A member of our writing team related the following experience during these times of near-lockdown. She had gone out to do some essentials such as grocery shopping and getting prescriptions filled for her healthy but self-isolating husband. Returning home, she threw down her things, wailed, “It’s just awful”, and burst into tears. Her astonished husband […]
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Loss & Grief
Infidelity: Rebuilding After a Betrayal
She makes an appointment to talk about the “what next” since the affair. You assume that her spouse has been unfaithful, but when she turns up to session, she tells you that she was the one who strayed. “It felt so good at the time,” she says. “I felt more alive and sexy than I […]
- January 14, 2020
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- Loss & Grief, Relationship & Families
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Infidelity: Helping the Betrayed Partner
He sits down and looks at you dolefully, his big eyes full of hurt and desperation. “I don’t know why she cheated on me,” he whispers hoarsely, “but this is the worst hurt I have ever felt. I don’t know how I will cope, or what it means for our kids. I guess my marriage […]
- December 17, 2019
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- Loss & Grief, Relationship & Families
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Counselling: From Resistance to Acceptance
Your 39-year-old female client seats herself and looks at you with frustration. It’s been many months now since she was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative condition, but she just can’t accept it; life is becoming impossible. Your 20-something male client suffered a relational breakup seven months ago; this was his “love of my life” and he […]
- July 12, 2019
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- Loss & Grief, Relationship & Families, Spirituality & Religion
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Dealing with the Stigma of Hearing Impairment
One in six Australians has hearing loss, and the projection is that one in four will have it by 2050, as our population ages (Australian Network on Disability, n.d.). Thus, even if you never have a profoundly deaf client come to your rooms, you are likely to see someone at some stage who is hearing-impaired. […]
- June 8, 2018
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Disability Issues, Loss & Grief
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Helping Clients Handle Rejection
There are no two ways about it: rejection is a universal experience and we will all face it multiple times over the course of our lives. But it still hurts! So what might it be helpful to keep in mind when you face that poor client that has been rejected (perhaps again)? This article offers […]
- April 9, 2018
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- Counselling Therapies, Loss & Grief, Relationship & Families
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Post-disaster Resilience: Who Survives Better?
In recent years, many disaster response experts and mental health researchers have switched their focus from looking exclusively at at-risk populations in the aftermath of an emergency to asking, “What are the protective factors?” “What situations, experiences, or personal traits help people to come through a traumatic incident with greater resilience?” First, let’s clear what […]
- September 21, 2016
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- Clinical Mental Health, Loss & Grief, Trauma & Disaster Mental Health
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Counselling Dilemma: A Terminally-ill Client
You are working with a 65-year-old female client, Mary, who has been coming to see you for six months as she had grief and loss issues around having lost her only sibling, her brother and her husband in a space of a month apart (a year ago). She has a daughter and son who are […]
- February 10, 2015
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- Counselling Dilemmas, Loss & Grief
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The Ten Commandments of Grief Counselling
Suicide is a significant public health problem, and properly supporting those left behind — the survivors — is a challenging but significant contribution to the wellbeing of the whole community. If a suicide-bereaved person wound up in your therapy room, what counselling tasks would need to be worked through with them? In this post we […]
- December 15, 2014
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- Loss & Grief, Self-harming & Suicide
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The Reactions of Grief and Mourning for the Suicide-bereaved
There are perhaps few human events which generate as many emotions and as intense a set of reactions as someone ending their own life. We can divide the reactions into two categories: those which tend to occur early in the grieving, and those which are ongoing. In this post we explore the early reactions of […]
- September 22, 2014
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- Clinical Mental Health, Loss & Grief, Self-harming & Suicide
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Tips to Support the Suicide-bereaved
If you have a friend, family member, or other acquaintance struggling with bereavement of suicide, how can you best offer support? What attitudes, translated into caring actions, can best facilitate the bereaved person’s coping in the immediate and short term, and their healing in the longer term? Because of the remaining societal stigma and also […]
- August 11, 2014
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- Loss & Grief, Relationship & Families, Self-harming & Suicide
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Common Stages of Disaster Recovery
Disasters and mass disruptive events can be extremely unpredictable and chaotic. Even though that is a valid characterisation of catastrophe, disaster experts have discerned a general pattern or cycle of phases that a community and the individuals in it go through from the time of impact of a disaster to establishing a newly reconstructed life. […]
- May 26, 2014
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Loss & Grief, Multicultural Issues, Trauma & Disaster Mental Health
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Core Actions of Psychological First Aid
In the first video of this two-part series (Principles of Psychological First Aid), Richard Hill looked at the five principles that are the basis for all Psychological First Aid: that is, promoting safety, calmness, self-efficacy, connectedness, and hope. In this talk, Richard will be putting you into the field: that is, the explorations will take […]
- April 11, 2014
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Loss & Grief, Multicultural Issues, Stress Management, Trauma & Disaster Mental Health, Videos
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Principles of Psychological First Aid
Psychological First Aid is a means of providing psychosocial support to individuals and families immediately after a disaster, terrorist or traumatic event, or other emergency. It consists of a set of helping actions which are systematically undertaken in order to reduce initial post-trauma distress and to support short- and long-term adaptive functioning. Based on the […]
- April 4, 2014
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Loss & Grief, Multicultural Issues, Stress Management, Trauma & Disaster Mental Health, Videos
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Symptoms and Behaviours of Unresolved Grief
Lindemann (1944), Lazare (1979) and Worden (2005) have identified numerous symptoms and behaviours that indicate unresolved / complicated grief. While many of the symptoms identified can be considered ordinary during the more acute earlier phase of grief, they are considered major signs of unresolved / complicated grief if they remain for unusually prolonged periods of […]
- March 22, 2012
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- Counselling Theory & Process, Loss & Grief
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