Meaning-Focused Grief Therapy: Essential Interventions for Traumatic Loss

What's In It For Me

Upcoming Schedule: 15 - 16 January 2026 (Registration opening on 21 July 2025)

Course Overview

In this 2-day workshop, we will begin by considering how we can quickly assess our clients’ needs in terms of the 4-dimensional model of Meaning-Focused Grief Therapy in bereavement, featuring obstacles to processing the event story of the death, accessing the back story of the relationship with the deceased, revising the personal story of the mourner’s own sense of identity, and sorting through the existential story of life in the shadow of loss. We will then review very recent research that traces the impact of avoidant and approach-oriented coping on meaning making and symptomatic outcomes in the case of traumatic losses as through suicide and drug overdose as well as the utility of a validated measure of client needs in dealing with sudden dead bereavement. Finally we will explore various meaning-oriented techniques that help mourners make sense of the loss in the context of the changed story of their lives but also make sense of themselves as survivors in light of it.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

· Describe the link between different styles of coping and bereavement outcomes following traumatic loss;

· Distinguish between therapeutic “presence” and “absence” in the process of therapy;

· Summarize recent research on the expressed needs of survivors of sudden bereavement and their implications for risk of prolonged grief;

· Apply My Loss Epicentres in Life as a form of loss history review to facilitate integration;

· Implement Restorative Retelling procedures for mastering the event story of the loss;

· Execute Analogical Listening to help clients make better sense of their emotions; and

· Distinguish between emotion-focused, sense-making and benefit-finding approaches to journaling and highlight the role of each.

Who Should Attend

All counsellors, healthcare workers, social workers, psychologists, teachers and principals, pastoral staff, and people involved in the helping profession.

Course Duration

2 days, 9am - 5pm

Course Outline

· Meaning-Focused Grief Therapy: A Roadmap for Intervention

· Coping with Crisis: Avoidance vs. Approach

· Finding a Focus: Identifying Client Needs in Traumatic Loss

· The Power of Presence: Constructing a Relational Container

· Loss Epicentres in life: An Experiential Practice

· Restorative Retelling: From Principles to Practice

· Conversing with the Canvas: Analogical Listening to the Heart of Grief

· Directed Journaling: Writing for Wellbeing

Certification Obtained and Conferred by

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

Medium of Instruction & Trainer

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.

Dr 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

Funding Information

NCSS member and MSF-funded Social Service Agencies are able to apply for PCG Funding, pre-approved at 45% funding per pax for Singaporean/PR. (subjected to screening and approval after registration).

Additional Notes

Venue: Lifelong Learning Institute (Room TBC)

Price

Discount / Promotion Fee (Apply to original fee only)	Fee Payable After Discount / Promotion
	Before GST	With GST (9%)
*Early Bird Fee Refer to EB closing date below**	$900.00	$981.00
	Course Fee Payable
Original Fee	Before GST	With GST (9%)
Course Fee	$975.00	$1,062.75
Corporate Pricing (Fee payable to Training Provider)
Non-SME	Before GST	With GST (9%)
NCSS PCG 45% funding (SC/PRs)	$536.25	$584.51
SME	Before GST	With GST (9%)
NCSS PCG 45% funding (SC/PRs)	$536.25	$584.51

Early Bird Fee (before GST): S$900 (register & pay 4 December 2025)

* Early Bird Discount will be reflected during payment checkout / billing invoice

NCSS member and MSF-funded Social Service Agencies are able to apply for PCG Funding, pre-approved at 45% funding per pax for Singaporean/PR. (subjected to screening and approval after registration).