In this YouTube monologue, therapist and faith‑based counselor Shakeeta Torres discusses grief as a natural, seasonal part of life, drawing on biblical passages (Ecclesiastes, Matthew 5:4, Psalm 147:3) to frame mourning and eventual comfort. She shares multiple personal and client anecdotes, including a woman who endured six close deaths in five years, illustrating how societal pressure to “shout it away” can invalidate deep pain. Torres introduces her "Feel‑Deal‑Heal" framework, urging listeners to fully experience emotions rather than suppress them, and warns that unprocessed grief accumulates like hidden debris under a rug, eventually causing further harm. She outlines therapeutic tools she employs: cognitive‑behavioral therapy to challenge negative thoughts, and interpersonal psychotherapy to encourage connection and communication of needs. Emphasizing that grief manifests uniquely due to individual biological and psychological makeup, she warns against prolonged, stagnant mourning (e.g., grieving a decade as if it were yesterday) and highlights the ripple effect on children. Torres concludes by promising supplemental resources (links to grief types, scriptures, treatment guides) and invites viewers to comment, like, and subscribe for future content on related topics.
Chapters
that chapter to me, I love it because it really does line up with our life. And it says that there's a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to heal and a time to kill, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh. And it goes on and on about mourning and laughing and being joyful and sowing seeds and having a harvest. It's the season for everything. Grief is a natural part of life, and for someone to tell someone else that they should get over it or they should, um, shout it away or they should just, you know, rejoice— okay, yeah, rejoice come after mourning. You need to mourn. You need to mourn your loved ones and your, your loved ones and your friends and your family who's passed away and process those feelings. I had a lady who literally had death back to back to back. Her son died one year, her husband died the next year, her son-in-law died the next year. She lost her grand— um, her grandchild, her best friend died, her sister died. She had 6 deaths in her family that were close to her within like a 4 to 5 year period, and she was told to go shout about it. Really? Go shout about it? And people wanted her to be so strong but she was so burdened and she was so weak and she was hurt and she was so broken. And, you know, I thank God that I was able to counsel with her and help her to get through, um, a very tough time in her life. I'm sure she's still healing at this time because that's a lot, you guys. That's a lot. You know, my family, we're very familiar with grief as well. My, um, I have my uncles passed away recently last year. Uncle died a few years ago. My aunt died a few years ago. And so my aunts and uncles are like, you know, are dying and it hurts, you know. I I still grieve them, you know, um, at times where it would just hit me. And, you know, as a therapist myself, I allow myself to feel those feelings. I allow myself to cry. I give myself permission to be hurt in that moment. I, I reflect, you know, I talk about it with my siblings. We laugh about our fun, you know, our times together. Um, that's normal. Even to this day, my brother and I talk about things we used to do as a kid. With my mom growing up, you know, some of the good memories and even some of the bad memories. That's okay too. A lot of times whenever people die, we want to make them look like they were a perfect person, and that's not realistic. That's not giving you a, um, a fair chance to really grieve even the things that you lost or didn't have from that particular person, whether it be your mom, your dad, or anyone else. So, um, grief— I love grief. I know it hurts, but I love working with clients who have experienced grief, um, because it gives me an opportunity to help them, and it gives me great joy to see them, um, progress and to see them process those emotions and get some things off their chest. Okay, um, also I wanted to address, um, the stages of grief. Okay, one thing I came up with, it was so amazing. I had one of my friends to reach out to me, um, who was going through a divorce or, you know, breakup, and she was like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I said, first of all, you need to feel, deal, and heal. Um, I encourage people to not try to escape their emotions. Don't run from it. Don't, because if you do that now, um, it will come back up later. It will come back later. It will come back up later. I watched, um, the Warnes, uh, the Erica Campbell— I'm sorry— show with her family, Erica and Warren Campbell, um, on WE tv. And I saw the one particular clip where Erica's friend was saying that she had lost a baby, she had miscarried, and she became very emotional. She said, I never grieved the loss of my baby. That's not good, that's not good, because we pressing it, we thinking that we're keeping ourselves safe, and we think that, you know, we are, um, not, you know, we can control our emotions, but it comes back up, it comes back full circle. And when you don't deal with stuff like that, it piles up. It gets higher and higher and higher. Like, here's the rug. The rug is hiding this. This is the rug here, and there's so much stuff underneath that rug. And then what happens? You trip over it. You fall over it. Um, you hurt— you hurt other people. Okay. Um, so what's— I want to talk about— so how do I treat grief? Okay, there are so many different ways to treat grief. Um, Every therapist is different. First of all, you know, I'm a faith-based counselor, so the first thing I'm going to go to is the word of God, you know. And I think about, uh, the scripture, um, says Matthew chapter 5:4, it says, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. And there's Psalms 147:3, he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. That scripture that I love the most because they helped me, um, once I gave my life to Christ and, you know, I still was grieving my mother, I thought about the scripture a lot, you know. And God told me, I'm going to heal you. I will. He's comforting me, you guys. He really has. Um, and then it's also, you know, being a therapist and, you know, doing, um, actual therapy model. Um, we do CBT, which is cognitive behavior therapy. We talk about, you know, the negative thoughts you may have surrounded around that person's death. Um, are they realistic thoughts, or are they your emotions? What is it based off of? Then also interpersonal psychotherapy that is used for like depression. And what happens is whenever you have grief, a lot of times people tend to push people away when really you should let people who love you in. Okay, so interpersonal psychotherapy, it focuses on that. It focuses on you, you know, communicating what your needs are and processing and being able to articulate to your yourself and to your loved ones what your needs are and how you're feeling. Okay, that's how people become depressed whenever they start pushing people away and pushing them away. Um, there's so many stories I've heard about grief, you guys, and everyone grieves differently. That's the most important thing. We all grieve differently. We all do. All of us do. No one has the same chemical makeup in their bodies. Um, I have seen clients before who've been depressed, um, and grieving their loved one for about 10 years like it happened yesterday. That's not healthy. That's not what, you know, what God had designed for us, to grieve someone for, you know, a decade like it happened on yesterday. I had a client that was like that, and I thank God that, you know, she's made so much progress. I'm so proud of her, and it gave me great joy to help her to process. She never processed his grief with anybody, anybody at all whatsoever. At all. And it was beautiful to see her transformation and see her unfold. I haven't seen her in a while, but you know, before I, um, stopped seeing her, she had, you know, got a job. Um, her, her son were doing much better. She was able to, you know, help him grieve. He hadn't really grieved because she hadn't grieved. So our children emulate what they see. What our children see us do, they're gonna emulate that, okay? Keep that in mind. And she was so depressed, she couldn't even see what her son's needs were. And he was about, I think, 8 9. So hey, I love it. I'm here for you. I'm here for it. I'm moving forward. I don't know what I'm gonna do in that area, but I'll do a support group for it, or, you know, we'll see. We'll have a lot of things that I want to do, but I can only do one thing at a time. Um, but like I said earlier, I will post some, um, links under my, um YouTube video about different types of grief, scriptures on grief, how to treat grief, and some other links to get you, you know, what you need. So if you have any questions or have any comments, just comment below. Like my video, subscribe to my channel, please share it. Like I said, I will be sharing some great tips moving forward about different areas. If there's an area you want me to talk about on this channel, you can also comment on that below. I have a lot more things that are coming up that I want to, um, address. But grief, yep, that's the area that I'm passionate about. So I hope you guys are having a great day. Thank you so much for hanging in there and watching. Please excuse my language and my little, uh, my typos and my language. I would say I get excited and start talking so fast that I forget that, you know, you guys are listening to me. So thanks again. Hope you have a great day. Bye!
