Blog

How can we better support young people through the complex processing of grieving? Shelley Gilbert is a consultant psychotherapist and child and adolescent grief specialist whose work is informed by her own experience of being orphaned at the age of nine. To mark Children’s Grief Awareness Week 2023, she guides us through the Upward Spiral of Grief – a trauma-informed model that speaks to young peoples’ lived experience of loss.

How can therapists contribute to a more open culture around death and dying? As we focus on supporting our clients through their grief, we can at times be in danger of estranging ourselves from our own. To coincide with Dying Matters Awareness Week 2023, which is encouraging conversations about death, dying and grief in the workplace, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Anne Adelman shares a very personal experience of loss.

When working with bereaved clients, we may sense the need for a ritual… and find ourselves reaching for a ready supply of generic prescriptions. As Paul M. Martin, clinical psychologist, assistant director of The Center for Grief Recovery and author of Personal Grief Rituals explains, therapists have an opportunity to help clients design something far more expressive, meaningful and tailored to their unique psychological needs.

How can taking photos of nature help clients to process grief? Following a sudden bereavement, professional photographer and transpersonal arts counsellor Sisi Burn started taking walks with her camera. The result was a powerful and transformative dialogue with herself – an approach that could be accessible to any client with a cameraphone.

What do grief work, relational neuroscience and the latest advances in trauma therapy tell us about the mental health impact of Covid-19 – and how we might help individuals and communities to heal? Next week, PESI UK will be asking Bessel van der Kolk, Julia Samuel, Daniel Siegel and Janina Fisher as part of a free, three-day summit for Mental Health Awareness Week.

Top clinicians and thought leaders, including Bessel van der Kolk, Janina Fisher, Dan Siegel, Julia Samuel and David Weaver, are coming together for PESI UK’s three-day Mental Health Awareness Summit this May – and it’s all completely free.

Denial, anger, depression, bargaining… we are likely to be encountering all of these reactions to the current covid-19 pandemic in our clients, as well as in ourselves. Dr Esther Ramsay-Jones, a psychotherapist and lecturer in Death Dying and Bereavement, suggests how the concept of anticipatory grief might help us to understand our shifting emotional positions at this time – and begins to imagine what acceptance might look like.

Psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE has spent 25 years working with bereaved families. Over the last eight weeks, the author of Grief Works has been sharing her concept of the ‘pillars of strength’, which we can use to help clients grieve and rebuild their lives. In her final blog of the series, Samuel introduces the eighth pillar – focusing.

Psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE has spent 25 years working with bereaved families. In this weekly blog series, the author of Grief Works is sharing her concept of the ‘pillars of strength’, which we can use to help clients grieve and rebuild their lives. Today, Samuel introduces the sixth pillar – recognising and asserting our limits.

Psychotherapist Julia Samuel MBE has spent 25 years working with bereaved families. In this weekly blog series, the author of Grief Works is sharing her concept of the ‘pillars of strength’, which we can use to help clients grieve and rebuild their lives. Today, Samuel introduces the fifth pillar – the mindbody – and offers tips on how to regulate this while grieving.