Seeking Meaning in Loss: 3-Day Workshop in Meaning-Focused Grief Therapy (Total Engagement Hours: 18)
(Total Engagement Hours: 18)
Dates:
September 2025: 15, 16, & 17
Time:
9:00 am - 4:30 pm
Location:
Sheraton Suites Wilmington Downtown
422 Delaware Avenue
Wilmington, DE 19081
Topics:
Day 1: Attachment-Informed Grief Therapy
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize the Two-Track Model of bereavement and its use in assessing two critical domains of post-loss functioning
- Apply Secure Base Mapping to trace sustaining bonds over time to identify internal and external resources to promote adaptation to life transitions
- Utilize Introducing the Loved One and Object Stories to invoke the presence of the deceased as a resource in bereavement adaptation and grief therapy
- Discuss the concept of continuing bonds with the deceased and identify how it can both support and interfere with adaptive grieving
- Summarize the use of the Unfinished Business in Bereavement Scale for assessing residual conflicts and disappointments in the relationship with the deceased that invite therapeutic work
- Practice Life Imprint technique to recognize the living legacy of the deceased for the survivor and Correspondence with the Deceased for realigning the bond with the deceased as the client transitions toward a changed future
Day 2: Trauma-Informed Grief Therapy
Learning Objectives:
- Distinguish between therapeutic “presence” and “absence” in the process of therapy
- Summarize the essential features of the Meaning Reconstruction model and outline its implications for grief therapy
- Implement restorative retelling procedures for mastering the event story of the loss
- Summarize guidelines for Analogical Listening as a procedure to help clients make greater sense of their emotions and themselves
- Describe how a figurative form of somatic inquiry into the felt sense of loss can help clients symbolize their implicit embodied meanings
- Distinguish between emotion-focused, sense-making, and benefit-finding approaches to journaling and highlight the role of each
Day 3: Resilience-Informed Grief Therapy
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize evidence supporting two meaning-oriented measures of challenges to personal identity and personal growth in bereavement
- Apply the Identity Constellation Exercise to map one’s position in the context of relationships and personal projects
- Conceptualize the Internalized Other Interview as a means of accessing the perspective of the deceased on the grieving client’s need for self-change
- Describe the relevance of Dialogical Self Theory in conceptualizing the self in the context of significant relationships to relevant others, including the deceased
- Apply Composition Work to access, differentiate and symbolize a variety of self-aspects and feelings involved in adapting to transition and loss
- Visualize significant shifts in the broader family system as a function of the loss, and promote their adaptive realignment
Presenter Bios:
Presenter Names and Bios
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology at the University of Memphis, maintains an active consulting practice, and directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, which provides global online training in grief therapy. Neimeyer has published 37 books, including Living Beyond Loss: Questions and Answers about Grief and Bereavement and New Techniques of Grief Therapy, and serves as Editor of Death Studies. The author of over 600 articles and book chapters, he has been recognized in the Stanford University/Elsevier list of Top 2% Scientists in the world, with 57,968 citations to his work according to Google Scholar. Neimeyer is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. In recognition of his contributions, he has been made a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning.
Carolyn Ng, PsyD, MMSAC, RegCLR maintains a private practice, Anchorage for Loss and Transition, for training, supervision, and therapy in Singapore, while also serving as Associate Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. Previously she was a Principal Counsellor with the Children’s Cancer Foundation in Singapore, specializing in cancer-related palliative care and bereavement counselling. She is a registered counsellor, master clinical member, and approved supervisor with the Singapore Association for Counselling (SAC), and a consultant to a cancer support and bereavement ministry in Sydney, Australia. She is trained in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) by the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, USA, community crisis response by the National Organisation for Victim Assistance (NOVA), USA, and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) by LivingWorks, Canada. She is also a trained end-of-life doula and advanced care planning facilitator. Her recent writing concerns meaning-oriented narrative reconstruction with bereaved families, with an emphasis on conversational approaches for fostering new meaning and action.
