Grief Support Skills:
How to Effectively Support Others Who Grieve the Loss of a Pet

image copyright Rachel Hemmingson
used with permission and gratitude

Empathy is the language of the heart. In grief support, it is the spoken expression of compassion. Compassion and love alone do not heal if helpers lack empathic inquiry into the client's story and heart, and merely impose tools and beliefs of their own. It is the skillful expression of empathy, along with compassion, love and tools offered in right timing, that create a haven of safety and understanding for another's heart fo heal and emerge in wholeness.

Image copyright Nancy Bright, used with permission and gratitude. Please visit her site to see her astounding art available in prints and cards.

CONTENT AND PURPOSE

In this four session class you will have an opportunity to:

• Learn how to care for yourself with energetic boundaries and protection, and raise your awareness of the ethics involved in providing grief support
• Understand grief from both a personal and an intellectual level
• Learn the core grief support skills of empathic inquiry and response, the appropriate use of self disclosure and spirituality when supporting grievers, the important dynamics of primary and secondary grievers, and specific do’s and don’ts known to help those who grieve
• Acquire access to a wide range of resources for both your own continuing learning and to pass onto clients

Effectively and lovingly offering support to someone through the challenge of grief can make a huge, positive difference in that person's healing journey. But learning how to effectively help others who grieve the loss of a pet requires far more than feeling sympathy. It also requires specific skills. When another being truly cares, understands, and acknowledges the depth of our loss, our path is lighter. When the truth of a painful and difficult loss is acknowledged, we know we are not alone. When we are understood, healing feels much more possible. Almost anyone seeing another in emotional pain wants to help. Yet, seeing or hearing someone in great anguish can also be overwhelming and intimidating. We may feel awkward or unsure about what to say or do. Sometimes in attempts to help, friends, family and even professional counselors, healers or authors impose their beliefs, thinking that their own paradigms of animal death and grief will be relevant and helpful to everyone. For grievers, this intentional or unconscious imposing gets in the way of them discovering for themselves what they believe or need, and what will work for them. It also often adds anger and frustration to an already stressful time of grief.

The most empowering things we can do to help grievers is to learn to be truly present with their suffering: to listen, not advise; to judiciously and gently suggest possibilities, not impose our beliefs as fact--and to do so only after offering enough empathy that it is clear to them that we understand and have listened to their story and their thought and feelings; to be with them as they find their own way, not judge, push or prod them in the way we think they should grow. To be truly present with someone's pain without feeling a need to fix it, reconcile it, or recoil from it is one of the most powerful gifts we can give another. It requires patience, discernment of what to say when, skills of empathic expression, and great respect for the wisdom of the other's soul. These delicate and subtle grief support skills can be learned and integrated into our practices as animal communicators, healers, veterinary professionals, shelter professionals and others who are with those who lose their beloved animals. This four session teleclass offers an introduction to these skills and ideas as well as an overview of the grief recovery process.

SESSION 1:

• Understanding energetic boundaries and energetic protection
• Why they important when working with people and animals in pain
• A chakra perspective of these issues
• Levels of Compassionate Response to Others' Pain
• The Whale's Lesson on Death
• Specific techniques and strategies to practice energetic protection

SESSION 2:

• Definitions of Loss, Grief, and Grief Healing
• Why Animal Loss is Different
• Personal Understanding of Grief:
  • Intimate Self Awareness of our Motivation to Help and our Orientation as Helpers/Healers
• Intellectual Understanding of Grief:
  • Principles of Healing Grief & Choices We Make in Response to Loss
  • Fators Influencing Grief Responses
  • Stages of Grief Theories
  • Beyond Stages: A Model of Conscious Grief Healing:
  •   Proactive Pathways for Coping, Healing and Growing From Loss
  • Disenfranchised Grief & Complicated Grief

SESSION 3: Core Skills of Grief Support Part I

• The Two Golden Rules of Grief Support
• Words That Heal: Empathic Inquiry and Response
• Defining Empathy: What it is and is not
• The Power of Empathic Inquiry: Gentle Questioning for Clarity
• The Power of Empathic Response: Active Listening
• Emotional Empathy Discrimination Exercises
• What is My Grief Support Style: Enmeshed? Empathic & Protected? Detached?

SESSION 4: Core Skills of Grief Support Part II

• The Role of Spiritual Beliefs and Paradigms in the Grief Support Process: Helpful or Hindrance?
• Appropriate Use of Self Disclosure
• Specific Do's and Don'ts Known to Help Grievers
• Understanding the Issues of Primary and Secondary Grievers
• Personal Integration: What Did I Learn From this Class?
• Resources on grief support for additional learning and referral
  
  

More classes: Animal Loss and Grief Support Training and Certification Program offers a full curriculum of classes--on both helping others understand how to grieve the loss of a pet and healing from our own losses.


COMMENTS FROM PAST PARTICIPANTS

"Teresa did a wonderful job at providing very detailed information in a useable format that I could understand and apply."
Lori W.

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