Grief Psychology

With all great leaders who find connection through life events and signs from the universe, Jacob Cooper demonstrates lessons learned when he encountered a near-death experience (NDE) as a child climbing a playground ladder. The result is a transformational guide that provides tenets and wisdom of each rung of the ladder, just like Jacob from the Bible. Upon applying these tenets, one can be reminded that they do not have to wait to get to heaven to see the light that is within themselves; the inner light is omnipresent. Follow Jacob’s journey as he teaches lessons from his NDE, shares ...

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an un­tapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she em­ploys the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and how embracing the bittersweetness at the heart of life is the true path to creativity, con­nection, and transcendence.

In Life After Suicide, Jennifer Ashton opens up completely for the first time, hoping that her experience and words can inspire those faced with the unthinkable to persevere. Part memoir and part comforting guide that incorporates the latest insights from researchers and health professionals, Life After Suicide is both a call to arms against this dangerous, devastating epidemic, and an affecting story of personal grief and loss. In addition, Dr. Ashton includes stories from others who have survived the death of a loved one by their own hand.

Grieving is a highly personal experience and reactions differ from person to person. Feelings of loss are arguably the most unique, confusing feelings with which to cope. Therapist and grief expert, Stephanie Jose, understands this. She created Progressing Through Grief as an interactive resource to gently meet you wherever you are today, as you move through your grief and toward healing.

Coping with loss is difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer alone. Based on the proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatment, Moving Through Grief provides simple and effective techniques to help you get unstuck and start living a rich and fulfilling life again, loss and all. ACT is all about embracing what hurts and committing to actions that will improve and enrich your life.

"Albert," the neighbor said, "your mom needs you to come home." That's how it began for Albert Hsu when his father died. Anyone who has lost a loved one to suicide experiences tremendous shock and trauma. What follows is a confusing mix of emotions - anger, guilt, grief, and despair.

When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways.

The death of someone we hold dear may be inevitable; being paralyzed by our grief is not. A growing body of research has revealed our capacity for resilient grieving, our innate ability to respond to traumatic loss by finding ways to grow - by becoming more engaged with our lives, and discovering new, profound meaning.

Suicide rates among Army soldiers increased 80 percent between 2004 and 2008, according to a recent report published in Injury Prevention. In the last several years, the number of soldiers returning from the Middle East with mental and physical wounds has continued to climb. According to Dr. Simon Rego, a supervising psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center, "Unlike any other time in history, U.S. military suicide rates now appear to have surpassed those among comparable civilian populations. It is therefore critical that we address this emerging public-health problem."

We are often urged to rely only on ourselves for strength, mental fortitude, and positivity. But with her distinctive “skill, wit, and sharp insight” (Laura Bates, author of Girl Up), Soraya Chemaly challenges us to adapt our thinking about how we survive in a world of sustained, overlapping crises. It is interdependence and nurturing relationships that truly sustain us, she argues. Based on comprehensive research and eye-opening examples from real-life, The Resilience Myth offers alternative visions of relational hardiness by emphasizing care for others and our environments above all.

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth getting upset about from those that are not.

More than 100 years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition - a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.

In The Wheel of Life, when Kübler-Ross was 71 years old and facing her own death, this world-renowned healer told the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she offered a lesson on how to live well. The Wheel of Life is an adventure of the heart - powerful, controversial, inspirational - a fitting legacy of a powerful life.

The Sun Stood Still and the world lost its color: The phone rang, it was the Deputy Coroner of Sacramento County, California "Ariel Died", she said as a simple matter of fact statement that she must have made hundreds of times before.. My heart sank and the world went black, as my mind, overwhelmed with those simple two words, could process nothing more. Time stopped. Ariel committed suicide in 2013, fresh off one of her many manic fantasy adventures in which she planned to conquer the world, for the thousandth time, followed by her usual magnificent crash into utter heartbreak and despair....

Suicide would appear to be the last taboo. Even incest is now discussed freely in popular media, but the suicide of a loved one is still an act most people are unable to talk about or even admit to their closest family or friends. This is just one of the many painful and paralyzing truths that author Carla Fine discovered when her husband, a successful young physician, took his own life in December 1989. And being unable to speak openly and honestly about the cause of her pain made it all the more difficult for her to survive.

The conventional view of grieving - encapsulated by the famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - is defined by a mourning process that we can only hope to accept and endure. In The Other Side of Sadness, psychologist and emotions expert George Bonanno argues otherwise. Our inborn emotions - anger and denial, but also relief and joy - help us deal effectively with loss. To expect or require only grief-stricken behavior from the bereaved does them harm.

Practicing medicine is traumatic: coping with the death of a patient, sharing a life-changing diagnosis, grieving futility in the face of a no-win situation. The emotional burden placed on doctors, nurses, and other healthcare practitioners is profound...and yet their suffering is often displaced, dismissed, or unrecognized. Here, Rachel Jones breaks the silence, daring to imagine a future where every healthcare worker is provided with the right tools to process grief, the space to integrate trauma, and--most importantly--the knowledge that they’re not alone.

Nearly half of US citizens over the age of 85 are suffering from some kind of dementia and require care. Loving Someone Who Has Dementia is a new kind of caregiving book. It's not about the usual techniques, but about how to manage on-going stress and grief. The book is for caregivers, family members, friends, and neighbors, as well as educators and professionals - anyone touched by the epidemic of dementia. Dr. Boss helps caregivers find hope in "ambiguous loss" - having a loved one both here and not here, physically present but psychologically absent.

Internationally renowned psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom has devoted his career to counselling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In A Matter of Death and Life, Marilyn and Irvin share how they took on profound new struggles: Marilyn to die a good death, Irvin to live on without her.

The notion of planning for one's death is intrinsically at odds with our human instinct to avoid considering our own mortality. Although we may contemplate the grief that our life's impermanence would cause to our loved ones, we seldom consider the myriad of emotional and legal issues that can arise afterward.