Grief Loss Psychology

Death is the last taboo in our society, and grief is still profoundly misunderstood. So many of us feel awkward and uncertain around death and shy away from talking honestly with family and friends. Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving, from the expected death of a parent to the sudden unexpected death of a small child, and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved.

In March 2017, Niamh Fitzpatrick’s life fell apart overnight. Her beloved sister, Dara, was killed in a helicopter crash. Soon afterwards, Niamh’s marriage ended, and she feared she would lose her home. Life as she knew it was gone forever, and the grief was overwhelming. A psychologist for many years, Niamh’s job is to help clients through the toughest times in their lives.

Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides - as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner - Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing.

Following deaths, divorces, or the confusion of major relocation, many adults tell their children “don’t feel bad”. In fact, say the authors of the highly praised The Grief Recovery Handbook, feeling bad or sad is precisely the appropriate emotion attached to sad events. Encouraging a child to bypass grief without completion can cause unseen long-term damage.

This award-winning book has been hailed as the seminal work in the field. And now the fourth newly revised and expanded edition offers so much more to the bereaving pet owner. This edition also includes a significant new way of considering the meaning of afterlife for us and our pets. It discusses the topic from a 21st-century scientific perspective that is very different from existing religious or metaphysical ones, offering a new comfort to skeptics and agnostics as well.

Coping with loss is difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer alone. Based on the proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatment, Moving Through Grief provides simple and effective techniques to help you get unstuck and start living a rich and fulfilling life again, loss and all. ACT is all about embracing what hurts and committing to actions that will improve and enrich your life.

Whatever loss you have experienced, this book can help you to make sense of it; guiding you through those difficult and overwhelming emotions, explaining how these fit into the universal psychological process of grieving—and showing you a path to creating a more content life. Psychotherapist Christine Hopfgarten looks in detail at different reasons that we may encounter feelings of loss and grief, including bereavement, relationship break-up, losing a job, infertility, miscarriage and illness, and provides focused help.

Although a mother's mortality is inevitable, no book has discussed the profound lasting and far reaching effects of this loss until Motherless Daughters. More than 20 years later, it is still the go-to book that women of all ages look to for comfort, help, and understanding when their mother dies. Building on interviews with hundreds of mother-loss survivors, Edelman's personal story of losing her mother, and recent research in grief and psychology, Motherless Daughters reveals the shared experiences and core identity issues of motherless women.

While we can speak to the psychological and emotional ramifications of loss and sorrow, we often overlook its impact on our physical bodies. Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor specializes in the study of grief, and in The Grieving Body she shares vital scientific research, revealing imperative new insights on its profound physiological impact. As she did in The Grieving Brain, O’Connor combines illuminating studies and personal stories to explore the toll loss takes on our cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems and the larger implications for our long-term well-being.

From the moment pets come into our lives, we know the day will arrive when we have to say farewell. Still, we are never emotionally prepared for the last adieu. In Goodbye, Friend, Gary Kowalski takes you on a journey of healing, offering warmth and sound advice on how to cope with the death of your pet.

At the age of 74, best-selling author Irvin Yalom turns his attention to one of the great human questions: our fear of death. He suggests that what he calls the 'awakening experience' can help us acknowledge, accept, and make use of our fear of death in a positive manner. These awakening experiences often follow a loss, a trauma, or the death of a loved one, illness or just growing old. Yalom shows us how such an awakening can be the turning point for a more meaningful life.

When a loved one passes unexpectedly, the person left behind can lose their bearings. After the sudden loss of her mother, Chelsea Hanson, a nationally recognized grief educator and founder of With Sympathy Gifts and Keepsakes, didn't know where to turn for help, what to do next, or how to put the pieces of her life back together. Hanson's The Sudden Loss Survival Guide gathers everything that she learned during her own recovery process and provides an indispensable road map to aid those who've experienced a life-changing loss.

When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways.

Internationally renowned psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom has devoted his career to counselling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In A Matter of Death and Life, Marilyn and Irvin share how they took on profound new struggles: Marilyn to die a good death, Irvin to live on without her.

Dr. Lisa M. Shulman, a neurologist, describes a personal story of loss and her journey to understand the science behind the mind-altering experience of grief. Part memoir, part creative nonfiction, part account of scientific discovery, this moving book combines Shulman's perspectives as an expert in brain science and a keen observer of behavior with her experience as a clinician, a caregiver, and a widow.

Heartbreak can manifest itself as depression, anxiety, self-sabotage, an inability to feel emotions, make connections, or live life on your own terms. Donna's practical nine-step programme will empower you with the tools and support you need to gain clarity, identify what has hurt you and learn how to release the pain, fear and anger keeping you trapped. Donna will teach you how to care for yourself with love, give you the courage to really feel your feelings, step into your authentic self and move towards whole-hearted living.

Treating Traumatic Loss starts with an introduction to traumatic loss and the GRIEF approach model, then guides you, step by step, through treatment planning—from conducting a thorough assessment of symptoms informed by a multicultural lens, to selecting modules for intervention.

This unusual and important audiobook is a series of reflections on death in all its forms: the science of it, the medicine, the tragedy and the comedy. Dr David Jarrett draws on family stories and case histories from his 30 years of treating the old, demented and frail to try to find his own understanding of the end. And he writes about all the conversations that we, our parents, our children, the medical community, our government and society as a whole should be having.

As an analyst working with the dying, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés has developed seminal methods to help ease the fear that can accompany the dying process. In The Radiant Coat, this bestselling author shares myths and stories first told at the bedsides of the dying to comfort them and their loved ones. For other cultures, Dr. Estés teaches, death holds no terror. It is in fact characterized as an ally, a wise and caring figure, leading departed souls through the starry night into the next day.

If you’ve experienced the trauma of loss, you might find yourself struggling with the “whys” of grief: Why can’t I remember anything? Why can’t I sleep? Why do I feel angry and isolated? Why do I suddenly dislike my friends? Psychotherapist and grief specialist Meghan Riordan Jarvis shares a research-based resource filled with clinical insights to these questions and more, along with practical steps for navigating loss. Whether you’re currently grieving or are looking to support a loved one, here is guidance to uncover the answers to why and discover what you can do to help.