As counselling courses show, losing a loved one is perhaps the hardest thing a person can go through during their life. People react to this kind of personal trauma differently, meaning that counselling people through loss tests your interpersonal skills to their limits.
How Can Grief Counselling Help After A Loss?
There are often distinct stages involved in bereavement, and a professional grief counsellor is there to help process feelings of denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance. The process can be long, but support is provided to help a person regain perspective and meaning.
How To Support Someone Who Is Going Through Grief?
While no two people are quite the same, some strategies tend to work with everyone - although there's no guarantee of anything. That said, we now look at five often-effective strategies that can help someone overcome the loss of someone close to them.
#1 - Allow Them To Experience The Pain Of The Grief
Being able to grieve appropriately is vital for our mental well-being, as you'll find when studying the subject online. That's because it allows a person to free up energy bound to the person who has gone. Unless grief occurs, reinvesting this energy in positive ways can be difficult. As such, you should let a person experience it, as it's a necessary part of the process.
#2 - Encourage The Person To Talk About Their Loss
Not everyone will want to talk about something as fresh as a recent bereavement, but if someone wants to, you should try and encourage it. It might not be easy to talk, and you might not understand fully what the person is going through, but expressing any words can be incredibly cathartic and help enormously.
#3 - Listen & Be There For Them
In the weeks following a death, people often turn to their friends and family for support and comfort. Counselling courses online teach us that simply being there and available to listen can help no end, especially in the immediate aftermath. Understanding the permanence of death can come slowly, with delayed grief being commonplace.
#4 - Respect Photos & Other Mementos
Avoiding pictures, possessions, and places associated with the deceased person is common at the outset. As time passes, such mementoes may come to be treasured. Indeed, being interested in these keepsakes can provide a helpful measure toward resolving grief. As such, photos and other mementoes should be respected and looked after.
#5 - Minimise Change During Grief
Short, online counselling courses also tell us that keeping a routine can be important when someone is grieving. As such, when looking after someone who's going through this pain, you should do your best to keep significant changes to a minimum, for months or even years, if necessary.
If you or someone you know is grieving, you can find many useful resources on the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement website. The help on offer includes grief support, education and other publications that may help them process their pain and feelings.
Take The First Step Towards Becoming A Counsellor With Online Courses Australia
Grief counselling is one of many career paths for those with the right training. At OCA, our online counselling courses are video-based for easy digestion and CPD Endorsed and industry-led, meaning that they're ideal for anyone wanting to become a counsellor or to see what a position as a counsellor entails.
Learning with us is mentally stimulating and engaging, as seen in our student study demo. However, if you'd like to know more about our comprehensive course library, which spans more than 20 industries, visit us today at www.onlinecoursesaustralia.edu.au, where you'll find that we also offer 1 to 1 mentoring and 24/7 tutorial support.
Alternatively, if you need to speak to us about your online training needs, call our friendly team on 1300 611 404 or email us at [email protected]. As soon as we hear from you, we'll do our utmost to reply immediately.
