Mourning to Meaning: Advanced Dialogic Practices in Grief Therapy
What's In It For Me
Learn to:
- Summarize a Continuing Bonds approach and its implications for grief therapy
- Apply Re-Membering Conversations as a means of engaging the deceased as an ally in therapy
- Implement the Symptom Dialogues technique to discover an unexpected source of support in grief
- Analyze a case of traumatic loss to identify concrete and abstract triggers for re-traumatization
- Practice the Embodied Dialogue technique to more fully integrate the meaning of the loss and of the bond with the deceased.
Course Overview
As our clients teach us, grief therapy typically requires more than empathic listening, while waiting for time to heal the wounds of loss. This 2-day workshop offers a close process analysis of two cases, as vehicles for demonstrating creative interventions tailored to the unique needs of quite different clients, one dealing with a normative loss of a partner to illness in later life, and the second with the traumatic loss of not one but two children in the perinatal period.
On Day 1, we meet Loretta, contending with profound loneliness in the aftermath of the death of her husband of over 50 years. In keeping with a Continuing Bonds approach to accessing the relationship with the deceased as a resource in grief therapy, presenter Robert Neimeyer invites a spontaneous and appreciative Re-membering Conversation about their special connection, followed by a Symptom Dialogue that facilitates Loretta’s conversation with a personified version of her loneliness to learn more about its function in her life now. Participants are then given clear instructions for both techniques, with an opportunity to practice them under the mentoring of faculty.
On Day 2, we meet Christina, following a tragically compounded bereavement in the context of infertility treatment. After retelling the traumatic story of multiple loss, Christina focuses on the struggle to retain attachment to a dead child she could scarcely hold outside her womb, and Neimeyer guides her in an Embodied Dialogue to help install a more internalized bond. Participants will then have the opportunity for mentored practice with this core technique, as well as to discuss theory and research supporting both days of training.
Training Type
Full Time
Who Should Attend
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.
Course Duration
2 days, 9am - 5pm
18 - 19 Jan 2027
Total Training Duration (Hour)
14 hours
Course Outline
- Assessing clients’ needs through the Tripartite Model of Meaning Reconstruction
- Detecting cues regarding the client’s need and readiness for a specific intervention at a given point in therapy
- Moving beyond a dyadic therapist-client approach to therapy to a triadic coupling of therapist-client-deceased to strengthen the work
- Exploring the bond with the deceased as a source of consolation rather than pain
- Using performative methods to go beyond the power of literal words in transforming grief
- Considering the implications of research for clinical practice
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
Course Objectives
- Summarize a Continuing Bonds approach and its implications for grief therapy
- Apply Re-Membering Conversations as a means of engaging the deceased as an ally in therapy
- Implement the Symptom Dialogues technique to discover an unexpected source of support in grief
- Analyze a case of traumatic loss to identify concrete and abstract triggers for re-traumatization
- Practice the Embodied Dialogue technique to more fully integrate the meaning of the loss and of the bond with the deceased.
Medium of Instruction & Trainer
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.
Funding Information
NCSS PCG pre-approved funding to be advised.
Course Pre-Requisites
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 |
Early Bird Fee (Before GST): S$900 (register & pay by 7 Dec 2026)
NCSS PCG pre-approved funding to be advised.
Please note that prices are subjected to change.