Online but In-Depth: Grief Therapy in the Virtual World - CORE

You’ve moved your therapy online, but have you sacrificed the depth and nuance of in-person practice, substituting psychoeducation, simple support and advice for the deeper, more emotion-focused work that grieving clients commonly require?  In this module, we explore the surprising benefits of online therapy for supporting evocative experiential interventions in grief therapy and demonstrate their use in video recordings of specific creative techniques.  Beginning with a conceptualization of grieving as a process of reaffirming or reconstructing a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss, we emphasize the practice of presence as the essential precondition to “going deep,” whether we encounter our clients in our offices or on a screen.  Working with both the choreography and staging of online therapy and the cultivation of mindfulness on the part of both therapist and client, we will consider how to construct a holding environment or secure base for accessing, symbolizing, voicing and transforming emotionally resonant meanings of mourning that foster felt shifts in how clients hold their grief, and how their grief holds them.​

At a time when humanity is swimming in a sea of loss, whether arising from bereavement or the collateral damage to once secure roles and resources resulting from the pandemic, developing deeper competencies in working with grief is essential to therapists of all theoretical orientations.  This module is designed to offer practical guidelines and to model interventions that support this goal.

Featuring: Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D.

[Note] This webinar was filmed on April 15, 2024, and may not reflect the most current information and laws regarding this topic.

Learning Objectives: 

1. List four guidelines for effective use of technology to enhance personalism in telehealth.
2. Identify distinct advantages of online therapy with special relevance to the bereaved.
3. Summarize the 3 P’s of Psychotherapy and their contribution to effective therapeutic work.
4. Describe procedures for  Analogical Listening to the somatic felt sense of a client’s grief in a way that promotes its articulation and evolution.

Continuing Education Credits

The Trust is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Trust maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The Trust is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0019.