Why reflecting on death is important

Thoughts of death, loss and grief can be challenging. How do we work with a client’s grief? How do we manage our own grief in this process? What does a dying client bring to the work?

Following a global pandemic, when thoughts of death were ever present, clinicians need time and space to reflect on what death and dying mean for us, what impact they may have on therapy and on the therapeutic alliance, and how death and grief may play out within our clinical work.

It is important to consider your own relationship with grief; culturally, spiritually, personally, systemically and professionally. To be best placed to work with this most universal of life experiences we must take the time to explore own experiences.

For many clinicians, death and grief can understandably bring fear, paralleling responses of wider society – a shutting down rather than a widening of the discourse around this often difficult subject.

What you will learn

This short course will help clinicians to meet clients with open curiosity, compassion and confidence. It will support clinicians in welcoming grief as a natural process and also recognising when grief has become complex or pathological offering tools and frameworks to facilitate the therapy work.

After completing the course, you will have:

• A better understanding of a range of grief theories, de-pathologising the grief process.
• Awareness of your own relationship with grief and what this brings to the therapy work.
• Familiarity with frameworks and tools for working with grief and loss.

Tutors

Sharon Herriot and Bethan Bäez-Devine