that is me or someone else, so you get the right kind of help rather than a general one.
What I actually do in the room
People sometimes expect me to walk them through five stages. I do not, and I would gently push back on anyone who does. The stages were an observation about dying patients, not a checklist for the bereaved, and treating them as a sequence tends to make people feel behind schedule on top of everything else.
What I do instead is closer to this.
I want to hear the whole story, including the parts you have edited out for other audiences. Most people have a public version of their loss by the time they reach me. The private version is the one we work with, and that is true of most of the individual counseling I do.
I want to make room for the contradictions. You can miss someone and be relieved they are gone. You can be furious at a person who died. Saying both out loud, to someone who does not flinch, does more than people expect.
I want to help you find a place for the loss rather than a way past it. The goal is not to sever the attachment. It is to carry it differently, so that remembering costs you less than it does now.
And I want to look at what grief is doing to the ordinary machinery of your life: sleep, appetite, concentration, whether you have stopped calling people back. Grief and depression can look similar from the outside and they are not the same thing. Sorting that out matters, because it changes what actually helps. If what you are carrying looks more like the second, depression counseling is a different conversation and I will say so.
If your faith is part of how you make sense of loss, it is welcome in the room. I offer Christian counseling for people who want their beliefs engaged rather than politely set aside, and the same care applies without it for people who do not.
How do you know it is time to call someone?
You do not need to be in crisis. Most people who reach out to me are not. Some signs it may be worth a conversation:
- It has been a while and the intensity still surprises you
- You are steering around places, dates, songs, or people to keep from feeling it
- You are functioning fine on the outside and feel flat, worn down, or far away underneath
- You want to talk about it and cannot think of a single person who would not be uncomfortable
- The loss is one you have never said out loud because you were not sure it counted
Starting, if you want to
My office is at 28 Valley Rd, Suite 1 in Montclair, with municipal parking close by, and it is a short drive from Bloomfield, West Orange, Cedar Grove, and Newark. I also see clients by telehealth anywhere in New Jersey, which for grief work matters more than people assume. There are weeks when getting in a car is the whole obstacle.
You do not need to have it organized before you call. You do not need a summary of what is wrong or a plan for what you want out of it. The first step is a free 15-minute phone conversation, no pressure and no obligation, where you can ask whatever you need to ask and decide whether talking to me feels useful.
Schedule a free consultation →
Daniel Erbach, LCSW, is a licensed psychotherapist in Montclair, New Jersey with more than twenty years of experience working with adults through loss, transition, and change. Any examples here are composites and describe no individual client. This article is general information, not clinical advice, and does not create a therapeutic relationship.
