As Thomas Attig might phrase it, grieving entails relearning the self and relearning the world, because both are challenged and changed by the significant loss of an intimate other. In such cases, we may be deprived of crucial relationships that anchor our sense of who we are, lose parts of ourselves sustained by the attachment figure, suffer deactivation of life-defining roles or positions, or when the loss is stigmatizing, as through the suicide or drug overdose of a loved one or divorce, we struggle with social avoidance, shame or ostracism. In all these ways radical changes arising in the loss commonly require us to revisit and revise core aspects of our identity and construct a new self in their wake, potentially opening pathways to profound personal growth through grief.
This 3.5-hour module addresses these themes as expressed in video recordings of clients dealing with both natural death loss of a key attachment figure and violent death of a partner by suicide, as well as other illustrations related to non-death losses. We begin by providing a schematic model of the impact of loss on survivors’ sense of self, which ushers in a need to re-author their self-narrative. We then present two well-validated scales for assessing the undermining of previous identities by loss as well as the posttraumatic personal growth that can result, which can be used in practice contexts to identify targets of intervention or serve as an index of clinical change. Next, we offer a generous toolbox of creative techniques for working with self-change in grief therapy, including the visual depiction of clients’ self-image and the mapping of their position in a web of influential relationships. Learners should conclude the module with multiple windows through which they and their clients can explore subtle but substantial alterations in identity arising from unwelcome transitions, ultimately freeing them to rebuild a sense of self in a changed world.
