Both sudden and anticipated bereavement can be complex, life- altering events that are typically challenging to navigate, particularly if the bereaved individual is sitting with PTS, PTSD or Complex (C)-PTSD from however long ago.
So once the griever has presented for therapy to make sense of their grief, how does the therapist work safely without the client becoming re-traumatised?
What skills and processes might they consider to achieve this?
An important part of this session would involve looking at how trauma may affect the client's window of tolerance (WOT): how their living in past trauma can brace them to detect threat, entering into a state of defence, meaning their WOT is narrow. The stress of a traumatic memory may push them out of their WOT.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Understanding the difference between PTD, PTSD and Complex (C) PTSD particularly (though not exclusively) in relation to bereavement.
- Recognising/identifying when a bereaved (or other) client/s might be sitting with any form of trauma from however long ago.
- Recognising/identifying when (a) client/s is out of their window of tolerance and begins to dysregulate, and how to facilitate stabilisation.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- This workshop is appropriate for counsellors/psychotherapists and allied professionals at all stages of training and qualification.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- As a practitioner who originally trained in a person-centred modality, Jennifer is comfortable workshops in a way that involves the participants, focusing on the experiential and participative elements, to facilitate learning. She believes that encouragement of shared experiences, including clinical work, is an important component. She is aware that some participants benefit more from working in pairs or triads, where others are more comfortable working in larger groups, so would endeavour to incorporate both styles in the session.
Course Content
Presenter
Jennifer Pitt has been a BACP accredited counsellor /psychotherapist since 2007. Alongside this, she has been managing a bereavement counselling service since 2005, that works predominantly with bereaved adults presenting with prolonged grief disorder having experienced some form of trauma in their grief.
These days, in addition to this, and writing therapy-based articles, and delivering workshops and webinars, she runs a private practice – much of her work here is with individuals, couples and families of all ages who have suffered a major and traumatic bereavement/s, or are anticipating one.
