Grief and Loss Counseling
Grief that has stopped moving
Grief is not a problem to be solved and most people arriving here already know that. They are not looking to be talked out of it.
What brings people in is the sense that it has stopped moving. That the same day is repeating. That everybody else has quietly gone back to normal and there is now a social cost to still being in it.
Grief has an enormous normal range and very little of it looks like the version in films. The useful question is rarely whether yours is normal. It is whether it is moving.
The first conversation is free and it lasts 55 minutes.
Open seven days a week.
Does your insurance cover this? Probably, and here is the list
We are in network with Kaiser, PacificSource, Cigna, Aetna, and United Healthcare and Optum, and with Medicare, both Open Card and in-network Advantage plans.
Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield is expected from 1 October 2026 and Moda from 15 October 2026, both for associates as well as licensed clinicians. For the Oregon Health Plan we can bill Open Card, but not the coordinated care organizations, and most OHP members are enrolled with a CCO rather than Open Card.
If you carry one of the plans above, you pay a copay rather than our full rate. If you do not, sessions are $205 an hour with a licensed clinician and $180 with a supervised associate, and we can give you a superbill to claim back whatever your out-of-network benefit allows.
We will tell you what your plan covers before your first session, not after it.
The losses nobody sends cards for
Death is the one everybody recognizes. It is not the only one that does this to a person.
A marriage, or a relationship that was going to be one. Including the ones you ended, which get less sympathy and hurt the same.
Retirement, a layoff, a license, a practice sold, a role that was most of how you understood yourself.
After a diagnosis, an injury, a stroke, or just enough years. This one is rarely called grief and is almost always exactly that.
Infertility, a diagnosis with a timeline, a plan that quietly stopped being possible. Grieving something that never happened is real and it is harder to explain to people.
Pet loss gets minimized more than any other kind, usually by the person experiencing it, and it is a common reason people call.
Anticipatory grief, when somebody is still here and you are already losing them. Caring for a parent with dementia is the version we see most.
Estrangement, addiction, a relationship that ended without anybody dying.
What we actually do
We do not run you through stages. The stages were never a schedule and were never meant to be one.
- Narrative Therapy is one of our approaches and it does something specific with grief. Rather than working toward letting go, it works on what the relationship becomes now, which for most people is the thing they actually want and have not been given permission to want.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, our associates’ main approach, for carrying it rather than resolving it, and for getting the rest of your life moving again while you do.
- Complicated grief work, when it has been long enough that the grief has organized everything around itself and the ordinary process is stuck.
- EMDR, when the death itself was traumatic and the memory keeps arriving unbidden. That is a different problem from grief and it needs a different tool. We are trained in it.
- Family sessions, when a household is grieving at different speeds, which is most households.
The first hour goes into understanding what you actually lost, which is not always the obvious thing.
If what you want is a group
We do individual and family work rather than groups.
If a group is what you are after, Dougy Center in Portland and now Beaverton has been running peer grief support since 1982, at no charge, for children, teens, young adults and the parents and caregivers around them. They are one of the best in the country at it and they are ten minutes from here.
Some people do both. There is no conflict and we will happily work alongside a group.
Who you would see
Every clinician here works with grief.
Licensed clinicians and registered associates, depending on fit and availability.
Our associates are credentialed with Aetna and Cigna. PacificSource stops taking associates on 1 October 2026. If you carry a different plan, our licensed clinicians are your in-network option.
Questions people ask
How long does grief last?
There is no schedule and anybody offering you one is guessing. What we can tell you is that grief which is moving feels different from grief which is not, and the second one is what therapy is for.
Is it too late?
It has been years. No. A good proportion of the people we see come years afterwards, usually because something recent brought it back up.
Is it too soon?
It was last month. Also no. There is no waiting period and no threshold you have to clear first.
I am not sad, I am angry. Is that grief?
Yes, routinely. So is relief, so is numbness, and so is a strange guilty efficiency where you handle the paperwork perfectly and feel nothing.
Can I bring my family?
Yes. Households often grieve at completely different speeds and that difference is frequently the presenting problem.
How soon can I be seen?
Usually within days. We are open seven days a week, and inquiries are answered the same day.
Book a free 55 minute consultation
An hour, at no cost, with a clinician rather than an intake screener.
Book online · In person in Tigard, by video anywhere in Oregon