Sitting with Sorrow

Purpose and Goals

This directive asks the client to consider their emotions and how it might feel to “be” with them rather than avoid them. It promotes mindfulness techniques and challenges thought distortions.

• Provide a tangible, sensory-based method for exploring grief and grounding during painful emotions.

• Support Wolfelt’s principle of reconciling grief rather than resolving it—honoring the ongoing, nonlinear nature of mourning.

Theoretical Rationale:

The art directive is designed to facilitate Worden’s 1st of 4 tasks of mourning (Worden, 2018). Worden's four tasks of mourning are a framework for navigating grief:

• Accept the reality of the loss

• Process the pain of grief

• Adjust to a world where the deceased is absent

• Find an enduring connection with the deceased while moving on with life

Worden, J. W. (2018). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner. Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

• Building on an adaptable and accessible framework to inspire and encourage clinical intuition through art-making.

• Orient bereaved towards externalizing, facilitating insight and understanding.

Art-Making:

Ask the client to consider their distressing grief emotions and their reactions to them. How do they react when they begin to feel those emotions? What actions do they take in response to their emotions?

When they are ready, ask them to create a piece that reflects how they feel or would feel about sitting with their sorrow. Let them choose what materials will help them visualize and contemplate their experience.

Reflection Questions/Prompts:

• Can you tell me about this piece? How do you think it represents your reaction to feeling the painful emotions of grief?

• When you begin to feel difficult emotions how do you react? What thoughts do you have? What actions do you take?

• How did it feel to consider sitting with your feelings? Did you notice any changes in your body? What thoughts were you having?

• How did you feel creating this piece? Did you notice any changes in youro body?

• How do you think holding space for your emotions would impact you?

• How comfortable are you with sitting with these feelings and giving them space to just be? What would make you more or less comfortable?

• What steps do you think you could take to begin to allow yourself to sit with sorrow?