“Griefworks”: Integrating Emotional Processing and Meaning-Making into Grief Therapy

In recent years, we experienced a global pandemic, which forced us to face grief in myriad ways. To stress the magnitude of our collective experience in the past years, the scientific community decided it is time to introduce another diagnosis for grief (prolonged grief disorder) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), specifically to address what is expected to be a common occurrence for years to come as a result of the loss, grief, and trauma we experienced during the COVID-19 years. With this ever-growing need in mind, we want to present a model of working with grief addressing two aspects of processing loss that we found paramount for successful outcomes in therapy: emotional processing and cognitive/meaning-making. To exemplify the two components of grief work, we created a composite case with aspects from different real cases we have worked with over the years.