Healing from Traumatic grief and loss, part 2: When we numb out w/ Rose Cadden
Healing from Traumatic Grief and Loss, Part 2: When Grief Gets Numbed Instead of Felt, with Rose Cadden
Not everyone who is grieving looks like they are grieving. Some people cry. Others go quiet. And some people keep functioning, keep showing up, keep getting through the day, while something underneath quietly gets harder and harder to carry. If you have found yourself drinking a little more since a loss, working longer hours than you need to, scrolling until 2 a.m. instead of sleeping, or just staying busy enough that you never have to sit still with what happened, this post is for you. That is not a character flaw. It is often what an overloaded nervous system does when grief has nowhere else to go.
This is Part 2 in our series on healing from traumatic grief at gokc, and it focuses on the work of Rose Cadden, LMSW, who sees clients out of our Brookside office and via telehealth across Missouri and Kansas. Rose is certified in both Traumatic Stress and Addiction Counseling, and her clinical focus sits at the intersection of complex PTSD, childhood trauma, and substance use, using a somatic, body-based approach. That combination matters for grief in a specific way: when a loss is traumatic, the pain it leaves behind does not always show up as sadness. Sometimes it shows up as the coping strategy someone reaches for instead.
When grief and coping become tangled together
Grief and substance use, or grief and compulsive busyness, or grief and any other numbing strategy, tend to get treated as separate problems. Someone might go to therapy to "deal with the drinking" without ever naming the loss sitting underneath it. Or they might grieve openly for a while and then quietly start relying on something to get through the harder nights, without connecting the two. Rose's work exists specifically in that overlap. As she puts it in her own writing, drinking to cope isn't a character flaw. It's often a trauma response, and the same is true of most of the ways people numb against grief that feels too big to sit inside of.
This matters because it changes what recovery actually requires. If grief is the root and a coping behavior is the branch, addressing only the branch rarely holds. Someone can white-knuckle their way through a period of sobriety or "getting it together," but if the original loss was never processed, the underlying pain is still there, and it tends to resurface, sometimes through the same coping strategy, sometimes through a new one. Rose's approach is to work with both at once: the coping pattern and the grief underneath it, without shaming either one.
Why Rose works with the body, not just the story
Traumatic grief lives in the body as much as it lives in the mind. People carrying it often describe feeling constantly on edge, exhausted in a way sleep does not fix, or strangely numb, as if they are watching their own life from a slight distance. These are not just emotional states. They are nervous system states, and talking about a loss analytically, on its own, does not always reach them.
Rose's training in somatic trauma therapy means the work includes paying attention to what is happening in the body, not only what is being said in the room. This might mean noticing where tension is held, learning to recognize the early signs of a nervous system moving into overwhelm, or building the capacity to stay present with hard feelings instead of automatically reaching for something to dull them. For people whose grief has been getting managed through substances, overworking, or constant distraction, this kind of body-based awareness is often the missing piece that talk therapy alone has not been able to reach.
Who this work is for
Rose's approach tends to resonate most with people who recognize some version of the following:
- You look fine from the outside. Capable, functional, holding it together, while privately running on fumes.
- You have tried therapy before and it felt like talking in circles without anything actually shifting.
- You carry a chronic sense of shame that follows you regardless of what you accomplish.
- You are maintaining sobriety, or trying to, but sense there is unresolved trauma or grief underneath it that has not been touched.
- You are early in recovery and want therapy that works alongside other supports, not instead of them.
- You are questioning your relationship with alcohol or another coping behavior and are not sure where to start.
None of this requires a rock-bottom moment or a formal diagnosis. Many of Rose's clients are people who are managing life reasonably well on the surface and are tired of the effort it takes to keep it that way.
What sessions with Rose look like
Rose describes her work as steady and grounded, without judgment and without pressure. Sessions are not built around forcing a breakthrough or demanding that you name every hard thing on day one. The pace is collaborative, and the goal early on is safety and trust, not speed.
From there, the work tends to include a few connected threads: a trauma-informed assessment of what has happened and how it is currently showing up in daily life, somatic awareness and nervous system regulation so the body has a way to settle instead of just white-knuckling through distress, emotional processing paced to what you can actually handle in a given session, and the gradual development of coping strategies that are sustainable rather than strategies that work for a while and then stop working. Rose also incorporates a relational and attachment-informed lens, since grief and trauma both tend to affect how safe or unsafe closeness with other people feels.
Importantly, Rose approaches addiction and other coping behaviors not as a problem to eliminate through willpower, but as a signal. A signal that the nervous system has been overloaded for longer than it could handle on its own. That framing tends to land differently for people who have spent years being told, implicitly or explicitly, that they just need to try harder or want it more.
Grief that gets missed because it does not look like grief
One of the patterns Rose sees often is grief that never got acknowledged as grief in the first place. This shows up in a few common forms. Sometimes it is a loss that happened years ago, during a period when someone did not have the resources, safety, or support to actually grieve it, so it got set aside and coped around instead. Sometimes it is grief tangled up with complicated feelings, like relief, anger, or guilt, that make it hard to grieve "cleanly," so the whole experience gets avoided rather than processed. And sometimes it is childhood loss or instability that a person has spent their adult life managing through achievement, control, or numbing, without ever naming it as something that needed to be grieved.
In all of these cases, the coping strategy, whatever it is, is not really the core problem. It is what filled the space where grieving should have happened. Rose's work is aimed at that space directly.
What to expect from your first sessions
If you are considering therapy with Rose, know that the first sessions are not about diving into your hardest memories before you are ready, and they are not about being pushed to give up a coping behavior on someone else's timeline. Expect an unhurried, honest conversation about what has been happening, what you have tried before, and what you are hoping is possible. Rose's approach is collaborative from the start, and part of the early work is simply building enough safety and trust that the deeper processing has somewhere solid to happen.
You do not need to have quit drinking, stopped a behavior, or figured anything out before you reach out. A free consultation is a low-pressure first step, and you are welcome to ask questions before committing to anything.
FAQ: Grief, trauma, and addiction-informed therapy with Rose
Do I need to already be sober to start therapy with Rose?
No. Rose works with people at many different points in their relationship with substances or other coping behaviors, including people who are questioning that relationship for the first time and people already in recovery who sense something deeper still needs attention.
What if my grief does not feel connected to a coping behavior?
That's fine. Not every client Rose sees is navigating substance use. Her broader specialty is complex PTSD and trauma, and traumatic grief on its own fits well within that work.
Is this therapy only for addiction?
No. Rose's clinical lens covers the intersection of complex PTSD, childhood trauma, and substance use, but grief and trauma processing are central to the work whether or not addiction is part of the picture.
Where does Rose see clients?
Rose sees clients in person out of our Brookside office, and via telehealth throughout Missouri and Kansas.
What if Rose is not the right fit for me?
That's a reasonable thing to wonder before starting. You can explore our full clinical team on the team page, and our Therapist Match Maker can help connect you with the right clinician at gokc if Rose is not it.
You do not have to keep managing it alone
If some part of this sounds like your own life, that recognition is worth sitting with rather than pushing past. Grief that gets coped around instead of felt does not go away on its own. It tends to keep asking for attention, one way or another, until it gets some.
Rose Cadden, LMSW offers trauma-informed, somatic grief and addiction-recovery therapy in Kansas City and via telehealth across Missouri and Kansas. No judgment, no pressure, just steady, grounded support.
gokc Healing Center provides trauma-informed grief and addiction-recovery counseling to clients throughout the Kansas City metro, including Brookside, Waldo, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, Overland Park, and the Northland, as well as via telehealth across Missouri and Kansas. Read more about our approach on our homepage, meet our full team on the team page, revisit Part 1 of this series featuring Kate Schroeder, or continue to Part 3 featuring Lisa Hoang and Robin Castillo.
