Grief & the Expressive Arts: Activating the Creative Imagination

Significant loss, including but not limited to bereavement, can disrupt our practical identities, dislodge relationships with others, and alter our experience of belonging in place and time. Adaptive grieving involves reconstructing a world of meaning that is enacted in the physical and social environment and shaped by cultural scripts. Aesthetic activities are embodied and help […]

Navigating Ambiguous Loss and the Maze of Dementia

The impact of dementia is being felt worldwide at this time, with the number of individuals being diagnosed with some form of this debilitating condition expected to continue to rise exponentially over the next generation.  While the focus tends to be on those who are directly affected, dementia care has a profound impact on families, […]

Emotion Co-Regulation

Though grief is widely considered a family affair, how can therapists best promote both personal and interpersonal resilience in a field dominated principally by individualistic theories?  Approaching this question from a systemic perspective, meaning can be viewed as a fundamental principle of resilience and shared meaning has the potential to bring families and communities together. […]

Adult Sibling Loss: Navigating Disenfranchisement & Supporting Back Story Exploration

The loss of an adult sibling is a deeply personal and often overlooked grief experience, leaving many adult surviving siblings feeling disenfranchised in their mourning. The first half of this module will explore the unique nature of adult sibling loss and how the back story and shared narrative of this special relationship is impacted by […]

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 […]

Trauma, Loss & Doll Making

Dolls have a universal and timeless appeal.  Ancient civilizations created them to ward off illness, promote fertility, and ensure abundant crops.  Dolls have been infused with the wishes, fears, and hopes of their makers, and have served as powerful talismans of transformation.  Learners will discover the clinical benefits of doll making through case studies that […]

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, […]

Grief through Creative Lens

Grief often calls for personal expression and often words are not enough.  Inviting clients to engage with color, shape, imagery and bits of paper sometimes meets with resistance since many people do not think of themselves as “creative.”  We all have imaginations and therefore the opportunity to view our grief experiences through a creative lens.  […]