GriefWork: Growing from life's inevitable losses (2025.05.21; via Zoom)

GriefWork: Growing from life's inevitable losses is organized by Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) Canada and will be held on May 21, 2025.

Overview:
Growing from life's inevitable losses
Losses happen. Historically, it was the wisdom traditions - religion and philosophy - that provided us with comfort. Today psychology helps too: the utterly universal experience of loss has spawned much excellent scientific research.  

This workshop assumes your appointments are brief, averaging only ten minutes. With that in mind, we teach the CBT tools that are highest in impact and practicality. The goal is to efficiently help patients cope - at least a little better - with the pain of some of life’s inevitable losses. 

1. What are the criteria for DSM-5-TR's new Prolonged Grief Disorder?
2. Is it bereavement or is it depression? If it’s “just” bereavement, how should the management differ?  
3. Kübler-Ross’s DABDA is dead. What new recovery model is both evidence-based and empowering?
4. Reassurance is helpful—but goodness gracious, only to a point. What concrete tools help the bereaved? And what tricks can we use to boost compliance? 
5. Forgiveness (in some form) is often required to overcome a loss. How does the research suggest we define and facilitate that which sounds so godawfully churchy?
6. People persist to prevent the pain of loss; e.g., with relationships beyond their “best before” dates, and with careers that suck their souls. How can one escape the “sunk cost trance” underlying such maladaptive behaviors?
7. How prevalent are the so-called “moral injuries”? How can we help those genuinely suffering from them?  
8. For some patients, the fear of death is overwhelming. How can we help them overcome that common cause of suffering?
9. Beyond reducing suffering, there’s the tantalizing prospect of “post-traumatic growth” (PTG). PTG is real—what are non-klutzy ways of facilitating it?

Head instructor Greg Dubord, MD is the CME Director of CBT Canada, and the prime developer of medical CBT. He has presented over 500 workshops, including over 50 for the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and is a University of Toronto CME Teacher of the Year.