Grief Therapist in Dubai | Dr Millia Begum
Dr Millia Begum is a British-trained Consultant Psychiatrist and trauma specialist with extensive experience working with traumatic loss, prolonged grief and grief-related distress.
Her therapeutic approach may include EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT), depending on the individual’s needs and clinical presentation. These approaches may be particularly relevant when grief is accompanied by trauma symptoms, emotional overwhelm or difficulty staying connected with internal experience.
Written and medically reviewed by: Dr Millia Begum, Consultant Psychiatrist (MRCPsych, DHA Licensed)
Prolonged Grief and Traumatic Loss: Key Insights
- Complicated grief is more than sadness. When grief gets complicated, it an affect self confidence, relationships, daily functioning, and a person’s ability to engage fully with life.
- Traumatic loss can trigger PTSD symptoms. Intrusive memories, nightmares, avoidance, hypervigilance, and emotional numbness may occur alongside grief.
- Attachment patterns influence grief. Unresolved conflict, abandonment pain, and aloneness distress may make adaptation to loss more difficult.
- Grief can reactivate earlier wounds. Previous losses, attachment injuries, childhood trauma, and feelings of loneliness may resurface following bereavement.
- Healing is possible. Trauma that overwhelm the griever can add more pain and distress. If trauma is alleviated, the person may feel less overwhelmed to grieve normally. Work of healing the trauma helps the normal flow of grief.
Book an Appointment
Book a consultation with Dr Millia Begum at First Psychiatry Clinic, Dubai.
Book at First Psychiatry ClinicWhat Is Prolonged Grief Disorder?
Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD), sometimes referred to as complicated grief, can develop if the bereaved person feels emotionally stuck, unable to accept the loss, disconnected from life, or unable to move forward. The longing, yearning, and emotional pain remain so overwhelming that relationships, work, wellbeing, and everyday functioning are affected. It is more common following sudden, traumatic, unexpected, or highly significant losses.
Key insight: Prolonged Grief Disorder is disruptive to life and functioning. A proper mental health assessment can help differentiate a normal grief from prolonged grief disorder.
Recovering from Prolonged Grief Disorder and Traumatic Grief
Yes. It is possible to heal from Prolonged Grief Disorder and Traumatic Grief. When grief becomes overwhelming or the loss itself was traumatic, the natural grieving process can become interrupted or blocked.
Trauma-informed therapies such as EMDR, Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and other body-based approaches may help process the trauma surrounding the loss, reduce emotional overwhelm, and create the sense of safety needed for healthy mourning.
Healing does not mean forgetting the person who died. It means finding a different way of carrying the relationship, processing the pain of the loss, and gradually reconnecting with life, meaning, hope, and inner safety.
Key insight: No therapies can make one forget the memories of their loved ones. Therapies can offer safe space to explore those difficult feelings and process traumatic aspects to resolution. This will help the natural flow of grief in a more healthier way.
What are the symptoms of Prolonged Grief Disorder?
People experiencing Prolonged Grief Disorder often describe feeling as though life stopped at the moment of the loss while everyone else continued moving forward.
Although they know intellectually that the person has died, emotionally it can feel impossible to fully accept the reality of the loss or adapt to a life without them.
- Persistent yearning or longing for the person who died
- Difficulty accepting the loss
- Feeling emotionally numb, disconnected, or detached
- Intense sadness, guilt, regret, anger, or loneliness
- Avoiding reminders of the loss
- Feeling unable to imagine a meaningful future
- Loss of purpose, identity, or direction
- Difficulty reconnecting with relationships and everyday life
Key insight: In those with Prolonged Grief Disorder, the most struggle described is being stuck with the memories of loss, without access to the heart-felt positive memories of their loved ones.
| Normal Grief | Prolonged Grief Disorder | PTSD Following Loss |
|---|---|---|
| Natural response to losing someone important | The attachment pain of the loss remains overwhelming and difficult to integrate | Shock and trauma disrupt the normal grieving process |
| Grief comes in waves | Persistent preoccupation with the person who died and difficulty shifting attention away from the loss | Avoidance of reminders alongside intrusive memories of the circumstances of the death |
| Sadness and longing gradually soften over time | Persistent yearning and difficulty accepting the loss | Flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance, and distress linked to the traumatic event |
| Gradual adaptation to life after the loss | Feeling emotionally stuck and unable to move forward | Nervous system remains organised around threat, danger, and survival |
| Memories bring sadness and comfort (bittersweet) | Memories trigger intense longing, pain, and difficulty accepting reality | Memories trigger fear, distress, shock, or traumatic re-experiencing. The distress is also from not being able to access heart-felt memories of connection. |
Key insight: Prolonged Grief Disorder is centered around persistent longing, attachment pain, and difficulty adapting to life after the loss. PTSD following a traumatic loss is centered on unresolved shock, threat, fear, and traumatic memories surrounding how the loss occurred.
Many people experience both Prolonged Grief Disorder and PTSD at the same time. In these situations, therapy may need to address both the attachment pain of the loss and the unresolved shock or trauma associated with how the loss occurred.
Common Triggers in Complicated Grief
Complicated grief can be reactivated by reminders of the person who died, the relationship, or the circumstances surrounding the loss.
- Anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays
- Family gatherings and important life milestones
- Songs, smells, places, photographs, or personal belongings
- Seeing others experience what has been lost
- Dreams, memories, or reminders of the person
- Unfinished conversations, regrets, or unresolved conflict
- Major life transitions that highlight the person’s absence
Clinical Insight: Triggers are a normal part of grieving. However, if reminders of the loss repeatedly lead to overwhelming distress, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, emotional numbness, or significant difficulties in daily functioning, it may be helpful to seek a professional assessment.
Concerned that grief may have become stuck or overwhelming?
Book a Confidential Consultation with Dr. MilliaCoping Patterns in Complicated Grief
To survive the pain of loss, people often develop coping strategies that help them manage overwhelming emotions, loneliness, shock, or the reality of what has happened.
- Avoiding reminders of the loss
- Staying constantly busy
- Emotional numbing or shutdown
- Withdrawing or isolating from others
- Using food, alcohol, work, exercise, or screens to cope
- Feeling unable to speak about the person who died
- Avoiding people, places, or activities linked to the loss
These coping patterns are often attempts to protect against overwhelming emotional pain. The unbearable pain may be hard to turn to without numbing or soothing it.
Need Support? It is not always easy to speak openly about grief with family or friends. A compassionate and confidential therapeutic space can help you understand your responses to loss and process grief safely.
Can Unresolved Grief Be Helped?
Yes. Working through grief does not mean forgetting the person who died or “moving on” as though the loss did not matter. It means gradually finding a way to carry the relationship differently, reduce emotional pain, process traumatic aspects of the loss, and reconnect with life, meaning, and inner safety.
How Different Therapies Help With Traumatic Grief
Traumatic grief can involve shock, attachment pain, intrusive memories, guilt, emotional overwhelm, and difficulty adapting to life after a loss. Different therapies work at different levels of the grief experience.
Therapy | How It Understands Grief | Focus of Healing |
|---|---|---|
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy for grief | Traumatic grief occurs when distressing memories of the loss remain emotionally and physically overwhelming. The nervous system becomes stuck in shock, guilt, intrusive memories, or traumatic aspects of the loss. | When grief is complicated by intrusive memories, shock or traumatic circumstances surrounding the death, EMDR therapy for traumatic grief may help process these experiences. |
IFS (Internal Family Systems) Therapy | Helps to soften up the protective parts of the system holding the pain of loss and grief. Parts that organize themselves to cope and prevent emotional flooding and overwhelm. | Helps build compassionate relationships with the protective parts, reducing the system’s internal conflicts that may have come from differing needs and fears and supporting emotional healing. |
DBR (Deep Brain Reorienting) Therapy for PTSD | Traumatic grief often begins with shock. The nervous system may become frozen at the moment the loss was discovered or realized, preventing the grief from fully unfolding. | Works with the brain’s earliest orienting and shock responses, helping process attachment pain and grief that feels deeply held, stuck, or difficult to access. |
Key Takeaway: EMDR primarily helps process traumatic memories, IFS helps heal the emotional and relational impact of the loss, and DBR helps resolve the shock and attachment pain that may keep grief feeling stuck. These approaches can also be integrated depending on the individual’s needs.
When Should Someone Seek Help for Grief?
Grief therapy may be helpful when the emotional pain of a loss remains persistently overwhelming or begins to affect daily functioning, relationships, sleep, concentration, or emotional well-being.
People may benefit from support if they experience ongoing guilt, intrusive memories, rumination, emotional numbness, anxiety, panic attacks, isolation, or difficulty coping following a loss.
Trauma-informed grief therapy provides a safe and compassionate space to process grief, traumatic distress, and unresolved emotional pain while supporting healing and emotional integration over time.
Frequently Asked Questions About Grief Therapy in Dubai
When should I consider grief therapy?
Grief therapy may be helpful when grief feels overwhelming, remains very intense over time, or begins to interfere significantly with work, relationships, sleep or daily functioning.
It may also be useful when the loss was sudden, traumatic or particularly difficult to make sense of.
What is the difference between normal grief and prolonged grief?
Grief varies greatly between people and does not follow a fixed timeline.
Prolonged Grief Disorder refers to persistent and disabling grief symptoms that continue well beyond the expected period of acute grief and significantly affect daily functioning.
What is traumatic grief?
Traumatic grief can occur when bereavement is complicated by distressing or traumatic aspects of the loss.
A person may be struggling not only with missing the person who died, but also with shock, guilt, fear or disturbing memories connected to the circumstances of the death.
Can grief therapy help after a sudden or traumatic loss?
Yes. Therapy can help a person work with both the grief itself and the traumatic aspects of the loss.
The approach depends on what is most distressing and whether trauma-focused work is clinically appropriate.
Do I need to be “over” the loss for therapy to work?
No.
Grief therapy is not about forgetting the person or removing the meaning of the relationship. It is about helping the person live with the loss while reducing the distress or difficulties that have become overwhelming.
How do I choose a grief therapist in Dubai?
It can be helpful to look at the clinician’s professional qualifications, experience with grief and traumatic loss, and whether they can assess for related difficulties such as depression, PTSD or prolonged grief.
The therapeutic approach should fit the individual rather than assuming all grief requires the same treatment.
Can grief and trauma happen together?
Yes. Some losses involve both grief and trauma.
This may be particularly relevant when the death was sudden, unexpected or associated with distressing circumstances.
You can read more about trauma therapy in Dubai.
Can EMDR help with grief?
EMDR may sometimes be useful when grief is complicated by distressing memories or traumatic aspects of the loss.
It is not intended to remove normal grief, but may help when particular memories continue to feel overwhelming.
You can read more about EMDR therapy in Dubai.
Can grief cause depression?
Grief and depression can overlap, but they are not the same.
A clinical assessment can help clarify whether someone is experiencing grief, depression, prolonged grief, trauma-related symptoms or a combination of these.
When should I seek professional help for grief?
It may be helpful to seek support if grief remains very intense, feels stuck, is causing significant distress, or is making it difficult to function in daily life.
It can also be important when grief is associated with severe anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms or persistent difficulty adjusting to the loss.