Seminars/Workshop
Grief Therapy as Meaning Reconstruction:
A Trauma-Informed Approach
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD
Portland Institute for Loss and Transition and University of Memphis, USA
As contemporary models of bereavement have become more nuanced and empirically informed, so too have the practices available to counselors and therapists who work with complicated, prolonged and debilitating forms of grief. This full-day workshop offers in-depth training in several of these techniques, nesting them both within the therapy relationship and in the context of current theories and research that provide flexible frameworks for intervention. Making extensive use of actual clinical videos as well as how-to instruction in the use a therapeutic tools, we will discuss and practice several trauma-informed methods for helping clients reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.
Beginning with a discussion of the power of presence as a fundamental dimension of the therapeutic “holding environment,” we will consider how we can quickly assess our clients’ needs and readiness for change. We will then discuss how to create a safe relational container for a healing “re-telling” of the loss experience, anchoring such work in both contemporary meaning reconstruction and dual process models and related research. Drawing on clinical videos of clients contending with losses through cancer, sudden accident and suicide, we will learn to listen between the lines of the stories clients tell themselves and others about the death to grasp more fully the unvoiced meaning of their grief, and how we can help them integrate the event story of the death into the larger narrative of their lives. Participants should conclude the session with sharpened skills for clinical assessment, a clearer appreciation for the challenge to meaning and spiritualty associated with violent death bereavement, and an expanded toolbox for using metaphor, body work and a variety of narrative procedures for helping clients make sense of the loss and their response to it.
Learning outcomes:
- Distinguish between therapeutic “presence” and “absence” in the process of therapy
- Recognize empirical risk factors associated with complicated grief reactions
- Implement restorative retelling and situational revisiting procedures for mastering the event story of the loss
- Differentiate between forms of directed journaling that foster self-immersion and self-distancing to modulate emotions evoked by the death
- Outline metaphoric and body-oriented procedures for exploring the sensed meanings of the client’s grief
- Describe narrative techniques for accommodating loss in literal and figurative ways into the changed narrative of the client’s life
Schedule:
9:30-11:00 The Power of Presence: Orienting to Client Needs
and Resources
11:00-11:50 Break
11:15-1:00 Restorative Retelling: Mastering the Narrative of the Death
1:00-2:00 Lunch
2:00-3:45 Analogical Listening: Exploring Sensed Meanings of Grief
3:45-4:00 Break
4:00-5:30 Chapters of Our Lives: Rewriting Stories of Loss
Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, where he also maintains an active clinical practice. Since completing his doctoral training at the University of Nebraska in 1982, he has published 30 books, including Techniques of Grief Therapy and Grief and the Expressive Arts: Practices for Creating Meaning (both with Routledge), and serves as Editor of the journal Death Studies. The author of nearly 500 articles and book chapters, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process, both in his published work and through his frequent professional workshops for national and international audiences. The founder and Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, Neimeyer also has served as Chair of the International Work Group for Death, Dying, & Bereavement and President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. In recognition of his scholarly contributions, he has been granted the Eminent Faculty Award by the University of Memphis, made a Fellow of the Clinical Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association, and given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning. For more information, see: www.robertneimeyerphd.com
