(he/him)
New to Grow
I am Grant Marylander, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Grief Counselor, and Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional practicing in Boulder, Colorado. My path to this work was not a straight one. I spent more than thirty years as an attorney before a close friend's terminal diagnosis changed everything. Sitting with him at the end of his life, I knew this was where I belonged — not in a courtroom, but in the hardest and most human moments people face. That conviction led me through palliative care, hospice grief counseling, and community mental health before I founded Share Your Grief. I work with two groups of people who, in my experience, often have more in common than they might expect. The first are individuals navigating grief, not only the loss of a loved one, but any loss that has quietly unmade a life: a diagnosis, a divorce, a career, an identity. The second are high-functioning professionals whose outward success masks an internal exhaustion driven by anxiety, perfectionism, and the relentless pressure to be more and do better. What I offer both groups is the same thing: a space where nothing they feel is too much, and a clinically grounded approach that goes beyond surface-level coping to address what is actually underneath. The impact I hope to have is not simply symptom relief. It is transformation — helping clients move from surviving their pain to understanding it, and from understanding it to carrying it with greater ease, self-compassion, and clarity about what they value most. Grief and anxiety have a way of stripping life down to what matters. My job is to help you find your footing in that stripped-down place — and rebuild from there.
The first session is not about jumping straight into the hard stuff. It is about beginnings — getting to know each other, establishing trust, and making sure you leave feeling like this is a space where you can actually breathe. We will start with what brought you here. I will ask about your experience — what you are carrying, how long you have been carrying it, and what has and hasn't helped so far. I am not checking boxes or rushing toward a diagnosis. I am genuinely trying to understand your specific experience, because grief and anxiety are never generic, even when they share a common shape. We will also talk about what you are hoping for. Not a rigid set of goals — grief and healing rarely work that way — but a sense of direction. What would feel different if therapy was working? What would you want more of in your life, and less of? I will share a little about how I work: the modalities I draw on, how I think about grief and anxiety, and what our collaboration might look like over time. There will be space for your questions too. By the end of the session, you will have a clearer sense of whether this feels like the right fit — and I will have a clearer picture of how I can best support you. There is no pressure and no obligation. The only goal of a first session is that you leave feeling genuinely heard, and a little less alone with what you are carrying.
There are therapists who specialize in grief. There are therapists who specialize in anxiety. There are clinicians who have worked in hospice, in palliative care, in community mental health. There are those who have sat with the dying, supported the bereaved, and facilitated the kind of groups where people say things out loud for the very first time. I have done all of it. And I believe that breadth — clinical, human, and professional — is the foundation of everything I bring to this work. A Career Built at the Intersection of Life and Loss Before I became a therapist, I spent more than thirty years as an attorney. That background shaped me in ways that still show up every day in my clinical work: precision in language, the ability to hold complexity without flinching, and a deep respect for the fact that the details of someone's situation matter enormously. No two clients are the same, and I have never been wired to treat them as if they were. The turn toward clinical work was not a gradual drift — it was a calling, arrived at through profound personal experience. When a close friend was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I traveled to be with him at the end of his life. Those final days changed everything. I left the law not reluctantly but with clarity, knowing that this — sitting with people in their hardest moments — was where I was meant to be. Depth of Clinical Experience Across the Full Arc of Loss What followed was a clinical education that most therapists never get the opportunity to have. As Palliative Care Coordinator at Boulder Community Health, I conducted more than 3,000 clinical consults with patients facing life-limiting illnesses — conversations about goals of care, about what mattered most, about how to live fully inside a prognosis. From there I moved into outpatient behavioral health at Boulder Community Outpatient Counseling Center, where I worked with clients carrying complex diagnoses — Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, Psychosis — and identified a gap in services that led me to create and co-facilitate a new group grief therapy program. Then to Trailwinds Hospice, where I provided individual and group counseling for a diverse bereavement caseload and managed what I think of as one of the most delicate clinical spaces in all of grief work: supporting families facing imminent loss before the death has even occurred. That arc — from the bedside of the dying, to the outpatient clinic, to the hospice bereavement office, to private practic
My clients generally fall within two groups. The first are people experiencing grief challenges following a loss. Not just the grief that follows a death, but also the quieter losses that our culture rarely makes space for: the end of a marriage, a devastating diagnosis, the loss of a career or an identity, the grief that follows estrangement, miscarriage, or a life that didn't unfold the way it was supposed to. My ideal client in this space is someone who senses that their grief deserves more than time — that it deserves real attention, skilled support, and a place where nothing they feel will be too much. The second are high-functioning professionals who are struggling beneath the surface. From the outside, their lives look like success. But internally, they are exhausted by the pressure they put on themselves, caught in cycles of anxiety and perfectionism that no amount of achievement seems to quiet. They are often intelligent, self-aware, and deeply frustrated that they can't simply think their way out of what they're feeling. They are ready for something more than coping strategies — they want to understand what's underneath.
I identify as
Dialectical Behavior (DBT)
My work with Dialectical Behavior Therapy is grounded in formal certification (C-DBT) and years of applied clinical experience across multiple settings — from outpatient behavioral health to hospice grief counseling. I first developed fluency with DBT while working at Boulder Community Outpatient Counseling Center, where my caseload included clients with complex presentations including Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, and Psychosis — populations for whom DBT's emphasis on emotional regulation and distress tolerance is especially critical. In my current practice at Share Your Grief, I draw on DBT primarily in two ways. First, I use core DBT skills — particularly distress tolerance and radical acceptance — to help grieving clients navigate the acute pain of loss without resorting to avoidance or self-destructive coping. Grief is not a disorder to be fixed, but the suffering it produces is real, and DBT gives clients concrete, learnable tools for riding out emotional waves rather than being overwhelmed by them. Second, for clients dealing with anxiety and perfectionism, I use DBT's emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness modules to help them soften harsh self-criticism and build responses to stress that are grounded rather than reactive. My integration of DBT sits within a broader evidence-based framework that also includes CBT, IFS, and Compassion-Focused Grief Therapy — so DBT skills are woven in where they serve the client's goals, rather than applied as a rigid protocol.
Cognitive Behavioral (CBT)
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is one of the foundational modalities in my clinical work, and I hold a certification as a Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional (CCATP), which reflects deep training in CBT-based approaches to anxiety. I have applied CBT across a wide range of clinical settings — from high-acuity outpatient behavioral health to hospice bereavement — adapting it to meet clients wherever they are in their experience of loss, anxiety, or life transition. In my practice at Share Your Grief, I use CBT most prominently with clients struggling with anxiety and perfectionism. Many of my clients carry deeply ingrained thought patterns — the belief that they are never enough, that catastrophe is always around the corner, or that their worth depends on their performance. CBT gives us a structured, collaborative way to examine those patterns, test their accuracy, and gradually replace them with more balanced and compassionate ways of thinking. For grieving clients, I draw on CBT techniques selectively — particularly cognitive restructuring — to help clients work through complicated beliefs about their loss, their guilt, or their capacity to move forward. I integrate CBT within a broader framework that includes DBT, IFS, and Compassion-Focused Grief Therapy, always tailoring the approach to the individual rather than applying a one-size-fits-all protocol.
Compassion Focused
Compassion-Focused Therapy is one of the modalities closest to the philosophical heart of my work. Developed by Dr. Paul Gilbert, CFT draws on neuroscience and evolutionary psychology to help clients activate their soothing system — the neurological counterpart to the threat and drive systems that so often dominate the inner lives of people who are grieving or struggling with anxiety and self-criticism. Compassion-Focused Grief Therapy is a core component of how I work with anxious clients, especially those who struggle with perfectionism. CFT is also effective for grieving clients who are experiencing shame. CFT gives clients a framework for understanding why shame and self-criticism arise, how we often develop an inner critic who questions our actions, and why feelings of shame or low self-esteem are so resistant to simple logic or reassurance. Many of my clients carry painful beliefs about how they are grieving: that they are too much or not enough, too sad for too long, or somehow failing at loss. CFT helps them recognize those beliefs not as truths but as threat responses — and offers a genuinely different way of relating to their own suffering. I write about these themes publicly. A recent blog post on self-compassion, shame, and grief reflects how deeply this framework shapes the way I think about clinical work. In session, this translates to helping clients develop what Gilbert calls a "compassionate mind" — not as a soft or sentimental exercise, but as a neurologically grounded practice that creates the safety the nervous system needs to begin healing.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Internal Family Systems therapy offers a framework I find particularly well-suited to grief and anxiety work — and to the kind of complex, layered presentations that bring most clients through my door. Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, IFS understands the psyche not as a single unified self but as a system of distinct "parts," each with its own history, perspective, and protective function. Rather than pathologizing these parts, IFS approaches them with curiosity and compassion — an orientation that aligns closely with the broader philosophy of my practice. In anxiety work, IFS is especially illuminating. Clients often have an "inner critic" part who constantly questions our actions and feelings leading to increased anxiety and feelings of shame. Another part may be running protective strategies — numbness, overwork, anger — that once served a purpose but are now getting in the way of healing. IFS gives us a language and a process for meeting each of those parts with genuine curiosity rather than judgment, allowing clients to understand their own internal landscape rather than feeling at war with themselves. I integrate IFS alongside DBT, CBT, and Compassion-Focused Grief Therapy, drawing on whichever combination of approaches best serves the individual client. For many grieving and anxious clients, the IFS concept of the "Self" — that calm, curious, compassionate core that exists beneath the parts — becomes an anchor: evidence that wholeness is possible even in the middle of profound loss.