In Conventional support groups or therapy groups for grieving clients can be rather predictable affairs: A group of grievers gather to share their stories of loss, express their relevant emotions, normalize their pain and receive social support, sometimes with the facilitation of a professional therapist. While useful, this generic format does not appeal to all mourners, and encounters some common challenges in terms of uneven participation, dominance of the group by its neediest or most vocal members, inconsistent attendance, potential re-traumatization by the stories of others and dispiriting rumination about shared grief at the expense of fostering change. None of these disadvantages are inherent to the group format, however, as all can be avoided, mitigated or resolved by creative innovations in the format and focus of the support groups or grief therapy groups.
This workshop is designed for all professionals and volunteers who facilitate groups for the bereaved or those dealing with significant non-death losses, as of health, an intimate relationship, or career.
Day 1 begins by sketching a meaning-focused approach to group work, and illustrates in detail a multi-session format with phases that help participants safely process and integrate their stories of loss and their associated emotions, access and address lingering unfinished business in the back stories of their relationships with the deceased, and envision necessary changes in their personal stories of who they are in the wake of unwelcome change. We then introduce and practice one highly engaging reflective exercise incorporated in this format for exploring transitions in group members’ stories of loss and sharing the resulting insights with fellow participants.
Day 2 then invites participants to give visual and verbal form to their own experiences of loss while preserving as much confidentiality about its content as they wish, and does so in ways that combine these individual experiences into a joint product that fosters both appreciation of difference and recognition of commonalities that transcend any single individual. Finally, we conclude with systematic instruction in reflecting team methodology, a group practice involving multiple observers offering pluralistic feedback on an individual or family therapy session in the presence of the clients and therapist, who are then free to engage or utilize those parts of the feedback that move or speak to them. Taken together, the two days of training offer in-depth exposure to and practice of a generous toolbox of creative techniques for enlivening group approaches to grief therapy and bereavement support, while resolving many of its conventional challenges.
All counsellors, healthcare workers, social workers, psychologists, art / music / expressive arts therapists, school personnel, pastoral staff, and people involved in the helping professions.
2 days, 9am - 5pm
· Common problems in grief groups and how to avoid or address them
· Meaning focused therapy through the complementary lenses of attachment, trauma and resilience and its implementation in the Meaning In Loss Group structure
· Promoting artful grieving through personal and interpersonal creativity utilizing the My LOG Book in Grief Journey and When Grief Finds Expression techniques
· Conducting Reflecting Teams to support grieving clients while also challenging them to grow through grief
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
· Describe common process challenges in grief groups and their corresponding solutions
· Conceptualize group processes and practices using the Tripartite Model of Meaning Reconstruction
· Implement creative narrative and arts-assisted methods in a group context to safely express and explore individual experiences of loss and promote their transformation through small- and whole-group processes
· Demonstrate use of divergent but appreciative feedback to consolidate therapeutic progress and catalyse further change
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.
