ABSTRACT
Training in compassion provides clinicians the ability to work from a place that is grounded, enabling greater distress tolerance and an enhanced ability to focus, thus being able to remain fully present and available to clients as they share their experiences of loss and grief. Clinicians can also incorporate aspects of compassion training into their therapeutic work with grieving clients, providing them with a greater ability to be present and open to their own experiences and to allow their grief to unfold in the most adaptive way possible. Grief is a painful experience, often made even more so by self-disenfranchisement, shame, and negative social messaging, all of which can benefit from compassion-based approaches. This chapter will explore how the principles of compassion apply to the therapist’s compassionate base in the therapeutic relationship, the client’s work in developing self-compassion, and specific compassion-based techniques that can be useful in the process of grief therapy.
