Grief Process Support Course

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«Grief is the price we pay for love.» — José González

Holding the Pain: Clinical Keys to Supporting Grief Processes

• Without pushing, fleeing, or becoming overwhelmed.

Why This Course

• 62% of psychology consultations are related to some grief process.
• Loss —of a loved one, a relationship, a life stage, a version of oneself— is constant in clinical practice.
• Specific training in grief support is scarce in the average psychotherapist's career.
• We learn to talk about grief, but we are rarely taught to be with it.

Grief Process Support Course

• Directed by José González Fernández, psychologist specializing in grief, loss, and trauma.
• Author of Grief: Growing Through Loss and awarded the Lafourcade-Ponce Prize.
• More than twenty-five years of clinical experience and twenty-five thousand grievers supported.
• Nearly eight thousand professionals trained annually.
• Practical-experiential program based on the experience of grievers.

The Premise Underpinning the Program

• Distinction between pain and suffering:
• Pain is the natural and inevitable discomfort of a loss.
• Suffering is the added discomfort caused by poor grief management.
• The goal of support is to hold the griever's pain to prevent suffering.
• The therapist's role is that of a co-pilot: suggesting and accompanying the pace, but not taking ownership of the other's process.
• The central conviction: the goal is not for the griever to forget, but to learn to remember with sustainable sadness.

What You Will Work On in the Course

Fundamentals of Grief Support

• Cultural contextualization of grief in a thanatophobic society that hyper-rationalizes loss.
• Distinction between pain and suffering as a clinical compass.
• The co-pilot's position as an intervention framework.

The Emotions of Grief

• Utility and management of unpleasant emotions: denial, rage, anger, envy, and sadness.
• Specific work on guilt in its three forms: traumatic, relational, and social.

  "Guilt is the kryptonite of human beings," according to González.

• Concept of ecpathy: how to manage professional empathy without merging or becoming overwhelmed.

Types of Grief and Reference Models

• Anticipatory, normal, chronic, and complicated grief.
• Worden and Kübler-Ross Models.
• Martin and Doka Model on processing subtypes.
• Tools for the suicidological dimension of grief.

Tools and Dynamics for Consultation

• Relational universe and support pillars.
• Loss Integration Letter: working on what is unsaid, unseen, and unrecognized.
• Integration rituals and the grief itinerary with its fourteen milestones.
• Firewall dynamic for complex grief.
• Session-by-session intervention protocol adaptable to each type of grief.

Additionally

Upon completing the course, you will have access to the full program of José González's Master in Grief Processes with a 50% discount.