Full Course Description

The 6th Stage of Grief: Why Meaning Making is More Important Than Ever

“There is no meaning in dying in a pandemic.” I’ve heard this from so many people over the last two years. And they’re right. And the meaning isn’t in the “why.” The meaning is in us and what we do after…and today making meaning in the wake of loss is more important than ever before. In this incredibly moving session, you’ll watch David Kessler, the world’s foremost expert on grief and loss, as he shows you how your clients can go beyond acceptance and find ways to replace painful memories with meaningful connections and move toward personal growth. We’ve all lost so much, but by making meaning we can stop feeling like we need to move on and start feeling like we can move forward.

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze the role of guilt in the development of prolonged grief and identify the corresponding counseling and treatment implications.
Investigate how adding “meaning” to current grief models can enhance posttraumatic growth and resiliency.
Use a positive psychology lens in work with grieving clients to help them adjust to loss and gain a new sense of meaning.

Outline

Strategies to address the guilt and helpless of loss in special circumstances
The Kubler-Ross’s stage authentic model and how a new stage of meaning can enhance posttraumatic growth and resiliency
Techniques for using grounded positive psychology to help witness vs. “fixing” grief
How if not used correctly support can look lie brightsiding and toxic positivity

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/28/2022

Clinical Strategies for Collective Grief and Pandemic Fatigue

The scale of loss your clients have been subjected to is unlike anything in a generation. Grief is now collectively woven into our experience…far-reaching with no discernible end. And the raw emotional weight of an ever-present pandemic reminds us all that death and loss is much closer than we realized. In this session, grief expert and Fellow in Thanatology Diana Sebzda, LPC will show you how the added layers of collective grief and pandemic fatigue continue to impact your clients, and how you can adapt your work to help them better cope with the fallout. Includes concrete tools, techniques and strategies to facilitate healthy grief and overcome anticipatory grief in the age of COVID.

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze the impact of collective grief on clients following societal, cultural or global experiences of tragedy.
Investigate the clinical implications of pandemic fatigue on counseling and treatment of grieving clients.
Utilize coping strategies and supportive techniques to build resiliency in clients during times of crisis.

Outline

How collective grief and pandemic fatigue are impacting bereavement
Recognizing the potential for Pandemic Fatigue in grieving clients
Coping strategies for resulting overwhelm and anticipatory grief

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/28/2022

From Loss to Resilience with Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) is one of the fastest growing therapeutic approaches available to clinicians today. Its attachment-based experiential approach makes it a perfect fit for grief work, giving you a roadmap and set of interventions to support your clients on their unique journeys to growth and resilience. Dr. Leanne Campbell is an internationally acclaimed expert on EFIT and co-author of A Primer for Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) with Dr. Sue Johnson. In this session, Dr. Campbell will show you how attachment theory and science offer a guide to more fully understanding love and loss. Plus, Dr. Campbell will provide clinical demonstrations so you can witness for yourself how EFIT harnesses the power of emotion to help clients reach their goals in the aftermath of loss.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate the attachment perspectives of health and the potential impact of loss.
Determine the treatment needs and goals of the client in the grief process.
Create a ‘safe haven’ alliance for clients to explore their loss experience in context.
Employ the EFIT roadmap and interventions to support and/or guide clients through loss and grief to growth and resilience.

Outline

Attachment, Loss and EFIT
Tuning in, Finding Focus, and Charting the Therapy Course
Clinical Demonstration
Research, risks and treatment limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/28/2022

Creating Safe Spaces for Culturally Diverse Clients to Grieve

Culturally unique ways of mourning have often been overlooked or unacknowledged, abruptly derailing the grieving process for many. Without empowering clients to openly feel and express grief within the cultural contexts of their pain, they’re missing an essential element to healing. Led by Tiffani Dilworth, LPC, this session will illuminate a path of skills, understanding, intersection and compassion that will leave you better prepared than ever before to help client from diverse cultures, subcultures and religions openly express emotional experiences, work through the grief of racism and injustice, and much more.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess yourself for biases and assumptions related to culture and religion that can impact the grief counseling process.
Analyze the clinical implications of systemic racism leading to grief in marginalized populations.
Use Grief Models to create safe environments for clients to embrace the traditions, rituals and ways of expressing grief unique to their culture or religion.

Outline

What clinicians should know about mourning in cultures, subcultures and religions
Racism and grief: the other pandemic
How to use Grief Models to promote a safe space for diverse grieving clients
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/28/2022

Narrative Therapy Techniques for Navigating Grief and Uncertainty

The pandemic has served as a reminder that we never know what’s around the bend. I was fourteen when both of my parents got cancer at the same time. My mother died when I was eighteen and my father died when I was twenty-five. Life was hard after that. I felt very alone in the world and unsure of my purpose. But through it all I wrote -- writing had always been my outlet and eventually it became my salvation. As a therapist I’ve found it to be one of the most powerful tools for working with grieving clients. In this session, I will share narrative exercises you can use to cultivate self-compassionate, facilitate emotional expression, and help clients find peace and connection in times of uncertainty and crisis.

Program Information

Objectives

Use personal narrative exercises to help clients manage grief related anxieties.
Use journaling and grief letters to help promote continuing bonds in grieving clients.
Apply narrative approaches to help clients cope and empower them to construct meaning following loss.

Outline

Personal narratives to help manage anxiety and overcome the fear of losing more
Journaling and grief recovery letters to promote continuing bonds
Narrative approaches to help clients construct meaning following loss
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/28/2022

Seizing the Moment: Re-Humanizing Grief Care for Our Clients and Ourselves

I thought I knew quite a bit about grief. Then on a beautiful, ordinary summer day in 2009, I watched my partner drown. If anyone could be prepared to deal with that kind of loss, it should have been me. But none of what I’d learned as a psychotherapist mattered. And when I found myself on the other side of the clinician’s couch, I discovered firsthand how outdated beliefs about grief fail us after loss.

It's time for a change. The pandemic has brought grief to the forefront of cultural consciousness. With more people seeking professional support for multiple losses, the need for skilled providers is vast – and most providers feel not only overwhelmed by their clients’ grief, they’re facing their own cascading losses as well. Watch me for a critical recorded session on the future of grief work, exploring the skills needed to de-pathologize and rehumanize grief… for our clients, for ourselves, and for the wider world.

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate the main problems with historical approaches to grief and be able to identify their own internal grief biases.
Use simple strategies to educate and support clients in a more human-centered approach to grief.
Use a de-pathologized lens to identify measurable client-centered outcomes.

Outline

The current state of grief care – looking back so we can look forward
At the crossroads: moving toward a human-centered view of grief
Client outcomes and social change: what can we measure?
Psychoeducation and simple strategies to de-pathologize grief in your client work
Risks and limitations – the complex nature of diagnoses

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/29/2022

Expressive Arts for Children and Adults: Giving Grief a Voice

Many people are left speechless when death and loss tears their world apart. And when you have clients grieving so intensely that words won’t come, being creative isn’t an option… it’s a necessity. In this can’t miss recording, grief expert and Fellow in Thanatology Diana Sebzda, LPC, will show you how you can use transformative expressive arts interventions with clients from a wide range of ages, backgrounds and abilities. Simple to add to your toolbox and implement in sessions, you’ll leave with creative techniques to give your clients a place to hold their pain, externalize their grief, and express emotion and love in ways that other techniques simply can’t replicate.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess when it is appropriate to introduce expressive arts as an intervention with clients at various developmental levels.
Use expressive arts to facilitate conversations with clients regarding their loss and grief process.
Develop coping strategies to help the client process their loss and grief.

Outline

Developmental perspectives in grief
How to use expressive arts to facilitate difficult conversations with clients
Use specific interventions including emotion masks and body tracings to externalize grief and facilitate emotional expression
Coping strategies to continue the externalization process

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/29/2022

Ethics and Personal Loss: Using Self-Disclosure in Grief Support

So many professionals drawn to grief work have experienced their own personal losses. And a growing body of research shows us that self-disclosure can be a tremendous asset in our work with clients. But handled incorrectly it can do more harm than good. In this recording, Litsa Williams, LCSW-C, grief expert and co-founder of whatsyourgrief.com, explores personal loss, countertransference and how to ethically use self-disclosure to enhance your work with grieving clients.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate potential positive and negative clinical impacts of self-disclosure.
Analyze common types of counter transference in end of life and grief support.
Use techniques to appropriately respond to and manage counter transference in end of life and grief support.
Apply guidelines for ethical therapist self-disclosure to normalize grief and increase collaborative work with grieving clients.

Outline

Assessing the impact of personal grief on clinical work
Current research, risks and limitations
Guidelines for ethical self-disclosure
Addressing counter-transference
Missteps and related problems

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/29/2022

Survivors Guilt, Regret and Shame: Interventions for Today’s Grieving Clients

Guilt, regret, and shame are common emotions to experience after a loss or traumatic event. But the pandemic has added unique and complicated elements to counseling and treatment that we must account for. In this timely session, Dr. Christina Zampitella, FT will show you how to help clients manage the “should’s” of regret, end self-blame and shame, and overcome the profound sense of guilt they may feel because loved ones succumbed to the virus while they survived.

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze the relationship between guilt and the well-being of bereaved persons.
Utilize mindfulness interventions to enhance grieving clients’ self-awareness and management of painful thoughts and emotions.
Use psychoeducation to teach self-compassion interventions to clients they can use to build shame resiliency.

Outline

Define the multiple categories of guilt
Survivors guilt in the COVID era
Addressing the “should’s” and “if only’s” of regret
Mindfulness and acceptance to reduce distressing thoughts and feelings
Self-compassion interventions for shame resilience
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/29/2022

EMDR Toolbox for Traumatic Grief and Mourning

Sudden or traumatic losses can leave clients stuck in the mourning process, unable to let go of the pain. Avoidant, hyperaroused and inundated with intrusive images and flashbacks, these clients cannot progress though the natural process of grief and form a new kind of loving relationship with the deceased. EMDR is one of today’s most in-demand therapies and has proven itself to be particularly effective in working with grief and mourning. In this recording you’ll watch EMDR expert Megan Salar, LCSW, EMDR-C, as she shows you how EMDR can help you free your clients from the cycle of complex symptoms they worry they’ll never escape.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate how EMDR can help clinicians address avoidance and stuck points with clients who’ve experienced a traumatic loss.
Assess the impact of intrusive images stemming from traumatic losses on the grieving process.
Use the EMDR calm place exercise to help manage hyperarousal and establish felt safety in grieving clients.

Outline

How EMDR can help address avoidance reactions and stuck points
Using the EMDR calm place exercise – managing hyperarousal in grieving clients
EMDR techniques for intrusive images stemming from sudden or traumatic losses
Research, risks and limitations

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Nurses
Psychiatrists
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Social Workers
Therapists
Other Helping Professionals

Copyright : 04/29/2022

Unattended Grief: Interventions to Facilitate Healthy Grieving

Our social connections, routine and sense of security have all been disrupted by the pandemic making it difficult to fully acknowledge the losses in our lives amongst the chaos.

But left unattended grief can negatively impact every aspect of our being — altering our physical, cognitive, emotional and spiritual health.

Join David Kessler, one of the world’s foremost experts on healing and loss, as he shares the tips and interventions he’s found most helpful in facilitating healthy grieving, even in unprecedented times.

Plus, you’ll end this segment with an exclusive discussion between David and PESI’s own Zach Taylor, LPC that will leave you feeling connected, energized and more ready than ever to help the grieving.

Program Information

Objectives

Investigate techniques that can be used to help those dealing with loss in their lives during the pandemic.
Utilize tools for helping clients address trauma, grief and the traumatic moment.
Assess how all losses, including death, divorce, job loss and more can impact clients.

Outline

What unattended grief looks like

When we’re not attending and when others aren’t attending
Grief, trauma and post-traumatic growth
6 keys to helping clients attend to their grief

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage and Family Therapists
Psychologists
Psychiatrists
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Nursing Home Administrators
Pastoral Counselors
Chaplains/Clergy
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners
Mental Health Nurses
Thanatologists

Grief and Addiction

As a result of the opioid epidemic, the United States saw its largest recorded increase in overdose deaths last year, which is now officially the leading cause of death among adults under 50.

What do we need to do differently for clients grieving for a loved one who overdosed? And how do therapists themselves deal with the loss of an addicted client?

Program Information

Objectives

Determine why addiction grief is often weighted in self-blame and guilt
Determine how to help loved ones sort through the shame, isolation, and the roles they played in an addiction death
Assess tools for helping clients deal with addiction grief and the “if only’s” that accompany it, such as responsibility clarification and separating out the loved one’s voice from the addiction

Outline

The Opioid Epidemic

Medicine got it wrong

Substance Related Causes of Death

Death Shapes Grief

Types of grief

Tools

Validate
Minimization

Pure Grief versus External Triggers

Seligman’s 3 P’s

Understanding Survivors Guilt

Sudden Death versus Suicide

Three most common challenges

The 3 C’s of Addiction

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Grieving and Remembering Well: Tools for Healing

While most therapists are experienced in exploring the pain of grief, their clients may be asking for a clear direction out of their pain. How does the therapist deal with questions of “When will this pain end?” How and when can the therapists help the client shift from feeling pain to experiencing healing?

David Kessler, one of the world’s foremost experts on healing and loss, will look closely at how death shapes our grief and explore appropriate interventions and talking points to use in your session. This recording will help you better understand how to approach the sensitivities of grief and, learn the importance of grieving for the healing process to begin in your clients.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the dynamics of different types of grief in clients and the healing processes associated with each.
Determine the relationship between traumatic events and grief as it relates to the healing process within clients.

Outline

Background
The Death Shapes Grief
- River of Grief
- Witnessing Grief
- Pure Grief vs. External Triggers
Grief vs. Trauma
Positive Psychology
Survivor’s Guilt
Grief Needs
Grief in Therapy
- Worst and Best Things to Say
Pitfalls of Getting Over Loss
Healing
- The Sixth Stage of Grief
Complicated Grief
- Multiple Losses
Goals of Grief Work

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Kids and Loss: How to Work with the Uniqueness of a Child’s Grief

In the past year families have been confronted with death on a scale not witnessed in generations.

And children are often impacted most intensely following the loss of an immediate or extended family member. Trauma, pain and confusion replacing safety and security.

But their understanding of death, and responses to the grief that follows, are largely influenced by their developmental level, making their treatment much different from that of an adult.

Join Dr. Erica Sirrine for this powerful session so you can better understand the unique nature of grief in children and adolescents and get developmentally appropriate treatment strategies to help these vulnerable clients find hope and healing!

Program Information

Objectives

Analyze the behavioral manifestations of grief in children. 
Evaluate the implications of a bereaved child or adolescent’s developmental stage on grief counseling and treatment.
Apply appropriate interventions for bereaved children and adolescents to mitigate potential disruption of healthy developmental trajectories.
Assess the diverse needs of bereaved children and families to prevent complications of grief and promote healthy adaptation following loss.

Outline

Cognitive components of understanding grief in childhood
Common grief reactions and coping mechanisms in grieving children and adolescents
Creative intervention strategies
Grief support groups for children and adolescents
Ethical and practical implications for counseling children at schools

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage and Family Therapists
Psychologists
Psychiatrists
School Counselors
School Psychologists
School Social Workers
Case Managers
Addiction Counselors
Pastoral Counselors
Chaplains/Clergy
Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners
Mental Health Nurses
Thanatologists