Loss, Grief and Existential Awareness introduces the Integrated Process Model (IPM), a new interdisciplinary and interprofessional model for grief research, education, and accompaniment that distinguishes and integrates five dimensions of grief: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual. Central in this book is the insight that grief is connected to love because it is rooted in losing what is meaningful and dear to us. Once we recognize this, grief can become a window to existential awareness. Combining research on the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual dimensions of grief, the integrated process approach connects this quest for a personal and authentic answer to the big questions in life with the philosophical and therapeutic tradition of existential thinking. Structured in an accessible, informative manner with gradual information building, the book presents the IPM approach at the beginning and then turns to it as a model throughout the book, so the reader gradually will start to deepen their understanding and memorize the framework. The structure is enhanced with boxes with existential reflections and exercises to engage the reader and case presentations of grieving persons who are followed throughout the book. This book is meant for everyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of how loss and grief can help opening the door to a more meaningful way of living. It is especially helpful for healthcare professionals, therapists, counsellors, chaplains, and researchers.

In this new volume, death is treated both as a threat to meaning and as an opportunity to create meaning.

All of us who work in the field of death and dying are, beyond our projects and our practices, working on our awareness of our own mortality. This richly stimulating collection of original articles challenges the reader to develop a disciplined and focused awareness of his/her own mortality, and to grapple with the implications. "Awareness of Mortality" contributes to the basic and passionate intellectual quest for meaning in thanatology. It provokes the reader with a wide range of ideas and thinking styles to deepen the questioning process within his/her own self. "Awareness of Mortality" explores issues in philosophy, ethics, developmental psychology, psychoanalytic psychology, idealistic humanism, sociology, spiritual traditions, and other humanities that thanatology overlaps. "Awareness of Mortality" is an introduction to a broad-based philosophical thanatology.

This innovative volume examines the phenomenological, existential and cultural dimensions of grief experiences. It draws on perspectives from philosophy, psychology and sociocultural studies to focus on the experiential dimension of grief, moving beyond understanding from a purely mental health and psychiatry perspective. The book considers individual, shared and collective experiences of loss. Chapters explore the intersections between the profound existential experiences of bereavement and how this is mediated by sociocultural norms and practices. It points to new directions for the future conceptualization and study of grief, particularly in the experiential dimension. Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, this important book will appeal to academics, researchers and students in the fields of death and bereavement studies, wellbeing and mental health, philosophy and phenomenological studies.

Combining the science of emotional trauma with concrete psychological techniques— including dream interpretation, journaling, mindfulness exercises, and meditation—Shulman's frank and empathetic account will help readers regain their emotional balance by navigating the passage from profound sorrow to healing and growth.

Mindful photography and self-reflection can be invaluable tools for grievers struggling to create meaning from loss. Learning to slow down, notice, create, and reflect inspires a sense of confidence, inner strength, gratitude, meaningful insight, and wisdom. Written for death and grief practitioners and educators as well as for those experiencing grief, Choosing Light teaches the Within and Without therapeutic method and how it can be transformative for individuals, groups, and communities. Guided steps and real-life exemplars guide readers through a healing journey to find authentic meaning and peace.

Long before contemporary approaches to helping people face death, loss, and other life transitions, poetry was used by many cultures to assist the grieving process. Today, it remains an important healing art. Capturing Shadows is an original collection of poems about actively engaging one's grieving and loss with a purpose. The poems were written by therapists, counselors, educators, and others who understand and have experienced the struggle of leaning into one's pain. The introduction along with activities at the end of the book provide a guide for readers to assist them in using poems from Capturing Shadows as well as their own poems to facilitate their grieving process. Whether wanting assistance with one's own grief and loss, a deeper understanding of the grief and loss, or a resource to help others in their journey, Capturing Shadows is a wonderful resource for all touched by death, loss, and other difficult life transitions.

An engaging and illuminating exploration of grief—and why, despite its intense pain, it can also help us grow Experiencing grief at the death of a person we love or who matters to us—as universal as it is painful—is central to the human condition. Surprisingly, however, philosophers have rarely examined grief in any depth. In Grief, Michael Cholbi presents a groundbreaking philosophical exploration of this complex emotional event, offering valuable new insights about what grief is, whom we grieve, and how grief can ultimately lead us to a richer self-understanding and a fuller realization of our humanity. Drawing on psychology, social science, and literature as well as philosophy, Cholbi explains that we grieve for the loss of those in whom our identities are invested, including people we don't know personally but cherish anyway, such as public figures. Their deaths not only deprive us of worthwhile experiences; they also disrupt our commitments and values. Yet grief is something we should embrace rather than avoid, an important part of a good and meaningful life. The key to understanding this paradox, Cholbi says, is that grief offers us a unique and powerful opportunity to grow in self-knowledge by fashioning a new identity. Although grief can be tumultuous and disorienting, it also reflects our distinctly human capacity to rationally adapt as the relationships we depend on evolve. An original account of how grieving works and why it is so important, Grief shows how the pain of this experience gives us a chance to deepen our relationships with others and ourselves.

This book explores the universal human existential trauma of "original loss," a trauma the author describes as arising from our primal, human evolutionary loss of experiencing ourselves as innately belonging to, and instinctively at home within, the larger natural world. In this trauma arose our existential awareness of impermanence and mortality along with the need to mourn that loss in order to create a sense of belonging and identity. The book describes how the invention of art and group ritual became the collective ways we mourn our shared existential loss. It describes as well how it is the art within the psychoanalytic practice that enables both patient and analyst to grieve their individual versions of our shared original loss. Drawing on the work of Winnicott, Loewald and Ogden, as well as art theory and religion, this book offers a new perspective on the intersection of metaphorical artistic thinking and psychoanalysis. This book will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and scholars of poetic, visual and muscial metaphor, creativity, evolution and history of art.