As Thomas Attig might phrase it, grieving entails relearning the self and relearning the world, because both are challenged and changed, sometimes profoundly, by the unwelcome transitions we encounter when one world ends, and another begins. This adage holds whether the existential change we confront is associated with bereavement due to the death of a significant person or due to a non-death loss, as through serious but non-fatal illness, trauma, divorce or relational betrayal, loss of career or more. In each case, we may lose crucial relationships that anchor our sense of who we are, lose parts of ourselves sustained by the deceased, 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, struggle with social avoidance, shame or ostracism. In all of these ways radical changes in our lives commonly invite and often require us to revisit and revise core aspects of our identity and construct a new self in their wake.
This 2-day workshop addresses these themes as expressed in video recordings of clients dealing with significant and sometimes staggering loss and offers a generous toolbox of creative techniques for working with them in grief therapy. We begin by presenting various windows through which clients can explore subtle but substantial alterations in their identity arising from unwelcome transition, and then move toward procedures by which people can start to reconstruct their lives as they grow through grief.
Helping professionals, community/outreach workers, befrienders/volunteers, pastoral staff and others, who are keen in rendering bereavement support to those suffering from suicide-related loss.
2 days, 9am - 5pm
· Assessing clients’ needs through the Tripartite Model of Meaning Reconstruction
· Using art-assisted methods as visual representations of the grieving self
· Reflection of the self-narrative changed by loss through imaginary narratives
· Facilitation of rewriting the self-narrative using autobiography
· An attachment-oriented framework for scaffolding self-change
· Processing the seasons of changes through creative symbolic expression
· Using an internalized-other interview to envision a future self
Participants who meet 75% class attendance will be awarded a Certificate of Completion by Portland Institute for Loss and Transition & Academy of Human Development.
For certification enquiries, please email carolyn@portlandinstitute.org
· Use the Self-Portraits to examine the grieving self
· Apply the Virtual Dream Stories to generate fresh self-understandings
· Implement the Chapters of Our Lives to process life transitions
· Use the Transition Cycle to reflect on the evolving sense of self across life transitions
· Construct a Tree of Identity as a representation of an evolving self across a major life transition
· Conduct a Future Self Interview to foster self-compassion balanced with self-reconstruction
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, and maintains an active consulting and coaching practice. He also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition (www.portlandinstitute.org), which provides online training internationally in grief therapy. Neimeyer has published 33 books, including the Handbook of Grief Therapies and New Techniques of Grief Therapy: Bereavement and Beyond, and serves as Editor of the journal Death Studies. The author of over 600 articles and book chapters and a frequent workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. Neimeyer served as President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) and Chair of the International Work Group for Death, Dying, & Bereavement. 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 ADEC and the International Network on Personal Meaning
Dr Carolyn Ng, PsyD, FT, MMSAC, RegCLR maintains a private practice, Anchorage for Loss and Transition, for training, supervision and therapy in Singapore, while also serving as an Associate Director of the Portland Institute. Previously she served as Principal Counsellor with the Children’s Cancer Foundation in Singapore, specialising in cancer-related palliative care and bereavement counselling. She is a registered counsellor, master clinical member and approved supervisor with the Singapore Association for Counselling (SAC), a Fellow in Thanatology with the Association of Death Education and Counselling (ADEC), USA, as well as a consultant to a cancer support and bereavement ministry in Sydney, Australia. She is a trained end-of-life doula and advanced care planning facilitator. She is also trained in the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) by the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, USA, community crisis response by the National Organisation for Victim Assistance (NOVA), USA, as well as Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) by LivingWorks, Canada. Her recent writing concerns meaning-oriented narrative reconstruction with bereaved families, with an emphasis on conversational approaches for fostering new meaning and action.Find out more at: www.anchorage-for-loss.org.
