Amber DeMatteo, LMHC, LPC,
Certified Advanced Grief Counseling Specialist
MY PERSONAL GRIEF JOURNEY
I simply do not know life, without death.
My own personal grief journey started young. My dad died when I was 2 years old. In the beginning it was painful trying to make sense of death. I did not understand the permanency of it all and my mind couldn’t understand why this had happened to me.
I wondered. I questioned. I raged. I cried. I kept so much to myself because I didn’t have the language for all the emotions.
It’s very confusing understanding death loss at such a young age. Nobody likes to talk about loss, but we miss out on also talking about the joy too. And sometimes there’s not joy, but we miss out on discussing truths that are so important for healing.
As the years went on, only more grief seemed to stack on top of that initial loss. I spent many years sitting with every emotion as it came. I felt it all.
All.the.feelings.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, I guess it became my superpower - trying to make sense of it all, to understand myself, and to understand others.
I simply do not know life, without death. My grief and my joy have co-existed my entire life. I cannot untwine them.
I used to think I was obsessive about it, that I would always be preoccupied with thoughts of people dying. But, what I’ve learned throughout my own grief journey was that I was processing, I was healing, I was trying to make sense of difficult losses of people who had impacted me so greatly. I was trying to stay connected to them. And I do. And the obsession began to melt away into peace and acceptance. Still grief, but, it just looks and feels different now.
Knowing loss and allowing myself to experience the pain of each death, means that I also know myself. I know love, and I know it deeply. I feel joy, and I feel it deeply. And I know how to integrate loss into living. Whether it’s seeing something symbolic that makes me smile, channeling a loved ones energy into something important that I do, or just feeling gratitude that I got to feel all that love.
Grief and Living truly do co-exist. And I live it everyday.
MY PROFESSIONAL JOURNEY
I have been working in the field of psychology since I was a teenager, from childcare to residential settings with at-risk youth to working with families and autistic toddlers to community based counseling. I worked for over a decade with children and decided it was time to shift gears to work with adults and return to school. I graduated with my master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Syracuse University and had such a fulfilling internship working with Veterans in their inpatient and outpatient programs. After graduation, I worked in the substance abuse field and provided therapy for those struggling with substance use and recovery, while also navigating traumas, generational wounds, and so many other mental health struggles.
During that time I became licensed in New York and most recently, Pennsylvania, and have been providing mental health teletherapy services to clients who reside throughout those states.
My approach to therapy is very much informed by my years of experience with children. I find it important to look at the whole picture and not only what is currently going on in someone’s life, but also what has occurred throughout a lifetime that might be intruding on someone’s present struggles. I believe you need your brain and body to work together in order to do healing work. Often in society, it’s very normalized to disconnect the two and continue to operate in toxic systems. I am currently working towards learning more somatic based trainings, in addition to already being certified as a Grief Counseling Specialist. Depending on the needs of my clients, I utilize CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) in session, somatic informed approaches, as well as strength based and existential approaches to processing emotions and situations in session. I work from a trauma informed lens and really enjoy working with others who are doing the hard work of bettering themselves while breaking generational patterns of dysfunction. Even in grief work, we can begin to examine how messaging, or lack of messaging, growing up informs our ability to cope with painful emotions.
Being a therapist is part of my identity. When I sit with my clients, I know this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. I hope this helps get to know me a little bit better! If you have any additional questions feel free to email or bring them to a free consultation call with me!