Release, Reclaim, (Re)build

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Alex Mammadyarov, LMHC, EdM, MA Related seminars and products

Alex Mammadyarov Mental Health Counseling

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Alex Mammadyarov is a New York-based licensed mental health counselor and writer specializing in grief. Alex works in private practice, providing trauma-informed and multi-culturally responsive individual psychotherapy to adults. Alex is passionate about holding sacred space through parent loss process groups for young adults. In 2019, Alex founded an online platform providing writings and psychoeducation on loss and grief, which continues to thrive today. Alex holds a dual master’s degree in counseling psychology and mental health counseling from Teachers College, Columbia University. Additionally, Alex has obtained training as a death doula from Alua Arthur’s Going with Grace End of Life Training Program.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Alex Mammadyarov maintains a private practice. She has an employment relationship with Intuitive Healing Psychotherapy Practice and is an author with New Harbinger Publications, Inc. Alex Mammadyarov receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Alex Mammadyarov has no relevant non-financial relationships.

Objectives

1. Evaluate how clients’ identities have shifted after experiencing a loss to inform clinical treatment interventions.
2. Assess whether changes to a client’s sense of self signify living in reaction or living with new intention as it relates to case conceptualisation.
3. Apply the 3 R’s of Identity Realignment (Release, Reclaim, (Re)build) in session with a client.

Outline

Understanding Identity Changes after Loss  

• Learn how relationships and life roles factor into a client’s self-concept and how loss can unravel a sense of identity  
• Attune to key statements and symptomatology that open the door to exploring identity change with a client 
• Guide clients in reflection on identity with essential questions regarding how they define and view themselves as people before and after loss 

Discerning Living in Reaction vs. Living with Intention 

• Learn about contrasting outcomes after loss 
• A diminished sense of self, anxiety, and avoidance 
• Posttraumatic growth and new values, beliefs, and desires  
• Empower clients to begin non-judgmentally exploring how loss may be holding them back and also propelling them forward in new ways via in-between session journaling 

Me, Before & After Loss Exercise 

• Learn how to guide clients in the use of a creative worksheet  
• Clients can write or draw in and around two bodies, one representing the self before loss and one representing the self after loss  
• Review and reflect together, noticing what has remained as stabilising forces and what has shifted, what has been visible and what gone unseen by those around them 

Learning how to Release, Reclaim, (Re)build  

• Through empathic dialogue and writing prompts, help clients re-work their sense of identity by discerning  
• What feels truly gone and/or acceptable to let go of? 
• Consider mourning practices for these parts of self 
• What has remained or feels recoverable? 
• Explore reconnecting to these parts of self through ritual 
• What feels new and maybe even exciting? 
• Collaborate on methods of self-discovery 

Risks and Limitations 

Target Audience

• Psychiatrists   
• Psychologists  
• Counsellors   
• Social Workers  
• Marriage and Family Therapists   
• Nurses   
• Physicians  
• Other Mental Health Professionals