Grief That Doesn’t Look Like Grief
R2300
Grief training often covers the basics. This workshop goes much deeper.
Most of us were trained to recognise bereavement. But grief is far larger than death. It lives in the loss of a relationship, a role, a body, a future, an identity — losses that have no funeral, no formal recognition, and often no name. Clients carry these losses without realising they are grieving. And even experienced practitioners can miss them.
This workshop covers the full spectrum: familiar grief presentations and the ones that hide in plain sight as anxiety, exhaustion, or years of quiet stuckness. It will deepen what you notice, expand what you can offer, and give you practical frameworks to work with grief in all its forms.
It also takes seriously the dimensions that are too often treated as secondary — the ethics of grief work, the cultural complexity of loss and mourning in a South African context, and the emerging questions raised by digital afterlife technologies that practitioners are only beginning to encounter.
Course Information
| Format | Two-day online workshop |
|---|---|
| Live Dates | 22 & 29 August 2026 (8:30am – 5:00pm) |
| Available Until | 30 November 2026 — recording, CPD points, and all materials remain available |
| Delivery | Online — live via Zoom |
| HPCSA CPD Points | 11 Clinical, 1 Ethics, (applied for) |
| Important Note | If you cannot attend the live sessions, the full recording and all materials are still available to you. CPD points available until 30 November 2026. |
This workshop is for:
- Psychologists
- Registered Counsellors
- Social Workers
- Psychiatrists
- Mental health practitioners working with adults
By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:
- Recognise grief presentations that do not follow conventional patterns, including ambiguous, disenfranchised, and non-death losses
- Apply Pauline Boss’s ambiguous loss framework and her six guidelines for moving forward
- Recognise Prolonged Grief signs and symptoms
- Distinguish grief from depression and trauma, and understand when they co-occur
- Apply a culturally informed approach to grief work relevant to the South African context
- Understand Kübler-Ross’s five-stages model and Kessler’s sixth stage in context, and integrate them with contemporary approaches
- Apply continuing bonds theory to distinguish healthy from complicated ongoing connection to the deceased
- Use meaning reconstruction principles, including post-traumatic growth as a possible outcome
- Apply the dual process model to guide oscillation-based grief work
- Recognise and respond to grief complicated by traumatic death, survivor guilt, and suicide bereavement
- Understand the ethical responsibilities particular to grief work, including working across cultural difference and practitioner self-care
- Engage thoughtfully with emerging ethical questions around digital afterlife technologies and death bots
What the two days cover
This two-day workshop gives you the grounding to see grief clearly. You’ll work across the full landscape — ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, cumulative and prolonged grief, grief after trauma and suicide — and you’ll leave with frameworks you can apply immediately: the dual process model, continuing bonds theory, meaning reconstruction, and more.
Day 1 builds your conceptual foundation.
Day 2 moves into practice — and ends with an ethics session that takes seriously both the cultural complexity of grief work in South Africa and the genuinely new questions raised by digital afterlife technologies and death bots.
A note on the South African context
This workshop is designed with South African practice in mind. Cultural diversity and the realities of working across difference are woven through the content as a priority — not added as a footnote.
Additional Materials:
Summary of work over the 2 days
Additional downloads to support grief work in practice.
R2300
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