One of the greatest challenges to the grieving client is “getting stuck in the “event story,” or the circumstances and details of their loved one’s death, especially when that loss involves trauma.

Such is the case of Guy, who, along with his wife, Christine, lost two of their children in traumatic and traumatizing circumstances. Having initially received individual and family therapy following the loss of their 19-year-old son Steven almost four years before in a car accident, Guy’s wounds have been tragically re-opened, along with intrusive thoughts and images related to the accidental drowning death of his 19-year-old daughter Sylvie a mere year-and –a-half ago.

Fearing of re-opening earlier wounds and the return of the depression and terror he experienced following Steven’s death, he meets with Neimeyer in hopes of gently and partially revisiting his painful and traumatizing event story with a restorative, hopeful, and resilience-affirming re-telling of his narrative of loss. By watching them work, you will not only appreciate but take away powerful techniques you can immediately apply in working with your own grieving clients centered around several core methods:

Restorative Retelling — An empathically attuned clinical response to the client’s event story supporting a re-telling of that narrative in a non-retraumatizing fashion.

Re-weaving the Event Story — Eliciting and integrating the three strands of the loss narrative including the external narrative (details of the loss), internal narrative (emotional/somatic elements of the loss), and reflexive narrative (the meaning-making of the story).

Three P’s of Attunement — At a “process” level, the clinician implements bracing (modulating the client’s level of exposure to the loss events), pacing (moving the client briskly through the re-telling) and facing (helping the client to “stand into” and narrate the story).

The Pyramid of Practice — A tripartite approach to standing with a grieving client in a non-anxious way that involves procedure (techniques, methods, and tools), process (empathy, non-verbal feedback, somatic awareness), and presence (mindfulness, responsiveness, vulnerability).

For Neimeyer, knowing how to do grief therapy should certainly be at the core of our work with grieving clients; however, it is only one leg of a 3-legged stool, the other two being attachment-informed therapy and resilience-informed therapy. By watching this gripping video, you will learn to comfortably, confidently, and competently share this stool with your clients as they re-narrate their stories of loss.