Death and the Therapist

Talking about death has lead to some of the most human and connected moments I've experienced as a therapist. Sadly, these conversations are vastly under-practiced. Often the impulse is to soften, speed through, or sidestep grief and death rather than linger in what feels uncomfortable. The busy world, and even our trainings, tries to observe grief from a distance rather than practice staying with what aches.

Grief work isn’t about interventions or homework. It’s not something we do to our clients. It’s something we learn to sit beside.

Grief asks for presence. It lives in silence, in the questions with no answers, in the moments when nothing can be fixed. As therapists, we need time and space to meet those places in ourselves, to tend to our own being, to become familiar with what is asked of us in grief. Only then can we hold that same space for others.

This in-person training, offering 4.5 CEUs, will take place at Casa de Luz Village, where participants will engage in reflection, discussion, and experiential exercises that deepen comfort with mortality, enhance awareness of personal responses to death and grief, and strengthen therapeutic presence. We'll also explore the theories that guide grief counseling and what the grieving client needs from us.

• Nurture the capacity to stay grounded while exploring death-related topics.

• Investigate personal experiences and attitudes about death and dying through meditation and experiential exercises.
• Recognize and work with the seven common fears about death and their personal impact.
• Examine cultural influences on death, grief, and bereavement, including how disenfranchisement affects the grieving process.
• Address counter-transference and understand how personal experiences shape the therapeutic relationship.
• Discuss the ways the therapeutic world conceptualizes death and loss; is it a friend or foe to the grieving.
• Explore the purpose and mechanism of grief as a necessary and natural function of healing.

• Therapists at any stage of their career, from new graduates to seasoned clinicians.
• Clinicians seeking deeper comfort and skill in addressing death and grief in sessions.
• Practitioners interested in an experiential and reflective approach to tending to grief.

Kimberley creates workshops which balance theory with personal exploration. She moves gently, but honestly, through the places where theory meets the human heart.

Kimberley is an LPC-S with a private practice in South Austin. She has worked with grieving clients for the past 14 years. She started her training at Austin's Center for Grief and Loss as as a therapist and support group facilitator working with both adults and children who had had a family member die. While there, she and a colleague who worked at hospice discussed the difficulties and heaviness of grief work with adults. From this seed, she created Morbid Curiosity: A Game About Death. She is passionate about tending to grief in a way offers acceptance, steadfastness, and presence rather than seeing it as something to “fix”.

Kimberley has attended Order of the Good Death national events, local Death Cafés, suicide prevention conferences and workshops, grief group facilitation training, and a variety of unique and sometimes quirky death-focused events. She has presented the game as a way to get people talking at the Thinkery as well as Lifting the Lid Conference, and spoken about death on the podcasts the Next Room, Funeral One, TalkDeath, and Seeing Death Clearly. She offers workshops, lectures, and consultation about death, working with grief, and sitting with our mortality.

The Venue

Casa de Luz Villiage in Austin Texas near Zilker Park, is filled with greenery, quiet nooks, and a sense of community - it is an ideal setting to nourish both body and mind. During our one-hour lunch break, you’re welcome to bring your own meal, enjoy the on-site restaurant known for its healthy, plant-based dishes, or wander over to nearby food trucks if you prefer something different.

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Host or Publisher Kimberley Mead Counseling