Grief Loss Psychology

Life After Losses is a memoir with a message. Author James LaVeck offers help for grieving while taking listeners on an intimate journey of love, loss, healing, recovery, and discovery.

In this collection of interviews with survivors of suicide, individuals talk candidly and intimately about how their lives have been impacted by the suicide of a family member or close friend. Over 50 individuals were willing to share their personal tragedies as a way of helping others who face a similar loss as well as educating the public about the issues survivors of suicide face. Their willingness to share their stories is a testament to their endurance and strength in the face of adversity.

While we can speak to the psychological and emotional ramifications of loss and sorrow, we often overlook its impact on our physical bodies. Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor specializes in the study of grief, and in The Grieving Body she shares vital scientific research, revealing imperative new insights on its profound physiological impact. As she did in The Grieving Brain, O’Connor combines illuminating studies and personal stories to explore the toll loss takes on our cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems and the larger implications for our long-term well-being.

For twenty years, Jill Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed her by twenty-one-year-old sister Kim's suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary nonfiction, she re-creates with unsparing honesty her sister’s inner life, the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it—especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind.

Emotional depression leading to suicide can work the same way. Sometimes, a person can be treated so that, in effect, they are cured; sometimes, they can’t ever really be cured but can be treated in a way that they can live with the disease for their whole life. And sometimes, just as with certain kinds of cancer, the disease is untreatable, unstoppable, and no intervention by anyone or anything can halt its advance. It eventually kills the person, and there is nothing anyone can do. Thus, Ronald Rolheiser begins this small, powerful book.

The essays of The Loneliest Places began as a chronicle of Rachel Dickinson’s life after her son’s suicide. The pieces became much more. Dickinson writes the unimaginable and terrifying facts of heart-breaking loss. In The Loneliest Places she tells stories from her months on the run, fleeing her grief and herself, as she escapes to Iceland and the Falkland Islands―as far as possible from the memories of her dead son, Jack.

In This Is Body Grief, disability advocate and recovery expert Jane Mattingly lays out a groundbreaking approach to mourning and accepting one’s ever-changing body. Like all grief, she says, Body Grief cannot be overcome but felt in all its complexity. Dismantling the narrative that your body is “against you,” she presents new ways to cope with your body's fluctuating abilities with self-compassion and grace. Along the way, she walks you through the seven stages of Body Grief, offering wisdom for how to make space for each difficult emotion as it arises.

There is one day in Joan Childs' life that she wishes she could do over: the day her daughter, Pam, a brilliant psychotherapist, plunged from a 15-story building to her death. In this vivid memoir, Childs (herself a psychotherapist) explains how her daughter's life was taken by the most unforgiving of executioners: bipolar disorder. It was the delusions, not her daughter, who made the final decision to end her life.

For people who struggle with their mental health, and those who love them, the call to action and support is long overdue. Stronger than Stigma shares the stories of people who have been impacted by this disease, and their efforts to magnify their voices and make a difference. The honest and raw stories in this book aren’t just about mental health and its impact on lives - they’re about how to change the conversation around mental health, and create a better world.

Tell a New Story offers an easy-to-follow, five-step approach using the STORY acronym to help uncover your patterns and transform the way you think and talk about yourself. Rowan weaves a tapestry of powerful emotions through personal storytelling. She expounds on struggles that teach lessons on how to dissolve the habits that hold you back from living your dream life. Rowan will help you recognize the patterns that are keeping you stuck in the same old story, and instead, guide you to rewrite a new and empowering version of yourself that you love.

Every day millions of people struggle after being blindsided by losing a loved one unexpectedly; especially a loved one that died by their own hand. In this eye-opening book, you'll hear how Chad Taylor and his two little children were suddenly thrust into this growing number of afflicted people. But their story doesn't end there, and yours doesn't have to either!

After a near fatal stroke in 1995, Robert McCrum has gained an intimate understanding of his own mortality. Twenty-two years on, his friends have joined him in experiencing Prospero's 'every third thought' of death as a dominating theme of life. McCrum asks: can we make peace with what Freud calls 'the necessity of dying'? Searching for answers leads him to brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients and writers for advice and wisdom.

Balena è la storia di un corpo che cambia e diventa gigantesco, ma è anche la storia di una donna che si riappropria di sé grazie a quel corpo. Dopo la perdita del padre, a soli undici anni, Giulia inizia a cercare di colmare quel vuoto enorme col cibo, finendo per passare da 40 a 96 chili in pochi mesi. Poi, insieme al corpo, cominciano a crescere il rifiuto di sé e la vergogna, mentre compagni e insegnanti iniziano a trattarla in modo diverso. Un memoir toccante e acuto che racconta la stigmatizzazione del corpo, il superamento del lutto e la ricerca di un nuovo inizio.

After suddenly losing her daughter in 2013, Dr. Betsy Guerra met excruciating pain and hopelessness face-to-face. Her grief journey taught her lessons that superseded the knowledge afforded by her doctorate degree and decades of clinical practice. Ultimately, Betsy found her way to joy, while continuing to love and honor her daughter. Her story has attracted hundreds of people who have also struggled with grief. Since her loss, Betsy has studied and tested the tools that helped her clients overcome incredible pain and hardships.

Accidental injury is the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of forty-five. From fatal traffic accidents to firearms injuries to casualties of war to a deadly virus passed to an elderly loved one, accidental harm dates back almost as far as our human stories go. When these accidents occur, they pose profound and agonizing questions. Rooted in research on moral injury, religious rituals of confession and cleansing, and psychology, Accidental explores the complicated reality of accidental death and injury and offers companionship to those affected by these tragedies.

El trauma siempre ha sido parte de la experiencia humana, y los eventos traumáticos —tanto físicos como emocionales— pueden trastornar todo nuestro ser y cambiarnos para siempre. Aunque sabemos más que hace diez años acerca de los efectos neurológicos y físicos a largo plazo que deja el trauma, pocos se dan cuenta de que la experiencia del trauma no tiene que condenarlos a una vida de sufrimiento y duelo.

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.

Heartbreak can manifest itself as depression, anxiety, self-sabotage, an inability to feel emotions, make connections, or live life on your own terms. Donna's practical nine-step programme will empower you with the tools and support you need to gain clarity, identify what has hurt you and learn how to release the pain, fear and anger keeping you trapped. Donna will teach you how to care for yourself with love, give you the courage to really feel your feelings, step into your authentic self and move towards whole-hearted living.

Finding Your Way after the Suicide of Someone You Love is a compassionate and practical guide that addresses the intensely personal issues of survivors of suicide (SOS). This gentle and faith-affirming resource helps survivors know what to expect, especially during the first year following a suicide. It includes personal stories of survivors and suggestions on how to move beyond survival to live life again.

Life is full of tough transitions, and they are a bitch! Ugly divorce, death of a spouse, losing a parent to dementia or worse, losing your mind and body through menopause or other physical changes, and losing children to college and then to adulthood. These losses can take you out right to the edge of sadness and even despair. I know you can’t see it now, but inside the turbulence, what you face now is a gift. I promise that you can get to the other side of these tough transitions.