Psychotherapy and Counseling Articles
Psychotherapy and Grief Counseling Articles
Our team of professionals brings a diverse spectrum of approaches in working with you. Are you learning about a new therapy method? Do you want some tips to try before starting counseling? Please browse our psychotherapy and grief counseling articles archive and take a look at our award-winning blog, listed as a Top 50 Counseling Blog by The Counseling Courier website. If you have grief & loss resources to add to our collection, please let us know via info@https://griefcounselor.org.
From PesiUK: Helping Clients Design Personal Grief Rituals
PesiUK published Paul M Martin's article, "Helping Clients Design Personal Grief Rituals" in December 2022. You can read it online at https://www.pesi.co.uk/blog/2022/december/helping-clients-design-personal-grief-rituals When working with bereaved clients, we may...
A Letter from On Being
"The Greek word “apocalypse,” as you may have heard me say in On Being interviews of recent years, does not mean a catastrophic undoing. It means an uncovering — the lifting of a veil. The Covid-19 virus — a product of the natural world, spread by human contact — has...
The Problem of Regressive Restoration
Many of us are hoping—perhaps beyond reason—that we will take a large evolutionary step forward as a result of the corona virus/covid-19 crisis. After all, we are being plunged into a sudden awareness of death, and death prompts introspection and life review in deep...
Core Causes of Corruption
Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests there is inherent in humanity a deep negative process that is driven into full bloom by excessive frustration and largely responsible for our suffering. At its base, the core causes of corruption (awkwardly named) are: selfishness,...
Having a Witness
If you’ve endured the death of a friend, colleague, or relative, hopefully someone was there who could witness your pain. In the case of grief and mourning, witnessing illuminates how our grief in the current situation is influenced by our beliefs and previous...
Thoughts on Grief and Ritual
This article will introduce some definitions that are useful to think about in the context of loss. Grief is the natural healing cycle humans endure when they experience the emotional, cognitive, physical, and spiritual reactions after a loss or separation. Grief is...
Professional Consultation for Therapists
Recently, we’ve had several conversations with therapists who have requested information about the intersection between loss experiences and ongoing psychotherapy. Many therapists need to increase their knowledge and experience helping individuals through the intense...
Empathy Defined
Empathy has been described and defined in many ways. In the last few years, I have been collecting my thoughts about empathy as it applies to psychotherapy and would like to share them here. My bias is to see the concept as a therapists’ main instrument for...
Going Back to Basics: Learning from Social Work’s Person-in-Environment Perspective
In the last few years, there have been days, weeks, months even, when I have felt more uncertainty and gloom than ever before in my adult life. Whatever personal issues were within and in front of me, they felt toxified by the social and political disorder of our...
Thoughts on Responding to Feelings of Helplessness and Futility
At a mental health provider training that I attended not long ago, at one point the facilitator was attempting to communicate how survivors of trauma often feel frighteningly out of control even in the most secure and benign situations. In a tone that suggested he...
Vulnerability and Transformation
We have all been conditioned to think about human vulnerability primarily in terms of weakness. As such, the experience of vulnerability is to be denied and avoided at all costs. We think to be weak is unacceptable. To be vulnerable is to be weak, therefore it is...
Innovative Methods to Enhance Counseling
Some of the Many Innovative Methods to Enhance Counseling In addition to traditional grief therapy methods, there are many innovative methods to enhance counseling, including guided imagery, expressive art therapy, and play therapy for children. Guided Imagery Guided...
The Howl of Grief
There is a phase in the grief process that feels like fragmentation. There are few words that can describe the gut-wrenching pain of this part of grief. Many people say it's like their self is being torn apart or that the anguish they feel coursing through their body...
Losing Jerry
As a result of a comment made in reference to my blog entry, "The Howl of Grief," I have decided to share something a bit more personal. In spite of my role as a therapist, I believe there are appropriate ways for myself and other therapists to share personal...
Expressing and Processing Emotions in Grief Therapy Part One
Part 1 In setting up grief therapy, which focuses on expressing and processing emotions in grief, it is necessary to look at the blocks to the free and appropriate flow of emotion. We can assume that within each of us there is a struggle to share painful feelings. A...
Anniversary Reactions
An understanding of anniversary reactions is especially important for grievers who have suffered their loss a year or more ago. Even if we are not consciously aware of our emotions, our psychological clock will be extremely accurate. Significant days or events from...
Expressing and Processing Emotions in Grief Therapy Part Two
The proper atmosphere for grief therapy should be a combination of warmth (gentleness) and structure (firmness). The mixture of these two, provides a safe place to express and analyze the difficult feelings surrounding loss. A feeling of safety is needed to help...
Assigning Meaning To Tragedy
As human beings we struggle with the notion of meaning. Perhaps one of the best discussions of this issue comes from Victor Frankl's, "Man's Search for Meaning." Frankl discusses his own experience as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps and how he worked to find...
Why Grief Counseling?
Many people wonder about why grief counseling is recommended. What is it? Why should I do it? It's hard enough to go through this with friends and family. What's meeting with a professional going to do for me? Why Grief Counseling Works We know that the searing...
Communal Grief
We are born knowing how to grieve. As children, we cry naturally to feel better, to let go of our pain, to release the burdens of pent-up emotions. It helped us lessen the weight from our shoulders. Positive expressions of grief are helpful to us. It is the lack...
Declaration of Values for Communal Grief
At The Center for Grief Recovery, we work primarily with individuals. But individuals make up groups and groups make up communities. These days we have both physical and virtual communities. As the world around us continues to show signs of chaos, it seems...
Walking Through Grief–Together
When The Center for Grief Recovery hosted its first-ever fundraiser walk to celebrate 25 years of service to the bereavement community, the day was hot, but there was a cool breeze off lake Michigan and the trees offered nice shade. A group of 60+ people attended the...
Loss Is Hard Enough
Grieving a loss is hard enough, but when the environment won't or can't surround us in our loss with consistent comfort and useful resources, then it becomes even harder. There's a term being used in the bereavement literature called complicated mourning or traumatic...
Loss and Change in Bereavement Counseling
Will I Ever Be the Same Again??? Grief comes in many different forms and in response to many kinds of losses. Sometimes an existential crisis occurs in the context of loss and grief. The desire to return to their pre-loss functioning and what has been good and...
You Know Grief Therapy Is Working When…
You know that your grief therapy is working when... You feel increasingly uncomfortable with the status quo when it is causing harm. Your causes and relationships begin to more closely reflect and reinforce your values. You take the risk to trust your own change and...
What to Say and Do to Support the Bereaved
It can be hard to know what the right thing is to say and do to supported the bereaved. There’s no way to take the pain away form someone who is grieving, but there are ways that one can offer support. Can you describe some of the most effective ways to offer...
Suggestions for Grief Journaling
Keeping a personal journal can help you process and sort out your thoughts, feelings, memories, images, sensations, etc. As you continue to write, you may begin to gain clarity of where you have been, where you are now, and where you want to be in the future. This...
Myths and Realities of Mourning
Regrettably, our society maintains a host of unrealistic assumptions and inappropriate expectations when it comes to the work of grief and the realities of mourning. Here are some myths to consider: Grief and mourning decline in a steadily decreasing fashion over...
Ideas About Mourning
For the griever the future feels shattered; everything hoped for is broken and gone, lost like a broken mirror. The task is to feel, look at, tolerate that brokenness and gradually recreate a beautiful mosaic out of those shattered pieces of one’s life. Some Ideas...
Grief Symptoms, Causes, and Effects
Grief is a normal part of coping with a loss, but for some people, it can be far more serious. In some situations, normal grief can lead to a grief disorder, which can require professional help to overcome. What Are the Types of Grief Disorders? There are several...
Grief in the Workplace: An Outline for Helping
How to Help Grief in the Workplace Stop the Action The first step in dealing with a death in an institution or workplace is to stop the normal activities and reschedule so that employees can come together to share their thoughts and feelings. Depending on the...
A Grief Out Of Season
We are not prepared to lose a friend and colleague in the span of a day or weekend. We are not prepared to have death come to us so suddenly, unexpectedly, almost assaultively. Work is the known world — the place for demonstrating our strength, our competence, our...
The Grief Experience
Grief is the natural, healthy, spontaneous, unlearned, normal, emotional, healing process that occurs after a significant loss. Grief is experienced uniquely by each of us, and is often experienced in waves, with emotions, thinking, physical, and social responses...
The Elements of Therapeutic Grief Work
Relationship Building In the past medical practitioners were accepted as authorities within a social system that expected certain people to give orders and others to obey them. Certain roles such as: doctor, lawyer, teacher, allowed those persons to give advice and to...
The Difference Between Grief and Mourning
It is critical to know the difference between grief and mourning. Both processes are there to help the bereaved face the reality that their loved one is gone and then to slowly begin to accommodate to that fact. This accommodation phase is essentially the ongoing...
Depression Boot Camp
Tips For Combating Grief - Depression Boot Camp Be up and dressed by 6:30 every a.m. Take a 30 min walk. Eat at least 3x per day or 5 smaller meals with a little protein in each—especially in the morning. Keeping blood sugar in check is very important. Avoid sugar and...
The Center’s Holistic Grief Scale
Grief is the natural, healthy, spontaneous, unlearned, normal, emotional, healing process that occurs after a significant loss. Grief is experienced uniquely by each of us, and is often experienced in waves, with emotions, thinking, physical, social and...