Hypnosis to Live Through Bereavement, Separation, Loss
This page will not promise you that you can "do your grieving" in a few sessions, nor that it can erase a sorrow that matches what you have lost. Grief is not an illness to be cured. It is the path, particular to each person, by which love learns to live with absence.
What hypnosis can do is make that path easier: calm the waves that overwhelm you, release the images that loop, loosen the guilt, say what could never be said, so that the natural process can do its work. This page explains how, when, and also in which cases other kinds of help come first.
Grief is not an illness
Grief is a normal reaction to loss, and it runs on no calendar
Grief is a normal process in the face of a loss: a person, a pet, a break-up, a job, a social standing…
It touches the emotions, the body, sleep and concentration, and both its intensity and its length vary enormously from one person and one bond to the next (Canadian Mental Health Association, Quebec division).
There is no "normal" duration, no date by which you should have "moved on". And the well-meant instructions ("you have to turn the page", "life goes on") say more about the discomfort of the people around you than about what you should be feeling.
A word too about the famous "stages of grief" (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance): that model, widespread as it is, does not describe a compulsory route. Accepting a loss (of a person, of a particular relationship, of a working life or even of a whole part of your life, as with emigration) does not climb steps in order.
It swings, with waves that come and go, steps back that are nothing of the sort, guilty lulls and relapses on a cold Sunday in November or while looking at family photographs. If you are not "following the stages", you are doing nothing wrong: you are grieving like a human being.
The path of grief
The waves, and what sometimes makes the path impassable

The pain of grief works in waves: they break, they overwhelm, they draw back, set off by a song, a smell, a date, or by nothing at all. With time, for most people, the waves come further apart and lose their violence without the attachment lessening. That is the natural process of grief.
But certain obstacles can block it:
- images that crush everything else (the goodbye, the hospital, the news…) which loop and confiscate forty years of good memories,
- guilt: the "I should have been there", "if I had insisted on that appointment", "our last words were an argument"…
- the words never said: the love, the forgiveness, the goodbye that a sudden departure made impossible,
- the ban on feeling better: that silent loyalty which whispers that smiling again would betray the person who has gone, or those who stayed behind in the old country.
Video available in French
What Hypnosis offers in the face of a loss
What hypnosis does, concretely, and what it will never do
Let us say first what it will never do: make you forget, erase the attachment, or hurry a process that has its own pace.
What it does:
- Calm the flooding
When the waves are so violent that they stop you functioning (sleeping, eating, looking after the children…), the work in therapeutic hypnosis puts supports in place: an inner place of respite, anchors of calm, sleep that comes back (see Sleep).
Not to run from the pain, but to cross it without drowning. - Free the good memories from the images of the end.
This is one of the most valuable pieces of work in the field: when the last image has planted itself across all the others, gentle work at putting it at a distance takes away its violence and gives access back to the good. That work happens at your pace, in safety, never by "reliving" difficult moments. - Loosen the guilt.
The "I should haves" of grief resist logic. You can know perfectly well that you could not have foreseen it, and the guilt still holds.
In hypnosis, you can revisit the context with what you knew at the time, not what you know now. And sometimes ask for, and receive, forgiveness symbolically. - Say what was not said.
Symbolic dialogue under hypnosis (speaking to the person, telling them the love, sometimes the anger, the goodbye…) is one of the oldest and most soothing tools in supporting grief. It claims nothing more than what it is: words finally spoken, which release the person carrying them. - Lift the ban on feeling better.
Finding taste again, laughing again, loving again without betraying anyone, because feeling better is not forgetting, and faithfulness to those we have loved is not measured in suffering.
The losses we support people through
- The loss of someone close: a partner, a parent, a friend…
With its particular shapes: sudden loss with no preparation and no goodbye, or the grief of a family carer, worn out by years of caring and adrift when the role stops. - The loss of a child and perinatal grief
The most painful there is. Our support then happens in connection with specialised professionals and associations, never on its own. - Break-ups and divorces
A separation is a real bereavement: of the person, but also of the life imagined together, and it deserves better than "you will find someone else" (see Love Life and Relationships). - The loss of a pet
Too often minimised ("it was only a cat") when the bond was daily and the love real. Your sorrow is legitimate, full stop. - And the losses nobody sees:
The country left behind after a hurried emigration, the miscarriage nobody was told about, the retirement that turned out too quiet after an intense working life...
These bereavements without "official" recognition are often the loneliest, and having a space to live them changes a great deal. - Children and grief have their own kind of support: stories, drawings, rituals at their level. With one recommendation: do not keep them at a distance "to protect them", because children grieve with what is explained to them, and often imagine worse from what is kept from them (see Hypnosis for Children).
When other kinds of help come first, and the signals to take seriously
In the first weeks, it is the people around you, the rituals and close support that carry you. Our kind of support often finds its place later, once everyone has gone home and the telephone has stopped ringing.
Some situations, though, are first a matter for health professionals: when, after long months, the pain stays as crushing as on the first day and stops you functioning. What the medical references describe as grief that finds no way out (Mayo Clinic). A psychologist or a doctor is then the right door, and our support will come alongside.
What our clients say
« At first, I went to see Anne-Marie for difficulty getting over a breakup. She quickly identified the problem and set up sessions that helped me chase away the sadness. Session after session, I kept getting better. I learned to reprogram the way I think. She also helped improve the quality of my sleep during one of the sessions for that reason. Overall, everything was positive for me! »
Brigitte, client of Anne-Marie Quesnel
« A wonderful experience, I absolutely recommend Jean-Marie Balestrat. Wonderful and very caring. For me it was about grieving my father, and the experience helped me a lot. »
Linda, client of Jean-Marie Balestrat
« Nuria Pérez is a real gem! She's attentive, and her positive, caring approach was exactly what I was looking for! She greatly eased my anxiety and helped me along my grieving journey. Truly excellent! I can't wait to see her again, I feel like she could change my life! Nothing less! 😊 »
Jessica, client of Nuria Perez de Leon
« Sanae was a lifeline for me during a very difficult time in my life. I recommend her with complete confidence. »
Sofya, client of Sanae Belgarch
« I had conflicts at work. In hypnosis, what came up was my sadness and homesickness, after more than 10 years in Canada. I cut the painful cord with my home country during quite an incredible session. I came out of it at peace, and my relationships have improved a lot. »
Patrick
More on some sadness and grief-related subjects
Find Hypnosis support for Sadness and Grief near you
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Annie Mayrand
Gatineau - Cumberland (ON)
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Christian Rocher
Beloeil
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David Veilleux
Montréal - Anjou
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Florence Aton
Sutton
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Jessica Reid
Sherbrooke
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Julie Rocque
Montréal - Jean-Talon
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Nuria Pérez de León
Montréal - Rosemont - Saint-Lambert
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Réjeanne LeBlanc
La Prairie
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Frequently asked questions about Hypnosis to Live Through Bereavement, Separation, Loss
There is no norm, and be wary of anyone who gives you a calendar.
The length depends on the bond, the circumstances, your own history; public health bodies say it plainly: every bereavement has its own pace.
What matters is not the length but the trajectory: waves that, very gradually, come further apart and let you function again.
If after long months nothing shifts and daily life remains impossible, speak to a health professional.
No.
The famous stages (denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance) do not describe a compulsory route: real grief swings, comes back, skips, mixes. There is no right way to grieve; there is yours.
No.
Faithfulness is not measured in suffering. Finding taste again, laughing, loving again takes nothing away from what that person was to you, and it is often what they would have wanted. Lifting that silent ban is one of the most freeing pieces of work in this kind of support.
Yes, and it is one of the areas where hypnosis brings the most.
When the final scene crushes every other memory, gentle work at putting it at a distance takes away its violence, without ever making you relive it. And access to the good memories comes back: the whole person, not only their ending.
If those images come with a significant traumatic experience (an accident, finding someone), a specialised psychologist may come first; we will point you there.
Yes, and not through logic (you have already tried that).
The guilt of grief is worked on where it lives: revisiting the decisions with what you knew at the time, not what you know now.
Saying what needs saying, and sometimes asking symbolically for forgiveness.
The "I should haves" rarely loosen all at once, but it is possible.
Putting them down is possible, even now.
Symbolic dialogue under hypnosis lets you say to the person what could not be said: the love, the forgiveness asked for or given, the goodbye.
It claims nothing mystical: it is words finally out, and almost everyone who has been through it describes the same thing, a settling.
No, the loss of an animal is a real bereavement.
The bond was daily, the love unconditional, the presence constant. And its loss leaves a real gap that "it was only a dog" has never once consoled. Your sorrow matches the bond, not the species; it deserves the same respect and the same support.
Yes, a separation is a bereavement.
Of the person, of the life built together and of the one you imagined. It has its waves, its guilt, its looping images and its "whys".
And it responds to the same support, with one added part: rebuilding yourself and, one day, trusting again.
Right now if dark thoughts cross your mind.
That is a signal you do not keep to yourself: a doctor, someone close, or a helpline, immediately. And first of all if, after long months, the pain stays as crushing as on the first day and makes daily life impossible: bereavements that find no way out call for psychological support, which ours can then complement.
No, and nobody would really want that.
The work touches neither memory nor attachment: it takes the violence out of the images that block, loosens the guilt, puts down the words left stuck. And it lets the natural process of grief happen.
You do not forget the people you have loved; you learn to carry them differently.
Hypnotherapy is complementary support and does not replace medical or psychological care. If your grief stays crushing after long months, or if dark thoughts cross your mind, see a doctor or a psychologist, and do not wait at all in the second case.
Page written by Anne-Géraldine Lavielle
hypnotherapist and holistic coach
partner at Solutions Hypnose.
English version reviewed by David Veilleux