Grief Counseling: Approaches of Beginner vs. Seasoned Counselors

This essay explores the contrasting approaches employed by beginner and seasoned grief counselors in assisting patients experiencing bereavement. It highlights that while both cohorts aim to provide a supportive space for clients to overcome feelings of loss, their techniques differ significantly. Beginner counselors often focus on normalizing symptoms and psycho-education, helping patients manage their conditions and relationships. Seasoned counselors, on the other hand, tend to utilize talk therapies and expressive arts therapy, emphasizing the acknowledgement of emotions. The essay concludes that regardless of the approach, providing companionship and specialized therapeutic services is crucial for clients to navigate grief and lead fulfilling lives. Desklib offers a variety of resources for students, including solved assignments and past papers.

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Psychotherapy can be described as the form of treatment that helps in enhancing the
recovery of the person from the feeling of sense and this intervention is in use for quite time
now. This system has been in use even before the symptoms like traumatic grief, prolonged grief
disorder, complicated bereavement as well as other symptoms was considered to be important for
ensuring developed mental and emotional health (Dunphy& Schniering, 2009). From that time
onwards, several researchers have come up with innovative methods that help patients in
overcoming their feelings of grief and bereavement.
The main responsibility of the grief counselors is to assisting patients who are
going through phases of bereavement and thereby help them to orient themselves after the death
or loss of near and dear ones. Moreover, they are also seen to help people in coping with
situations and orienting themselves in the phase of grieving along with easy transition through
the phase of grief. These roles and responsibilities have made the grief counselors to become an
active member of the healthcare teams attending to depression and other emotional turmoil faced
by patients besides their physical challenges.
It has been found that seasoned counselors show distinct difference in their
approaches than the new counselors as they are able to help the clients in adopting themselves in
the direction of meeting the demands of their lives. Studies have found out different techniques
that are applied by grief counselors when they need to handle various kinds of patient cases who
are suffering from intense grief and depression. One of the techniques is psycho education. Great

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deal of importance is given to the concept of psycho-education through which grief counselors
can educate people to cope and mange their present conditions in their relationships with ease
(Carpinello, 2004)..
The counselors who are just beginning with the procedure of treatment are seen to
adopt various kinds of techniques for normalizing the patients and for easing their symptoms.
They are seen to localize the emotions of the clients in ways by which they become successful in
creating a separation between their emotions as well as themselves. This is quite different from
the theories believed by seasoned grief therapists. The latter is mainly seen to believe in
techniques like that talk therapies as well as Expressive arts therapy that are not usually followed
by the former cohort. These therapists are seen to attend to the different emotions of the clients
through the procedure of acknowledgement (Kirchberg Robert 1998).
For concluding successfully, it can be stated that both the cohorts of the
counselors – the beginner counselors and that of the seasoned counselors follow different
techniques and have their own approaches to deal with situations of loss in a patient who is
suffering from grief and bereavement. Although marked difference is found among both the
cohorts of the counselors, it is found to be quite significant that for every grief counselors to
provide a distinctt space for the clients who have come for service to overcome their barriers of
going through feelings of intense loss and bereavement. It is also understood that such clients
require companionship and therefore, it is important for all such clients to attend the service of
therapists to lead a better quality normal life

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References
Carpinello, S. (2004). Grief counseling resource guide: A field manual. NY. SO o. M. Health
(Red.). New York: Bureau of Education and Workforce Development.
Dunphy, R., & Schniering, C. A. (2009). The experience of counselling the bereaved. The
Humanistic Psychologist, 37(4), 353-369.
M. Kirchberg Robert A. Neimeyer Richard K. James, T. H. O. M. A. S. (1998). Beginning
Counselors'death Concerns And Empathic Responses To Client Situations Involving
Death And Grief. Death studies, 22(2), 99-120.