The Grief Clinic
Specialist psychological therapy for grief, trauma and loss, visible and invisible. Online, from London, for clients worldwide.
Explore the clinicChartered Counselling Psychologist · Existential Therapist · Author
For those wounded and depleted by life: call yourself into presence.
Grief, trauma and loss, visible and invisible, can break the shape of who we were. I am Dr Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell, a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and existential therapist. I help people recover, heal and return to themselves: authentically, and anchored in meaning, purpose and connection.
Heard and read on
- BBC Radio 4
- BBC Radio 2
- CNN International
- The Guardian
- The Telegraph
- HuffPost
The work
We grieve more than people. We grieve the selves we lose along the way.
Not every loss involves a death, and most are never named. Life wounds us in ways both visible and invisible: bereavement, illness, divorce, redundancy, estrangement, trauma. What we grieve is rarely only the event. It is the person we were before it, the future we had imagined, and the ease with which we once lived inside our own life.
Many of us keep functioning through all of it. We perform, achieve and stay busy, while something quieter goes missing: our relationship with ourselves, and with the people and life around us. I think of it as a muted dissociation, and as a loss in its own right. The loss of me.
We are not broken. We are fragmented. When our world breaks, we scatter — into busy mode, into holding everything for everyone — until we are present for all of it except ourselves. Presence is how we return. I call this work Calling Ourselves Into Presence. And when we do return, we find that our capacity to heal was never missing. It was waiting.
My work brings the depth of existential therapy, trauma and grief psychology to that return. Suffering is not something to be pathologised. Grief is an expression of love, meaning and attachment, and what has wounded us can become the way back to a fuller life.
What I help with
- Trauma and traumatic loss
- Grief and bereavement
- Invisible loss: divorce, illness, infertility, estrangement, redundancy, loss of identity
- Mental health disruption: burnout, anxiety, low mood, feeling lost or “not myself” after life changes
- Relationships
- Health
- Identity
- Belonging
- Certainty
- Possibility
- The future we expected
- Ourselves
How I can help
Calling Ourselves Into Presence
Whether you are grieving, living with the aftermath of trauma, depleted, supporting someone else, or leading people through loss at work, there is a way in. About the approach
Speaking & consulting
Keynotes, workshops and psychological consulting on invisible loss, change and what people quietly carry into work.
Work with organisations
Books & writing
The Loss Prescription, therapeutic guides, and The Anchored Letter, a weekly essay on grief and the return to self.
Read the workStart here
Free and gentle ways in
Free guides
Practical support for every kind of loss
Short, psychologically grounded guides for first steps, invisible loss, joy in grief and divorce — plus free videos.
Grief Circles
You don’t have to hold it alone
A monthly gathering in West London. Not therapy, not fixing — an hour of presence and company with others who understand.
A one-minute practice
Call yourself into presence
Arrive. Feet on the floor, a hand on your chest, three slow breaths.
Feel. What am I feeling, and what do I need?
Choose one thing that is yours. Water, rest, a walk, a no, a candle.
Once a day. Notice what begins to return.
Founded by Dr Chloe · Loss changes us. Love does too.
A specialist practice for the losses that change us: bereavement, trauma and traumatic grief, illness, relationship breakdown and the quieter losses of identity, belonging and self.
Every client works directly with Dr Chloe. Therapy draws on existential psychology, trauma science, attachment and compassion-focused approaches, shaped around the person rather than a stage model of grief.
The book · HarperCollins, 2024
The Loss Prescription
This is not a book about the five stages of grief. It offers no checklist, and no promise that things will be fine if you follow the right steps.
Drawing on 25 years of clinical practice, existential insight and the neuroscience of grief, The Loss Prescription treats grief as an expression of love, meaning and attachment, and offers a practical roadmap for living with it. It is read by people navigating their own losses and by professionals in health, education and care.
Coming next: The Stranger Within, on self-estrangement and the way back to ourselves. About the new book
What clients say
Language for what people silently carry
In the aftermath of team trauma, Dr Chloe offered insight and steadiness when we needed it most. Our team is better for it.
Her webinar gave language to what so many of us had silently carried. It opened the door to a new way of caring for each other at work.
Human, trauma-informed and refreshingly honest. She doesn’t just talk about support; she models it.
Organisations Dr Chloe has worked with
- Goldman Sachs
- Allen & Overy
- Freshfields
- Cleary Gottlieb
- Weil Gotshal
- Sidley Austin
- BNP Paribas
- Nomura
- Accenture
- Aviva
- Allianz
- Ogilvy
- Tesco
- EBRD
- World Food Programme (WFP)
- Clyde & Co
- Department for Transport
- This Can Happen
- The Sandcastle Trust
The Anchored Letter · Every Wednesday
An essay a week on grief, loss and the return to self
Written from the clinic, for anyone living through a change that has no name yet.
Free on Substack
One essay. One practice. One reframe.
From a clinician who has spent 25 years sitting with the full weight of human loss.