That is precisely why we have developed rituals around grief, so why not include small rituals in other endings too? When I finish work with a client, I light a candle or burn wood in my garden. I pause and reflect on the work I am about to let go of and move forward from. I celebrate the connection with the client and the journey they are on too. Celebrating endings helps us externalise our strong and heavy feelings, which can feel healing.
Talking about endings can feel hard at first, but it can also be quite liberating. As they say: a load shared is a load halved. A lot of healing comes from social interactions, validation, and acknowledging our feelings. Sometimes that is all we need to pause and put the heavy feelings down; reflect before moving on.
That’s what we do during our coaching and counselling training: we learn about the importance of endings and practice holding those for and with our clients. We read, discuss and reflect on the science of grief, identity changes, loss, final stages of work and other endings to feel more equipped to support our clients safely. You can do this too.
Thinking about endings can sometimes feel scary, especially when dealing with complex grief, suicide, traumatic loss or sudden changes in our reality. It may feel right to pause, switch off our feelings, or dissociate even. However, accepting our feelings and exploring them safely may help the healing.
This month, I would like to talk about endings because I had many of them recently and learned a lot about the importance of handling them well – especially in therapeutic and coaching work.
Vicarious trauma is often confused with controlled empathy, so it might be useful if we explore it here to notice the difference.
This month we are looking into the cost of working in carrying professions: the impact of client’s trauma on our health.
Emotional regulation – we all have feelings; those feelings are fleeting, and they ARE valid – no one can question your individual emotional experience – it might be helpful to remind people about this; validate all their emotions, educate them about how emotions are made; model connecting with and expressing a wide range of feelings but also choices around them – we can struggle, subconsciously shut down to stay safe and that’s OK.