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Grief/Loss Response Kit Education about what to expect on your grief journey.

Welcome.  For whatever your loss that you are grieving that made you seek this out -I am very sorry. 
I am Casey Cole Corbin and I'm a counselor that has specialized in grief.  Unresolved grief/loss issues is found as the root issue in the majority of over 3,000 clients I have counseled in the last two decades. 

In the usual process of counseling on unresolved grief and loss issues, it occurred to me that most of what my profession offers is after the fact, well, long after the fact.  In my role as the program director of a psych hospital outpatient program I witnessed many of the patient’s very serious mental health issues were rooted in unresolved grief issues from 5, 10, 20, and even 30 years ago.  I knew what to do to help them at that point, but I began to wonder where the patient would be if there had been earlier intervention?  What would have been their outcome if they even had a basic understanding of grief and the stages they would be going through?

So I sought out the opportunity to work with people when less time had occurred between the loss and the point of mental breakdown. 

It worked.  Naturally, I wanted to shorten that chasm, that time between the loss and the intervention.  Unfortunately, 5 years ago I had an opportunity.  In the town I lived in, a tragic death took place with a teenager.  I was asked to do a community meeting where flyer invitations were sent home by the school to all parents. 
The open educational meeting went well, and I was invited to attend the funeral and meet with the boy’s traumatized family.  I started working with two of the teens most affected.  Adapting ‘unresolved’ approaches to the process of actually resolving them in real-time as these young men naturally progressed through the stages.  We meet weekly for months.

Today these two clients are on their way to college and my ongoing contact with them and their families report impressive stability and even character growth and life purpose because of the loss.

The format for this education on grief videos comes from a 2-part process that I use with my clients -frequently in a group Family Session.  The first part is education about grief.  Then we meet again to process their feelings, assess where they are in the grief cycle, and possibly continue to meet to work on therapeutic homework assignments.  It is important to let you know the usual format to help the flow of this Kit make sense and also for you to consider doing something similar with a counselor. 

What this Kit is: We will discuss:  

• The expected Stages someone goes through when facing a loss. 

• The Four Phases and of Grieving.

• The Four Tasks of Mourning.Healthy coping skills in dealing with grief/loss. 

• Practical things to do to assist yourself and others to move productively through grief progression.  

What this session is not: The following can be very important and needed, this Kit is not to replace elements that might need to take place, such as: 

• a community forum response or round table discussion of the recent issue.

• a memorial service or other helpful traditions and rituals.

• suicide prevention education.

• a therapy group for processing grief/loss feelings.professional individual counseling

Feel free to contact me if you need help finding resources.  Casey@CaseyColeCorbin.com


5 Stages of Grief, plus 2

1. Denial: A common first reaction to loss, with either loss that has happened or loss that is coming, is to refuse to believe it, or to refuse to believe that we will be seriously affected by it. This may be hard to understand for others watching this reaction. This is the first way to control the experience and avoid feeling the pain and fear, but it doesn’t usually last long because the denial is difficult to maintain in the face of facts unless a person is delusional or becomes delusional and therefore seriously mentally ill.

2. Anger: The most common second stage, once denial starts to wear off, is anger. This anger may be felt toward anyone or anything. We often feel angry at doctors and other medical professionals working with a dying or dead person; at other people, often family members or friends; at ourselves; and often at the person or thing that is being lost. Often, this anger is intense even though we know that it doesn’t make sense. This is a second way to keep the pain away, which can last longer than the denial but usually breaks down in turn.  It’s OK to be mad.  Our culture mistakenly says things like “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”  That’s a denial of very valid feelings.  They hurt us when they left.  This anger doesn’t have to make sense but it does have to be dealt with.  We must work through our mad to get to the other side where we can then forgive.  Forgiveness fixes everything.

3. Bargaining: In this common stage, we may try to “make a deal” with God, fate, or some person we feel has the power to keep the loss from happening: “God, if you let my wife live, I’ll do anything.” This is still another attempt to control the situation and avoid the loss. This stage also tends to end when we see that this tactic is not preventing the loss, and sometimes we slip back into anger at this realization.  Also known as the "woulda, coulda, shoulda" stage.

4. Depression: This is the stage we reach when all our efforts to avoid experiencing the loss fail and we realize that we can’t escape this painful experience. Depression may be experienced not only as a “down” mood, but as apathy, withdrawal, loss of interest in many parts of life, loss of energy, loss of appetite or increase in eating, changes in sleep patterns, difficulty thinking or concentrating, self-hatred, and/or thoughts of death or suicide. People in this stage often become worried that they are falling apart or “going crazy,” that their feelings will never return to normal, and that they are not reacting normally, but this is a common experience. After a time, as we adjust to the loss we are experiencing and it starts to become a normal part of our world, we can move on to the final stage (though, as mentioned, in many cases, people fail to reach the last stage for various reasons).

5. Acceptance: This is the stage in which our feelings begin returning to normal. We get to be comfortable with the knowledge that we will die, or a loss we have experienced becomes part of the past and the new version of our world becomes what we think of as normal. Thinking of the loss becomes less painful, though it will probably still cause sad feelings for a long time, possibly for the rest of our lives.

Growing beyond the 5 Stages of Grief:

6. Growth:  Similar to our new understanding of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), after appropriate treatment and attention, survivors can experience Post Traumatic Growth!

7. Fulfillment: The tragedy can give an opportunity for a turning point for renewal and motivation.  Possible positive changes include: Increased Self-reliance Higher Self-esteem Expanded SpiritualityMore appreciation of Life, Relationships, and PrioritiesStrengthened Character Superior Life skillsExtensive Lifestyle benefits Greater Purpose in Life


More current research in the field of grief find Four Phases and Four Tasks of Grieving and Mourning: The Four Phases by John Bowlby and Colin Murray Parkes are: 

1. Shock and numbness. 

2. Yearning and searching.

3. Despair and disorganization.

4. Re-organization and recovery.

In J. W. Worden's “Tasks of Grief” this process has no time table and in some ways may never end in this lifetime: 

1. To accept the reality of the loss.

2. To work through the pain of grief.

3. To adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing. 

4. To emotionally relocate the deceased and move on with life.

These four can be more easily remembered as:
Reeling, Feeling, Dealing, and Healing.

According to Stroebe and Schut, healthy grieving means engaging in a dynamic process of oscillating between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping. A griever will oscillate between confronting the loss and avoiding the loss.

We are not ‘right’ during this time.  Naturally because something ‘wrong’ happened.  We expect our thoughts to be logical and orderly.  Emotions follow no such rules.  Accept this.  “You are just as crazy as you need to be right now.”

Healthy Coping Skills for Grief and Loss
• Build, maintain, and rely on a support system: Both within a recovery program such as Alcoholics Anonymous and in other situations, it is vital to find people who are supportive, who will listen to and spend time with someone who is suffering, and to turn to them when one has the kind of painful feelings that led to drinking, drugs, or other excesses. For some of us, our habit has been to isolate ourselves, and it may take a deliberate and uncomfortable effort to go to others. It is especially helpful to join with others feeling the same loss for mutual support.
• Understand and accept the grieving process: Learn about the information in this presentation, and understand that feeling as if you are falling apart or going crazy is normal and not a sign that you aren’t handling the situation adequately.
• Remind yourself that the pain is temporary.  As people often say, “This, too, shall pass.” It does not lessen the hurt in the present to remember this. However, a dangerous aspect of depression is the feeling that life will always be sad and painful, and this can lead to despair. Remembering how past pains healed can be a source of hope and strength.
• Slow down: When we are grieving, we don’t function as well in any area of life. We are less effective at work, more prone to problems in relationships, more likely to get physically sick, and more accident-prone. It is important not to expect as much of ourselves as we normally would.
• Concentrate on basic.  We may tend to neglect self-care in times of grief. It is important at these times to make sure we eat properly, get enough rest, and get regular exercise of some kind. Failure to do these things makes us vulnerable to stress and depression even under normal conditions. In a time of loss, this failure can set us up for relapse.
• Turn to spiritual sources of support: Whether through participation in organized religion or a private relationship with a personal higher power, faith, and reliance on something larger than oneself for support can be a literal lifesaver. In circumstances of the loss, the application of some of the tools and principles of 12-Step recovery programs can be as useful to cope with grief as to avoid relapse.



I would like to introduce to you what I call the Survivorship Amelioration Model (SAM) (the act of making something better; improvement.) that I use with my private clients for both grief and trauma.  Old models of grief counseling included ideas of closure that were based on disconnecting from what was lost.  We now understand that continuing the bond is not only a better approach, but it’s not healthy -or even possible- to disconnect fully.  Humans are highly complicated, multifaceted, and even multidimensional.  We will always have those that we lost with us.  To get through the Stages, Phases, and Tasks.  We must learn to ‘sit in our sad’.  Just be sad.  Accept it.  You can allow yourself to experience small amounts of sad, then take a break from the sad.  This is ‘dosing’ our sad.  Then allow the sad to return without judging it.  You don’t have to express or suppress -just observe that sad, as if it’s over there …and you can observe the sad …and not have to do anything about it.  You don’t have to numb the sad by using substances or emotional detachment.  Just sit in your sad.  You can be sad and be OK at the same time.  It’s OK to be sad.

The magazine that I am writing all this into an article for was born from growth (6) and fulfillment (7) of Patricia Rosen, who says, “I am the mother of an addict who overdosed on a prescription drug at a young age, a tragedy that no parent expects or forgets; but this inspired me to help the thousands of other families that are struggling with addiction. I started the magazine and website in 2012, in memory of Steven.”

But HOW do we get from the pit of despair to the other side where things are not only functional again, but better, improved, stronger than before? 


Examples of Therapeutic Homework Assignments:
* Create a Grief/Loss History Time-Line to chart your losses. 
* Feelings Journal in which you address your specific feelings about the loss daily, consider including what you eat, exercise, sleep. 
* Write out a Personal Grief Plan for how you will process through it and when you might seek a professional counselor or attend groups, such as GriefShare.  Include short term and long term goals.
* Write a letter to the person you lost, such as: “I apologize for…”, “I forgive you for…”, “I want you to know…”. 
* Write about special memories.  Read your letters to a listener or small group.

We must consider the many dimensions a person is affected by grief not only emotional, but: physical, spiritual, cognitive, behavioral, and even in one’s identity. 

In all this, the thing to remember is that grief is a transformative process through which our lives can ultimately become worse …or better. 

Casey has been counseling for over 20 years and has specialized in grief, anxiety, Trauma, PTSD, addiction, and abuse survivorship.  He meets with private clients and their families virtually everywhere. 

For more information go to:  CaseyColeCorbin.com