Constructing Relational Resilience

How do couples support each other when they are both simultaneously grieving the loss of a child?  Grief can create either connection or isolation in couple relationships, as parents cope with the gravity of their own tragedy while also bearing witness to their partner’s suffering and pain.  A research-based systemic perspective on bereaved couples’ coregulatory […]

On the Edge

Major loss, especially of key attachment figures in our lives, can shatter a world of meaning anchored in that relationship, and leave survivors struggling to make sense of the loss and their lives in its aftermath.  When such losses occur violently and traumatically, they can further undermine core constructs of predictability, benevolence, and control, greatly […]

Holding onto Grief

You’ve spent years offering support to bereaved people, helping them express their grief, manage waves of disruptive emotion, process the loss, and pursue a changed life and renewed bond with their deceased loved one.  But what do you do when they respond to none of these initiatives, and remain mired in an anguishing and life-limiting […]

Captured in Box of Pain

When a client seems to be “frozen” in grief across a period of years or even decades, delicate work with the “back story” of the relationship and complicating dimensions of the continuing bond is often called for. This video case study examines an adult daughter’s ongoing anguish about her mother’s death, to a level that […]

Personal Grief Rituals

Loss, grief and mourning are ubiquitous human experiences that pervade the work of therapists, psychiatrists, counselors, and social workers alike.  Helping those who have experienced a significant loss can be challenging and confusing, largely because there is no single intervention that is well-suited for all individuals.  In what ways can we tailor our interventions to […]

Writing the Creative Self in Grief

Based on her own two-year journey of writing the self after the death of her spouse, researcher and writing-the-self professor Reinekke Lengelle invites participants to develop a stronger ‘internal dialogue’ as a part of their resilience.  This course demonstrates that losing a loved one (or going through a non-death loss) is not only a matter […]

Suicide & Unfinished Business with the Deceased: Assessment & Intervention

The loss of a significant person to suicide or overdose is more than a traumatic life event.  It also poses a profound challenge for survivors in establishing a sustainable continuing bond to the deceased, characteristically leaving many questions unanswered, much that is unsaid, and multiple longstanding concerns unresolved.  This module focuses on the burden of […]

The Relational Window of Tolerance: Systemic Assessment of Bereaved Couples

The Relational Window of Tolerance describes how couples negotiate individual and relational coping when grieving the loss of a child.  Depending on the individual coping styles of each partner, couples may enter imbalanced, dual-fragile, or coregulatory relational states throughout their grieving process.  Each of these relational states, identified and exemplified in recent research, helps the couple to […]

Memory boxes

In this module, learners will learn about the art therapy practice of creating memory boxes with bereaved patients.  As containers, boxes readily protect and hold memories, secrets, narratives, and emotions.  They provide a space for creating, storytelling, exploration and documentation.  Boxes come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and materials, and may be painted, decorated, […]

Death of A Partner

Spousal / partner loss is often experienced as a profound loss resulting in significant disruptions in one’s daily life and major changes in the social world.  Whether the couple relationship used to be loving and intimate or ambivalent and conflictual, the surviving spouse / partners commonly need to review their sense of identity, life goals […]