Episode 22: When Therapists Grieve: Love, Loss and the Dharma Practice
EPISODE 22
When Therapists Grieve: Love, Loss and the Dharma Practice
Therapists are often the people others turn to when life falls apart. We sit with grief, trauma, illness, relationship loss, and uncertainty, helping our clients find ways to move through experiences that cannot simply be fixed.
But what happens when we are grieving too?
Personal loss does not disappear because we are therapists. We can still become foggy, overwhelmed, emotionally exhausted, or unsure of how to keep showing up when our own hearts are hurting.
In Episode 22 of The Practitioner’s Heart, I reflect on the experience of grieving while continuing to work as a therapist, and what Buddhist practice has taught me about meeting loss without needing to rush through it.
We Are Not Outside the Human Condition
There can be an unspoken expectation that therapists should know how to cope. We understand grief. We teach emotional regulation. We encourage our clients to seek support.
Yet knowing about grief does not make us immune to it.
When we experience significant loss, it can affect our concentration, energy, emotional regulation, and capacity to be present. Recognising this isn't a professional failure. It is part of being human.
The important question is not whether we grieve, but whether we are aware of how our grief is affecting us and our work.
Sometimes that means adjusting our workload. Sometimes it means seeking supervision or therapy. Sometimes it means allowing trusted people to support us rather than trying to carry everything privately.
Grief Is Love Meeting Impermanence
Buddhist teachings offer a different way of understanding loss.
Impermanence reminds us that everything we love is subject to change. This truth can be painful, but it can also deepen our appreciation for the preciousness of our relationships.
Grief can be understood as love meeting impermanence.
Rather than treating grief as something we need to eliminate, we can learn to make space for it. Love doesn't necessarily end when someone dies. Our relationships with those we have lost can continue to shape how we live, remember, and care for others.
Finding Support in Practice and Community
During difficult seasons, spiritual practice can offer a rhythm when everything else feels uncertain.
In this episode, I reflect on chanting the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Sutra, ritual, breath, and community as practices that helped me slowly make space for grief. These practices did not make the loss disappear. Instead, they gave the grief somewhere to be held.
This is also why community matters so much.
We don't always need someone to give us an answer. Sometimes we need people who can simply sit beside us, practise with us, and remind us that we don't have to walk through suffering alone.
Letting Grief Change Us
Grief can be devastating, but it can also deepen our capacity for tenderness.
When we allow ourselves to experience our own vulnerability, we may become more able to recognise it in others. Our suffering doesn't automatically make us wiser, but when we meet it with awareness and compassion, it can become part of our path.
For therapists, this may be one of the most important reminders: we don't need to stand outside suffering in order to support others through it.
We are human too.
And perhaps our practice is not about becoming untouched by loss, but learning how to remain open-hearted while moving through it.
A Gentle Invitation
If you are a therapist carrying grief, loss, or simply the weight of being human while caring for others, I hope this episode reminds you that you don't have to do it alone.
The Bodhi Inner Path Circle is an ongoing contemplative community for therapists and healthcare professionals who want to practise meditation, explore Buddha-Dharma through reflective practice, and connect with dharma friends.
It is currently open for enrolment, and you're warmly invited to join us.
Listen to Episode 22: When Therapists Grieve: Love, Loss and the Dharma Practice on The Practitioner’s Heart wherever you listen to podcasts.
