August 2026: Asking Questions in Grief Counseling, Part 2

The Author: For more than 40 years, William G. Hoy has walked alongside the dying and bereaved. Since his retirement from Baylor University in 2024, he gives much of his time to helping colleagues connect more helpfully with bereaved individuals. He can be reached at Bill_Hoy@baylor.edu.

Through this column last month, I introduced the idea of asking questions in grief counseling. I acknowledged then that while there is some controversy about asking questions in therapeutic work (Williams, 2023), I find there are few tools that I employ that have any greater effectiveness.

As I stated before, I prefer open-ended questions that utilize these five interrogatives: who, what, where, when, and how. The sixth interrogative, why, is not one I generally use because it tends to raise defenses. The “why” question’s purpose is to understand the motives or choices that are driving a bereaved person’s decisions: “Why do you think that?” or “Why did you make that choice?” 

While we often need to explore motives and thinking strategies with the bereaved people we seek to help, I find there are less direct (and therefore, less defense-provoking strategies) to get there. For example, when I hear a person is practicing a behavior or a coping strategy that I expect to lead in an unhealthy direction, I might ask, “How did you come to that conclusion?” or “What were the steps that got you to that decision/conclusion?” This often provides opportunities for us to speak into behaviors and strategies that will not likely serve the bereaved person well long-term.

Following the first few of my favorite grief counseling questions that I introduced last month, I conclude this topic with five more of my favorites.

How would you describe the person who died? This is my most elemental question because it helps me get to know the deceased through the eyes of the bereaved individual. In groups, this question helps build community and comradery as people sense similarities of experiences and personalities.

How are you now making sense of this loss? Meaning-making is an ongoing—perhaps lifelong—experience of grief. Though our first baby died in utero and my father died decades ago, every change in my own life presents new opportunities to rethink and redefine that loss. The meanings of our loved ones’ lives and deaths change over time and the way we make sense of the loss changes, as well. Teach bereaved people this fact and how this is part of the process of “integrating” the loss (which is quite different from “recovery.”)

Would you tell me a bit about any health issues with which you have struggled? Because physical and mental health history can have a strong impact on how one processes a loss, knowing a bit about this background can be useful. Obviously, this information is most valuable to the therapist who is well-informed about physical conditions, medications, and other treatments for physical and psychiatric conditions. Because such questioning can be seen as intrusive, I set up the question by saying, “You know that we grieve as whole people so other illnesses you might be dealing with and the medications you are taking for them could affect how you experience grief. Would you mind telling me a bit about other health issues with which you have struggled?”

Would you please tell me about the funeral or memorial service? Did it meet your needs? What would you do differently? The COVID pandemic laid bare the importance of gathering with a supportive community in the face of a loved one’s death; when we were not allowed to follow our preferred mourning practices, significant complication in the bereavement process arose. This has now been widely documented in the research literature (Hoy, 2025). In my counseling—both with individuals and groups—I want to know how the funeral or memorial activities worked, and if the bereaved individual chose not to have one, what might have been the factors to explain that lack. On occasion, I have uncovered significant abuse and ambivalence in the relationship that was acknowledged as the reason for not holding or participating in a formal memorial service. The follow up question about what the bereaved person would do differently provides an opportunity to discuss co-creating a substitute ritual with the client, selected others, and perhaps even the counselor participating.

How do you think you are doing? Do others in your life seem to agree with your opinion about you? Last month, I closed with this question. Though I don’t often ask it of an entire group, I ask  this question often during my work with a grieving individual, in part to gauge the bereaved person’s assessment of how he or she is progressing. I believe that regularly checking in with this question often helps us demonstrate that this work is about the client, not about us. In fact, I am regularly astounded by the number of bereaved people who think they “are not doing it right,” usually because they have been told that by a well-meaning friend or family member. When bereaved individuals indicate they don’t think they are moving fast enough, it is usually a good idea to find out what “fast enough” would look like. “What do you think it would look like for you to be at that point/further along?” can be a useful line of questioning because it gives us an opportunity to explore these self-expectations (which are probably quite unrealistic).

Once again, I reiterate what I have said before: there are no “magic questions.” However, leading the client to tell his or her story is a vital aspect of supporting people in bereavement and I know of no better way to honor the person’s life and experience than to ask them to teach us what we need to know.

References. 

Hoy, W.G. (2025). Creating meaning in funerals: How families and communities make sense of death. Routledge.  

Williams, E.N. (2023). The use of questions in psychotherapy: A review of research on immediate outcomes. Psychotherapy 60 (3), 245-254. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000471