Sandtray Therapy With Bereaved Clients

Sandtray is perfect, and expressive arts intervention modality for working with grief. Grief often involves remembering things from the past (sometimes very recent past) and sandtray provides a visual and kinesthetic experience for clients such as creating a scene that includes images and symbols of loss. Grief is also about experiencing feelings at present.

kinesthetic quality sandtray provides customers with a powerful non-verbal means of experiencing grief. figures, sand, arranging thumbnails in a meaningful configuration of all enable customers to experience their feelings of sadness without saying a word. Also, the visual aspect sandtray external display provides a powerful symbol that has meaning for the client. Whenever a client chooses, she can look at the symbols and clusters of symbols in the tray.

Clients experience polarity when they experience deeper emotions and feelings of loss, obviously, among the deeper feelings that customers experience. So, as sandtray therapist, a client can expect to be reluctant to express feelings of sadness and loss, even though part of the customer wants and needs to complain about the loss. Polarity is the fear of layoffs and the pain sensation compared experiencing a sense of loss. Just knowing what to expect will save you some frustration when working with clients who are grieving.

Denial of Death
Growing up in this country as a Euro-American, I was witness to the tendencies of people from my cultural background when it comes to the death and loss. For years, he was disturbed and worried me that many Euro-Americans, compared with people from other cultural backgrounds, tend to be less mourn, to deny death, and avoid the grief process as much as possible. I have been to many funerals where people who have lost spouses were admired for not grieving. They are admired for not grieving. After the funeral, I've heard people say: "It held up very well." This phenomenon has always puzzled and disturbed me. Why do not admire people for mourning? Would not anyone who really cares about the dead person feel pain? Why is my adopted culture, attitudes toward death and dying that I consider false?

I hope it can even be part of our denial of death. Did you even know someone who is hoping for too long? When someone is nearing the end of a terminal illness, we hope that interferes with the process of grief. I've known people who wanted their wives to accept the reality of their deaths, but the spouses can not accept it. In these cases, hope is a hindrance. Some people hope to do with my eyes closed.

A few years ago, I had a client whose husband died of cancer. client began to tell me your story, it became apparent that he held hope until the day his wife died. His wife tried to talk to him about death and his adult children had as well. I think he believed that holds the hope for his wife, but it is clear that for him. He simply could not face her death.

Intra-psychological issues, cultural differences and family issues are other important factors that may influence the pain process. Families are the styles of handling feelings of grief / loss and other emotions. In some families, feelings are expressed openly, while in others the feelings are suppressed and not expressed. In other families, the anger expressed by some members of the family, while feelings like fear and sadness expressed by other family members. Cultural differences make a big difference in the grief process. As I mentioned earlier, many Euro-Americans tend to grieve less open, while many African-Americans are much more open in expressing feelings of sadness and loss.

to cope
Clients who deal with the death of a loved one and still have responsibilities in your life that need their attention. Even if clients are bereavement leave, leave will be over long before the grief process is completed. It is therefore important for clients who are grieving find a balance between coping and grieving. In the first months of mourning process, this condition is hard to find, grieving will be in the forefront to such an extent that elusive deal. But as months go by, finding a balance between the two possible, although it could be difficult. In my opinion, the therapist's role is to support and encourage the process of grief and coping. Sandtray therapy provides the perfect environment for clients to explore and express feelings of loss and get the support they need.