Healing from traumatic grief and loss: Kate ottley
Healing from Traumatic Grief and Loss, Part 1: Finding Steady Ground with Kate Ottley
Grief does not follow a schedule. It does not care that you have a meeting on Tuesday, or that your kids need dinner, or that everyone around you seems to have moved on. When loss comes suddenly, violently, or in a way that leaves more questions than answers, it stops being just grief. It becomes something the body holds onto in a different way. That is traumatic grief, and if you are reading this in Brookside, Waldo, Prairie Village, or anywhere else in the Kansas City metro and wondering why you cannot seem to find your footing months after a loss, you are not broken. You are carrying something heavier than ordinary grief, and it deserves a different kind of support.
At gokc, we work with people moving through exactly this kind of loss. This is the first post in a three-part series on healing from traumatic grief, and it focuses on the work of Kate Ottley, PLPC, who sees clients out of our Brookside office. Kate's specialties are anxiety, self-esteem, identity, and trauma, and if that list looks unrelated to grief at first glance, it is actually the exact combination that traumatic grief calls for. Grief that stems from trauma does not just break your heart. It can shake your sense of who you are, spike anxiety you have never dealt with before, and quietly erode the self-worth you thought was solid ground.
What makes grief "traumatic"
Not all grief is traumatic grief, and that distinction matters because it changes what kind of support actually helps. Ordinary grief, as painful as it is, tends to move. It has waves, but the waves eventually space out. You cry, you remember, you find moments of peace next to moments of pain, and over time the balance shifts.
Traumatic grief is different. It shows up when a loss is sudden, violent, unexpected, or surrounded by circumstances that overwhelm your ability to process it in real time. This includes losses from accidents, overdoses, suicide, homicide, medical emergencies that came out of nowhere, or a death you witnessed or discovered. It can also include ambiguous loss, where someone is gone but the goodbye was incomplete or the circumstances remain unclear. In these cases, your nervous system does not just register sadness. It registers threat. Your body holds onto the shock the same way it would hold onto any other traumatic event, and that shock can freeze the grieving process before it has a chance to move.
People experiencing traumatic grief often describe symptoms that go beyond sadness: intrusive images or memories of the loss, a persistent sense of disbelief, anxiety that feels physical and constant, numbness that alternates with overwhelming waves of emotion, and a nagging feeling that they are supposed to be "over it" by now but are not. If any of that sounds familiar, it is worth naming clearly: this is not a personal failure to cope. It is a nervous system response to something genuinely overwhelming, and it responds to the right kind of support.
Why anxiety and identity work matters when you are grieving
One of the things that surprises people most about traumatic grief is how much it can hijack their sense of self. You may notice you do not recognize the person you have become since the loss. Maybe you were the calm one in your family and now you cannot stop your mind from racing. Maybe you built your identity around a relationship, a role, or a routine that the loss took away, and now you are not sure who you are without it. This is where Kate's background in anxiety, self-esteem, and identity work becomes directly relevant to grief therapy, not a separate specialty bolted onto it.
Traumatic grief often triggers or intensifies anxiety that was not there before, or that had been managed and suddenly resurfaces. This can look like a constant sense of dread, hypervigilance about the safety of the people you have left, panic that seems to come from nowhere, or difficulty sleeping because your mind will not quiet down. Working with a therapist who understands anxiety at a clinical level, not just as a symptom of grief but as its own pattern with its own tools, means you get support for both at once instead of having to choose which problem to bring to session.
The identity piece is just as real. Grief changes people. It can shake your confidence, your sense of purpose, and your ability to trust your own judgment, especially if the loss was sudden or if you are carrying guilt about things you wish had gone differently. Self-esteem work in this context is not about positive thinking. It is about helping you rebuild a stable sense of who you are as you move through a loss that has upended the version of yourself you used to know.
What working with Kate actually looks like
Therapy for traumatic grief should never feel like being handed a five-step plan to "get over it." That is not how grief works, and pretending otherwise does not help anyone. What it should feel like is having a steady, honest presence in the room who is not afraid of the hard parts of your story and who will not rush you toward closure you are not ready for.
Sessions with Kate focus on creating a space where you do not have to perform being okay. Many people carrying traumatic grief have spent months managing everyone else's discomfort with their pain, softening the story so people do not flinch, or putting on a version of "doing fine" for coworkers and extended family. That takes an enormous amount of energy, and it leaves very little room for the actual grieving to happen. In session, that pressure comes off. You get to say the hard things plainly, including the parts that feel confusing, angry, or not the "right" way to grieve.
From there, the work is practical. Kate helps clients build tools for managing the anxiety spikes that often come with traumatic loss, whether that is racing thoughts at 2 a.m. or a body that will not settle even when your mind knows you are safe. She works on rebuilding self-trust and identity for people who feel like the loss took a piece of who they were. And she holds space for the grief itself, without a timeline, without judgment, and without the expectation that healing means forgetting.
You do not have to earn the right to grieve "that badly"
A pattern we see often at gokc, especially with people navigating loss in Brookside, Waldo, and the surrounding Kansas City neighborhoods, is a quiet belief that their grief is somehow too big, too messy, or too long-lasting compared to what other people expect. Maybe someone has told you it has "been a while" and you should be doing better. Maybe you have told yourself that. Traumatic grief does not run on other people's timelines, and it does not run on comparison. The size of your grief is not up for debate, and it does not need to be justified to anyone, including yourself.
This is part of why identity and self-esteem work sits alongside grief work so naturally. So much of what makes traumatic grief harder to carry is the added layer of doubting whether you are allowed to feel this way, whether you are grieving "correctly," or whether something is wrong with you for still struggling. Untangling that added layer of self-judgment often makes room for the actual grief underneath it to finally move.
What to expect from your first sessions
If you are considering therapy for traumatic grief for the first time, it is normal to feel unsure about what that actually involves. The first few sessions with Kate are about getting oriented, not about diving straight into the hardest parts of the story before you are ready. Expect to talk about what happened at whatever pace feels manageable, what your life has looked like since the loss, what symptoms are showing up day to day, and what you are hoping therapy can help with. There is no requirement to have language for all of it yet. Part of the work is finding that language together, over time.
Kate also works from a trauma-informed lens, which means the pacing of the work is collaborative. You will not be pushed to process memories or details before your nervous system is ready to hold them safely. Grief work, especially traumatic grief work, has to build a foundation of safety first. Everything else follows from there.
FAQ: Traumatic grief and loss therapy at gokc
How is traumatic grief different from "regular" grief?
Traumatic grief typically involves a sudden, violent, or unexpected loss, or circumstances that overwhelmed your ability to process the event as it happened. It often comes with symptoms beyond sadness, including anxiety, intrusive memories, numbness, and a persistent sense that something is unresolved.
Is it too soon or too late to start therapy after a loss?
There is no correct window. Some people start therapy within weeks of a loss, and others come in years later once they realize the grief never fully settled. Both are valid times to begin.
Do I need a specific diagnosis to work with Kate?
No. Many people seeking grief therapy do not have, and do not need, a formal diagnosis. You do not need a clinical label to justify wanting support.
Where does Kate see clients?
Kate sees clients out of our Brookside office and is also available through virtual sessions for clients across the Kansas City metro, including Waldo, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, and Overland Park.
What if I am not sure Kate is the right fit?
That is a completely reasonable concern to have before starting therapy. You can read more about our full clinical team on our team page, and our intake process is built to help match you with the clinician whose approach fits what you are looking for.
You do not have to carry this alone
If any part of this has felt like it was describing your own experience, that is worth paying attention to. Traumatic grief has a way of convincing people they should be able to handle it on their own, quietly, without asking for help. You do not have to prove you can carry it before you are allowed to set some of it down.
Kate is currently accepting new clients at our Brookside office and virtually across the Kansas City metro. If you are ready to talk to someone who will not rush your grief or minimize what you have been through, we would be glad to hear from you.
gokc Healing Center provides trauma-informed grief counseling and nature therapy to clients throughout the Kansas City metro, including Brookside, Waldo, Prairie Village, Mission Hills, Leawood, Overland Park, and the Northland. Read more about our approach on our homepage, meet our full team on the team page, or continue to Part 2 of this series.
