Yet, as therapists, we know the cost to our clients when these intangible losses are never acknowledged or comforted.

• Because grief is such a painful emotion, the universal instinct of all human beings is to avoid feelings of sorrow. That leaves our clients angry at the failure of their attachment figures or angry at themselves for not being good enough to be loved, unable to resolve their grief because it is too frightening to ‘go there.’
• In addition, such anger can reflect as hostility, physical / emotional aggression, lack of self-worth and relationship / behavioural difficulties in clinical manifestations.
• Often the clients are grieving for an intangible loss (like the loss of safety) without being fully aware of what that loss is. Sometimes, the lack of acknowledgement of this loss from parents/caregivers is even more devastating for the clients than the actual loss itself
• Addressing this wide gamut of psychological manifestations requires us to get to the root of the presenting challenge and assist the grieving process for ‘lost’ childhoods. By validating their intangible, abstract, profound loss and allowing them to grieve, we can help support trauma recovery of our clients.

But as psychotherapists and counsellors, how do we help our clients grieve when they fear sadness or re-opening the wounds of childhood?

At this intellectually challenging and therapeutically oriented two-evening online webinar with globally acclaimed trauma specialist Dr Janina Fisher, we will address the special challenges involved in grieving early losses of safety, welcome, comfort, and kindness.  Using clinical vignettes, we will first examine how never feeling important or cherished or delighted in, is a different kind of loss than the socially recognized loss of a parent or partner, further complicating bereavement.

In addition, the early loss of safety results in diminished capacity to tolerate emotional pain, making it harder to grieve without getting overwhelmed by it.  We will then consider how can we help our clients to feel less frightened of their grief and better able to acknowledge it.

Specifically, we will consider how a mindfulness-based approach to grief and loss is gentle and less anxiety-causing than other approaches.  We can use mindfulness to help clients learn to tolerate an optimal level of sadness, not too much that it becomes overwhelming and not so little that it results in avoidance.  Mindful grieving helps us befriend grief and diminishes the sense of aloneness so often felt by those grieving emotional losses of childhood by themselves.  Through case studies, delegates will be introduced to step-by-step somatic approaches for letting sadness arise and then flow through our clients’ minds and bodies, creating release and healing. We can help our clients to transform and heal the grief they carry and find the emotional resilience they need to move on.

© nscience 2023 / 2024