As someone with a desire to help people faced with significant loss, you’ve spent some time reading about grief and learning about the art and science of grief therapy. This base of essential knowledge is a foundation for the higher order skill set that you will develop through the experience of sitting with and providing support to bereaved individuals.
What does such experience teach us? What does an experienced grief therapist know about what helps, about the nature of change in grief therapy and what attributes of the therapist and the therapeutic relationship are most salient in promoting change and facilitating the healing process?
The presenter for this program, with 25 years of experience in supporting the bereaved, will share with you some of this deeper wisdom about what you can do to help someone who is grieving. Research into the practice of psychotherapy suggests that the therapeutic relationship is the most important variable in treatment effectiveness. This is especially the case in therapy for bereavement, which is a relational loss and requires a relational approach that takes into account the attachment style of the client. These assumptions are central to the approach to grief therapy introduced in Kosminsky & Jordan’s (2016) book, Attachment Informed Grief Therapy: The Clinician’s Guide to Foundations and Applications, published by Routledge in New York.
Clinical examples, experiential exercises and directed writing will combine to illustrate the importance of non-verbal forms of communication that build trust and create a safe space in which the bereaved are able to enter the often frightening realm of grief. What you learn will guide you in the identification and development of your own relational style and will show you that much of what is most essential in the delivery of grief therapy is already inside you, waiting to be tapped.
