As a couple separates and a marriage is dissolved, all the parties involved are bound to experience multiple losses, ranging from practical and tangible losses like financial stability and matrimonial house, to implicit and ambiguous losses like sense of self and relational bonds.  In the process of transition, different grief reactions and repercussions may emerge, as each party has to relearn about life and relationship, as well as re-establish one’s self-concept and social world.  This training will invite you to look at separation and divorce and other forms of relationship dissolution from a grief and loss and meaning reconstruction perspective.  This will also equip you to use meaning-oriented intervention tools to facilitate one’s transition and adaptation in the aftermath.

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

• Examine the impacts of separation and divorce using the Tripartite Model of Meaning Reconstruction;

• Describe the myriad of loss and grief in the process of separation and divorce; and

• Apply meaning-oriented techniques to facilitate post-separation / divorce adaptation.

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GRIEF COUNSELLING FUNDAMENTALS COVERED

• An assumptive world shattered by separation and/or divorce;

• Use of What Have You Lost? as a conversation practice to elicit intangible, ambiguous and/or disenfranchised loss in separation and divorce;

• Implementation of My Safe House in Times of Storms to identify constructive resources to deal with the impacts of separation;

• Use of Restorative Retelling of the Lost Bond to facilitate processing and reintegration of the relational loss;

• Application of Our Relationship Tree to help clients address relational ambivalence;

• Apply Composition Work to reconstruct their identity and life narratives;

• Use of creative rituals to signify closure, transition and/or new beginning; and

• A "Holding Frame" for children through parental separation and divorce.