David Kessler: Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief – David Kessler

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Even as a grief expert, David was unprepared for the sudden death of his son, who died at age 21.

People asked him, “What’s it like for the grief expert to lose his son?” He would answer, “The grief expert did not lose his son, the father did.” Everything he knew about grief turned out to be true.

David had to go through the five stages of grief but found himself wanting more from the experience – he wanted to find meaning in his life after such a terrible loss. He learned that broken heart syndrome is real and he realized he would either die of it or live with it, and that healing occurs not when grief gets smaller, but when life gets bigger. This led to the discovery of the 6th stage of grief – finding meaning.

Based on David Kessler’s new book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief (to be published in 2019), this seminar is designed to help clinicians and other professionals guide clients through life’s worst moments to find meaning after loss. All types of loss will be covered, including divorce, betrayal, loss of a parent or family member, and loss due to addiction, mental illness and suicide.

After watching this recording, you will be able to enhance your work as a clinician with clients who have dealt with any kind of loss. It will fill you with new insight, tools, strategies, and inspiring information, leaving you looking forward to the next day… so you can immediately begin to use all you have learned!

• Learn healthy and supportive ways to heal all kinds of grief
• Address “stuck” thinking that complicates grief and increases suffering
• Help loved ones find meaning to live with loss after death instead of “getting over” the loss

“People always want to know if there is life after death for their loved ones. I believe there is, but more importantly, there is life after death for the living. I want to help them find meaning that honors their loved ones. Sometimes when we are at our worst, we can find our best.” -David Kessler

1. Implement meaning-making strategies to help clients cope with all types of loss.
2. Identify ways to use meaning to help clients remember with more love than pain.
3. Outline techniques for using meaning to help clients resolve the internal struggle of “why did this happen?” and “why did this happen to me?”
4. Recognize why children are often the forgotten grievers and how to help them through their grief.
5. Identify strategies that incorporate meaning mechanisms to help clients cope with complicated grieving.
6. Utilize strategies to help clients address guilt, shame and stigma associated with grief.

The Sixth Stage of Grief: Finding Meaning

• Why the stages were never meant to be linear
• What is making meaning in grief?
• Types of meaning making
• How meaning can help remember the person who died with more love than pain
• Why a sixth stage is the key to recovery from grief
• Keys to finding acceptance and moving into the sixth stage

Witnessing vs “Fixing” Grief

• Mirroring techniques
• The cost of trying to “fix” those who are grieving
• Go beyond active listening skills to connect
• The consequence of trying to find meaning too early

Help Clients Change Their Thinking Around Loss

• Strategies to address guilt, shame and stigma in grief
• How to increase resilience after loss
• Use positive psychology to increase the possibility of post traumatic growth
• Understand the “meaning” we attach to the traumatic loss or death
• How to decrease catastrophizing after loss
• Learn ways to instill good memories instead of painful ones

Complicated Grief

• Simplifying grief models and exploring new models, including resiliency and Option B
• Meaning making as a new tool for dealing with murder, multiple losses, Alzheimer’s
• Techniques for strength-based grief counseling
• Post traumatic growth vs Post traumatic trauma
• Techniques for releasing the obsessive replaying of the trauma/death

Help Bereaved parents

• Understand the impact of child loss
• Learn ways to be comfortable with treating this type of loss
• Techniques for helping parents who are often grieving differently
• Learn ways to help sustain the marriage through tremendous loss
• Ways to help parents deal with the discomfort of living and loving again
• Address intimacy issues that may come up in grief

The Grief of Suicide

• Tools for dealing with the “what if’s” and “if only’s”
• Understand the true “why” of death by suicide
• Ways to help others find peace again

Loss by Addiction

• Meaning making for healing self-blame
• How to help loved one’s sort through the shame and isolation
• Understand the roles they did and didn’t play in an addiction death

Shootings and Other Disasters

• Shootings/hurricanes/earthquakes and terrorist’s acts
• Techniques for approaching horrific crime and/or disaster scenes
• The impact of natural vs. manmade disasters

Healing Grief in Divorce

• Use meaning to reframe divorce and heal shame
• Heal after betrayal by understanding its meaning
• Understand the true meaning of marriage after it ends
• Interpret the meaning behind negative reoccurring patterns
• Negative meanings we make after a relationship ends

Healing Complicated Relationships after Death

• Learn techniques to heal a relationship after death
• Understand patterns that can heal that relationship and help in all future relationships
• Learn ways to help your client find peace in difficult relationships

Meaning and the Afterlife

• Effective and ineffective models of continuing connections for living a full life
• Use the model of continuing bonds and connections for healing
• Learn ways to normalize client experiences around continued connections with loved ones that have died