Hello,
When I was 27, in the space of a year, my husband was diagnosed with cancer and died. Navigating through my ordeal, I learned that grief is one of our greatest allies if we know how to approach it.
But it took me a long time to understand that.
Following my devastating loss, I studied grief for years. Ultimately, it led me to become a therapist, specializing in how grief affects people. I've made it my life's mission to get people to talk about grief.
There isn't a therapist in the world who hasn't had grief show up in their office since the pandemic.
Yet you might not have recognized the grief sitting across from you.
Instead, you might have seen a client suffocating under the weight of depression. Or fretting with incessant anxiety. Or battling with bouts of uncontrollable anger and rage.
But…Grief is a master of disguise.
It hides itself, and shape-shifts to avoid detection.
It takes a keen understanding to recognize grief's many faces. And if you can't see that it's actually grief you're dealing with, your clients might stay stuck in seemingly intractable patterns.
That's why I've created this course: to help therapists identify and work with grief in all its forms.
Module 1: Redefining Grief: Curiosity and Rapport
Module 2: A New Lens for Grief Support: The Hero's Journey as a Roadmap for Grief
Module 3: Refining Grief with the Client: How Personality Types Inform Healing
Module 4: Facing the Non-Linear Aspects of Grief: Creative Tools to Use with Clients
Module 5: Grief Work: Process and Progress
When you know what to look for, and what questions to ask, you can hone in on buried grief. You can learn to engage with grief as something to live with - rather than something to get over.
And this exploration can help your clients peer behind grief's many masks, revealing hidden sorrows at the root of dysfunction.
This course will give you a framework, practical tools, and clear processes for working through grief with your clients.
Join me for Unmasking the Pain of Loss: Helping Clients Identify & Work with Grief.
Warmly,
Edy Nathan, MA, LCSWR, CST
Academy of Therapy Wisdom
Recognize grief when it is hiding
Grief loves to play hide-and-seek! It wears many masks, and it's often mistaken for other things...but when it's not treated, it persists.
Treat the underlying causes of treatment-resistant symptoms
Often, that seemingly intractable depression, anxiety, anger, or numbness is actually grief in disguise!
Use tools to help you talk about grief
Edy provides several creative, non-invasive ways to ease clients into openness about grief they are experiencing.
Turn grief into an ally in therapy
Look, we don't "get over" grief...we learn to dance with it, to partner with it and integrate it. It can become a good friend and trusted ally.
"Grief is non-linear and does not follow any one path. Mimicking the unpredictability of life, grief cries out to be heard. When you listen, change occurs."
- Edy Nathan, MA, LCSWR, CST
Each module explores new perspectives and tools for working with clients dealing with grief. Edy will share roadmaps and metaphors to help navigate grief, techniques to identify and unmask grief, and the path to creating better endings.
All your course materials in one easy-to-navigate platform, supported by our dedicated customer service team.
Recordings, transcripts, and handouts so you can re-watch and dive in deeper at your own pace.
At a time when clients can easily end their relationship with therapeutic work with a text, an email, or ghosting, it is essential for therapists to create boundaries around ending therapeutic relationships. Learn how to set up good endings at the beginning and create agreements to create a safe environment for the client. The result is powerful: Good endings lead to better outcomes for self-determination and differentiation.
As a clinician, understanding your own relationship with grief while working with others' grief is essential. Self-reflection and self-care are often the last pieces of work we make time for. Edy will discuss how to assess our own grief, and the importance of self-assessments around losses and burnout you may have experienced, especially after the pandemic. Use the companion workbook, Working With Grief, with this lesson.
You probably learned there are five stages of grief. Now, Edy will expand your thinking with the Eleven Phases of Grief, created and used clinically by Edy. You will be able to identify the multiple layers grief creates in the mind, psyche, and soul of anyone facing its power and potency. For the first time, grief is given an accurate dimension of experience that can be used with clients to help them normalize their grief experience.
In this conversation, Edy and Cyndi discuss the nuanced connections between sex, desire, grief, and power dynamics. They explore the intersection of sex and grief, the impact of cultural narratives on sexual expression, and the role of power dynamics in desire discrepancy. Cyndi explains that sex and grief are two sides of the same coin; both are often difficult topics to discuss and elicit strong emotions. Opening up dialog around sex and grief can empower people to find their voice, express their desires, diminish societal pressures around sexuality, and prevent sexual grief.
Cyndi Darnell (she/her) is a clinical & somatic sexologist and author of Sex, When You Don't Feel Like It:The Truth About Mismatched Libido & Rediscovering Desire. Cyndi supports individuals, couples and polycules navigating relationships and sexual difficulties. Originally from Australia, she's now based in New York City.
In this conversation, Edy and Nathalie discuss the losses experienced during the pandemic and ongoing racial stress and trauma as examples of collective grief. They talk about the importance of acknowledging and validating grief, particularly for marginalized communities who carry intergenerational trauma. They explore the challenges of addressing and expressing rage that stems from accumulated grief, and how to disrupt the urgency, shaming, and perfectionism culture by creating a compassionate space for dialogue and curiosity in navigating the complexities of grief and trauma. They emphasize the importance of community support, racial affinity groups, vulnerability, and overcoming the fear of being rejected when addressing collective grief.
Nathalie Edmond, PsyD, RYT-500 is a licensed clinical psychologist and experienced yoga teacher who takes an integrated perspective to her consultations and trainings, grounded in multiculturalism and intersectional feminism. Dr. Edmond believes that transformation happens when we integrate mind-body-spirit and have an embodied dialogue. She runs the Antiracism Revolution community, where members have access to yoga, workshops, live streams, discussion, and resources. Nathalie's work focuses on DEI, healing racial trauma, and helping people bring an anti-racist and mindful lens to all they do.
Ruth Cohn, MFT, is a therapist who works with survivors of trauma and neglect, and their intimate partners and families, to build relationships. An avid student of trauma and neuroscience, Ruth works with couples and individuals to work with trauma and sexuality through therapy, the body, and brain training. Ruth is also a certified sex therapist and Board Certified in Neurofeedback.
In this conversation, Edy and Narayan discuss the impact of personal experiences - the impact of the past on the present - that shape one's understanding of life and spirituality. The conversation delves into the transformative power of grief, even as one loses relationships, loses their way, and leaves behind family expectations. Narayan shares about her training as a meditation teacher and the importance of being present in the moment. Edy and Narayan explore the concept of healing without relying solely on narrative and instead embracing one's allies and personal strengths, along with stillness, movement, and the present moment.
Narayan Helen Liebenson is an Insight Meditation Society Emeritus Guiding Teacher, and has been a teacher at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center since its inception in 1985. She has studied in the United States and Asia with meditation masters in the Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan traditions. Narayan is the author and illustrator of Life as Meditation and The Magnanimous Heart.
From the Eleven Phases of Grief, to lists of emotions and feelings and diagrams you can use with your clients, you have access to this colorful and easy-to-use workbook.The downloadable workbook shows you how to use the Hero's Journey and Archetypes as ways to help clients speak to their experience of grief and move them out of stuckness.
A monthly journal with prompts for self-reflection, and lists of words to help clients identify their feelings. Available to you as a downloadable PDF.
Receive two downloadable PDF chapters from Edy's book, It's Grief. Included are Chapter 4: Listen to Your Grief and Chapter 8: The Eleven Phases of Grief.
Grief is defined and expanded upon as a response to something that is lost and cannot be retrieved, a yearning and hunger that causes a void that is difficult to understand. Edy shares a new perspective on grief; one that demystifies grief by inviting its power into your sessions, and presents our relationship with grief as a dance to be defined and redefined over time.
In this module, you will learn:
Edy lays out a roadmap for you to use as a guide to the emotional journey grief presents in the life of a client. From how to define grief, navigating each unique path of loss, and how to be a mentor for the grieving, Edy uses phases of the Hero's Journey as a way to understand complex grief, and as a map to return from the darkness and depression that resides there.
In this module, you will learn:
This module focuses on personality type inventories and how they can provide useful insights into how clients process grief.
In this module, you will learn:
Grief is non-linear and, therefore, left-brain strategies such as talk therapy are not enough to effectively work with it. We need to integrate creative measures to help clients get out of cognitive zones that keep them stuck, afraid and in pain. No matter your clinical background, you can utilize Out-of-the-Box Thinking and strategies with your clients. Fill up your toolbox with creative tools to help recognize grief, unmask it, and engage/cope with it on a daily basis.
In this module, you will learn:
People are often afraid to move forward with their grief, worried that moving on is the same as forgetting. In this module, Edy will guide you in how to help clients move from being fused to their grief to being able to differentiate from their grief. Help your client let go with insight, resolve unexpressed anger, and in the process create your own better endings with your clients.
In this module, you will learn:
1) Five in-depth Unmasking the Pain of Loss teaching modules
2) Access to the Academy of Therapy Wisdom private membership site so you can access the course materials at any time
3) Downloadable course materials so you can learn and refer back to them over and over
A Recipe for Good Therapeutic Endings: What They Didn't Teach Us In School - video lesson with Edy
How to Dance With Your Own Grief - video lesson with Edy Nathan
From Five Stages to Eleven Phases: The Nonlinear Journey of Grief - video lesson with Edy Nathan
Interview with Lisa Ferentz
Interview with Cyndi Darnell
Interview with Nathalie Edmond
Interview with Ruth Cohn
Healing Without Narrative: The Movement of Grief and Loss - An Interview with Narayan Helen Liebenson
Working With Grief Workbook
Notes to Self Journal
Two Free Chapters from It's Grief
If you are a BIPOC helping professional,
please accept our discounted enrollment price for this course by clicking here.
We are glad to have you with us!
Edy Nathan is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in New York City. Edy's work focuses on three of the four things people never want to talk about - grief, sex, and trauma (she leaves the discussions about money to others). Her work in grief, trauma, and sexuality offers insight into the way loss affects the soul and the brain. She uses these insights to breathe new meaning into the lives of those stagnated by loss or trauma.
Edy has master's degrees in Psychology, Drama, and Social Work, and post-graduate work in Sex Therapy and Sex Education. She is a Certified Sex Therapist, Certified Hypnotherapist, EMDR clinician, psychodrama therapist, Psychology Today blogger, motivational speaker, and workshop leader. Edy is the author of It's Grief: The Dance of Self-Discovery through Trauma and Loss.
We are confident you will learn new skills in this online training. However, within 7 days after purchase you don't believe you will learn anything to apply with your clients, please contact our support team at support@therapywisdom.com, and we will give you a full refund, no questions asked.
"I admire her intelligence, her open heart and her playful intuition."
Edy Nathan is a friend and colleague of mine. She is fortunate to be a psychologist with a background in the arts. [She shares] a passion and an unstoppable imagination about a topic she clearly knows firsthand and as a therapist.
- Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Ageless Soul
"A new way to picture grief."
This workshop enabled me to learn about a new way to picture grief and evaluate the presence of it in my clients.
- E.D.
"I wish [this course] was longer."
I want more access to Edy so I can teach this to my clients.
— D.M.
"Finally a perspective that makes sense."
I liked the new perspective to grief in treatment concepts that were beyond grad-school and Kubler-Ross.
- A.N.
"Edy had a great energy..."
...and shared really beautiful ways of looking at and working with grief. I would like this to be an ongoing course.
- R.R.
1) Five in-depth Unmasking the Pain of Loss teaching modules
2) Access to the Academy of Therapy Wisdom private membership site so you can access the course materials at any time
3) Downloadable course materials so you can learn and refer back to them over and over
Recipe for Good Therapeutic Endings: What They Didn't Teach Us In School - video lesson with Edy
How to Dance With Your Own Grief - video lesson with Edy Nathan
From Five Stages to Eleven Phases: The Nonlinear Journey of Grief - video lesson with Edy Nathan
Interview with Lisa Ferentz
Interview with Cyndi Darnell
Interview with Nathalie Edmond
Interview with Ruth Cohn
Healing Without Narrative: The Movement of Grief and Loss - An Interview with Narayan Helen Liebenson
Working With Grief Workbook
Notes to Self Journal
Two Free Chapters from It's Grief
If you are a BIPOC helping professional,
please accept our discounted enrollment price for this course by clicking here.
We are glad to have you with us!
There are many ways to work with grief and we're so grateful you are already helping folks with it. But oftentimes, therapists don't know they're working with grief. Edy likes to talk about grief as having many masks. That is what makes this course so unique. Edy has tools and processes for uncovering the many faces of grief, going beyond the 5 Stages of Grief, and learning how to integrate - rather than "get over" - grief so it isn't an obstacle to a full and good life. After this course, you will have a brand new lens with which to view grief.
We know grief can be so painful to face. As a caring professional, you deserve kind and compassionate support to face your grief. Edy will show you new ways to look at grief as an ally. You can practice the tools on your own in the pre-recorded modules. And in the live calls, Edy will lead you through exercises to explore your own grief so that you can relate to your clients' grief on a heart level. We know how beneficial it is when therapists have done the work they are asking their clients to do. If you're ready, this can be an exceptionally meaningful way to ease into personal grief work.
Yes. A major focus in this course is helping the therapist to work with their own relationships with grief. Therapists may find themselves over-distanced or under-distanced with their clients' grief. Understanding what is triggering you, and how to work with it, is key to your self-care and effectiveness as a healer.
This is a pre-recorded course featuring presentations, client session tapes, demos, and exercises.
Yes, this program has limited approval for both distance learning and live CEs. Full CE info can be found here.
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