Many clients come to therapy seeking support for recent or anticipated losses and their lasting effects—difficulties forming attachments, a tendency toward excessive self-reliance, or other disruptions to relational and emotional life. After all, loss is intrinsic to the human experience, and it offers opportunities to cultivate wisdom, growth, and resilience.
This advanced workshop will provide you with a systematic, evidence-based framework for grief therapy grounded in over three decades of empirical research by Dr. Robert Neimeyer. His work on meaning reconstruction in bereavement has generated nearly 58,000 citations and established him among the top 2% of scientists globally.
You will acquire a comprehensive clinical model that integrates trauma-informed, attachment-informed, and resilience-informed perspectives. This model addresses the multidimensional nature of complicated grief across diverse loss circumstances.
Throughout this training, you will learn how to:
- Implement validated assessment protocols that identify specific disruptions in meaning-making, unmet bereavement needs, and attachment-related complications to guide targeted intervention selection
- Master restorative retelling procedures for trauma processing, imaginal dialogue techniques for resolving unfinished business, and narrative reconstruction methods for accommodating loss into clients' revised life stories
- Utilize creative interventions—including correspondence with the deceased, virtual dream house construction, life imprint exploration, and designed rituals—that facilitate active grief engagement both within and between sessions
The therapeutic techniques presented rest on robust empirical foundations. These include clinical trials demonstrating that increases in meaning-making in one session predict decreases in prolonged grief symptoms in the next. They also draw on network analyses revealing the intersection of complicated grief and post-traumatic growth, as well as longitudinal studies identifying the processes through which sense-making promotes adaptation.
You will gain a deeper understanding of how to work with three integrated domains: the event story of dying, the back story of relationship, and the personal story of self. Each requires differentiated yet coordinated clinical attention.
This systematic approach will enable you to address the deepest sources of fixation in bereavement—whether traumatic distress, separation distress, or identity disruption. Ultimately, you will support clients in reconstructing rather than relinquishing bonds with the deceased as they transition toward lives of renewed coherence and purpose.
