When a significant person dies by suicide, homicide, overdose or fatal accident, mourners often need more than the informal support systems in their lives can provide, calling for specialist intervention. And yet many professionals struggle to meet the daunting challenges that such violent and unnatural deaths pose, not only to the survivors but also to their therapists. This practicum session focuses to two major sites of meaning construction in such cases, focusing on the griever’s need to titrate the trauma evoked by the traumatic dying, and to rescue the relationship with the deceased from the horror and possible stigma of the circumstances of the death.
In Part 1 of this module, we will begin by practicing a simple self-soothing technique that can help ground mourners when they begin to feel rising anxiety, before considering recent research on grief attacks, sudden and commonly overwhelming upsurges of loss-related anguish. Learners will be introduced to the first validated measure of this complex phenomenon, detailing its 4 dimensions, the triggering places, circumstances and activities in which they occur and how grievers attempt to manage them. We then present longitudinal research on the role of avoidance and approach coping on prolonged grief and other psychiatric outcomes in the aftermath of violent death, and the role of meaning making in mediating these effects. Finally, we turn to a technique for mapping trigger zones that tend to engender grief attacks, and provide clear guidelines for buffering and confronting them, which we will practice and process in small groups.
In Part 2, we discuss research documenting the high priority that long-term survivors of stigmatizing losses place on restoring the personhood of the deceased, as part of the process of reconstructing a sustainable continuing bond. Illustrating this process in a clinical video, we then offer two tools for reaffirming the reputation of the loved one or restoring the relationship, using written, conversational and arts-assisted means. Individual and small group practice will then prime concluding discussion about the coordination of these two dimensions of clinical work in grief therapy.
