The Archetype of the Psychopomp in Professional Consultation: Supporting Therapists Through Grief, Loss, and Thresholds
As therapists, we enter the work knowing we will be witnesses to suffering, heartbreak, and grief. What we may not anticipate is how deeply the work will shape us—how our clients’ losses, deaths, or unspoken sorrows will inevitably stir our own.
Professional consultation, especially in the realm of grief, death, and dying, asks us to hold not only our clients’ thresholds but also our own. This is where the archetype of the psychopomp—the guide of souls—becomes a living companion in our clinical practice and in the way we support one another as therapists.
What Is a Psychopomp?
The word psychopomp comes from the Greek psyche (soul) and pompos (guide). In myth, psychopomps were not deciders of fate but attendants at the threshold. They accompanied souls through the liminal passage from life to death, earth to underworld.
Charon, the ferryman who carried souls across the River Styx; Hermes, the messenger who escorted the dead; and Anubis, the Egyptian god with the jackal’s head—all are psychopomp figures. Across cultures, birds are often symbols of this archetype, bridging heaven and earth with their flight.
In essence, the psychopomp archetype is about presence: guiding when the way is unclear, accompanying when the path is too dark to walk alone.
As therapists, we often find ourselves embodying this archetype. And in consultation, I consciously hold it as a model for how I accompany colleagues through their own threshold experiences.
How I Embody the Psychopomp in Consultation
In my own work with therapists, I often identify with the psychopomp. My role is not to rescue or to prescribe, but to accompany. Therapists frequently bring me cases where they feel undone:
A client has died, sometimes by suicide.
A therapist is carrying disenfranchised grief—losses they are not “allowed” to speak about.
Burnout has hollowed their sense of meaning, leaving them disconnected from themselves and the work.
These are moments when therapists themselves stand at a threshold. They are not the steady guide but the one who needs accompaniment. In consultation, I offer myself as a fellow traveler, walking alongside rather than above, honoring the mystery of what unfolds.
When a Client Dies: Holding Space for Therapists in the Aftermath
Few experiences impact a therapist as profoundly as the death of a client. When that death is by suicide, the weight can feel unbearable. Shame, doubt, guilt, anger, and sorrow mingle together. Therapists often feel they must keep this private—silent in their grief because of confidentiality, professional expectations, or fear of judgment.
In consultation, I provide a space where this silence can soften. I invite therapists to bring the full range of their experience—their sorrow, their questions, their self-blame. Sometimes, we explore dreams that arise after a client’s death, which often carry psychopomp imagery: birds, rivers, crossings, or the client appearing in symbolic form. Other times, we sit in wordless grief together, acknowledging what cannot be explained.
To embody the psychopomp here is to say: You do not have to walk this alone. Your grief is valid. You are being carried, even now.
Disenfranchised Grief in Therapists
Therapists are not immune to the kinds of grief that go unacknowledged in our culture. This may be the loss of a client who leaves therapy abruptly, the death of someone they were not “supposed” to love, or even the quiet grief of carrying others’ pain without recognition.
Disenfranchised grief is isolating—it whispers, “You shouldn’t feel this way,” or, “This isn’t yours to mourn.” Yet it lives in the body and in the unconscious. Left unattended, it can surface in burnout, numbness, or reactivity in the therapy room.
In consultation, I hold space for these hidden losses. I help therapists name what has gone unnamed, to see their grief as real and worthy of tending. Often, images or dreams reveal themselves here, offering guidance when words are insufficient. The psychopomp archetype reminds us that even grief pushed to the margins carries meaning and deserves companionship.
Burnout as a Threshold Experience
Burnout in therapists often arises not only from overwork but from an accumulation of unattended grief. We absorb sorrow session after session, sometimes without pause for our own integration. Over time, the soul begins to shut down, seeking refuge in numbness.
I see burnout as its own threshold—a death of sorts. It is the collapse of an old way of working and being that can no longer be sustained. Consultation through the lens of the psychopomp means walking with therapists through this unraveling, helping them not rush to “fix” but to listen to what burnout is trying to say.
What is ending? What needs to be released? What new rhythm or way of being is seeking to be born?
By honoring burnout as a liminal passage rather than a professional failure, therapists often find their way back to meaning, but with a deeper, more sustainable relationship to their work.
Why the Psychopomp Archetype Matters in Consultation
Holding the psychopomp archetype as a guide transforms consultation in several ways:
It creates space for mystery, where not everything needs to be solved.
It legitimizes grief in all its forms, whether spoken or unspoken.
It reminds therapists they do not have to carry the work alone.
It honors burnout, death, and endings as thresholds, not failures.
Our culture wants grief to move quickly, therapists to be endlessly resilient, and burnout to be solved with productivity hacks. The psychopomp archetype offers another way: presence, accompaniment, and trust in the deeper unfolding of the soul.
I often tell the therapists I work with: you are not alone in these passages. Consultation is not about having the right answers—it is about being accompanied as you sit with what feels unbearable.
The archetype of the psychopomp reminds us that even in death, even in endings, even in the most profound losses, the soul is not abandoned. Something larger is walking with us, guiding us toward what we cannot yet see.
When we honor this archetype—in our therapy rooms, in our consultation spaces, and in our own lives—we remember that our task is not to fix but to accompany. And in doing so, we find that even in endings, something new is always being born.