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. 

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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.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Explain recent findings regarding the impact of early attachment experience on attachment style and on the development of emotion regulatory capacity;

• Explain the importance of emotion regulation in coping with loss and how deficits in emotion regulation contribute to complications in grief;

• Describe what is meant by “attachment informed grief therapy” and discuss the practical application of attachment theory in providing bereavement support to individuals with attachment related grief complications; and

• Explain the role of the grief therapist as a transitional attachment figure and describe the clinical skills that are core elements of an effective therapeutic relationship with bereaved clients.

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Note:  Completion of this program (total 3-hour activity, including approximately 2-hour recorded webinar and 1-hour reflection) and return of the Responsive Journal satisfies 1 Orientation Module required for Certification in Grief Therapy as Meaning Reconstruction.

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PROGRAM CONTENT

This program contains the following video segments:

1. Reflective Practice: Lessons of Life, Love & Loss (29 mins)

2. Attachment & Grief: Security, Regulation & Flexibility (27 mins)

3. Jane Story: Oscillation between Loss & Restoration (29 mins)

4. Kevin Story: Learning to Manage Emotions (24 mins)

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COURSE PACK CONTAINS...

• Handout on Mapping the Terrain of Loss;

• Article, Wherever we go, our past goes with us; 

• PDF of presentation slides; and

• The Responsive Journal that, upon completion and return, confers 1 credit of Orientation Module leading to Certification in Grief Therapy as Meaning Reconstruction.