Certification Training 

It is a unique training which encompasses the principals and actions developed over the past 25 years by John W. James and Russell Friedman, the founders of The Grief Recovery Institute, and co-authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook and When Children Grieve. It is designed specifically to assist all who wish to help those with broken hearts retake a productive place in the mainstream of their lives.

The uniqueness of the program lies in the essential idea that grief is the normal and natural emotional reaction to loss. Even though that is an accurate statement, the majority of guidance for grieving people tends to move them toward their intellects to deal with their broken hearts. Thus the comment - "Grievers don't wind up at our door with broken heads, they all arrive with broken hearts."

While our ideas are neither new nor revolutionary, they are almost exclusively focused on helping people deal with what remains emotionally incomplete at the time of a death, a divorce, or other losses, or as reminders of a loss occur over time. We have known people to wait decades for "time to heal" them, their lives limited and restricted, only because no one has been able to help them with recovery actions. It is our job to address the presenting issues of grief and recovery, not the intellectual ideas that distract them from the task at hand.

Most literature, philosophies, and programs tend to move people away from their hearts into their heads, diminishing the probability of real completion or recovery. In keeping with the basic tenets of our program, the Certification training itself is a blend of experiential and didactic components. We insist that our Certificants be willing to take the same emotional actions they are going to ask of the people they help.

The Certification training is an intensive 4 day program. The mixture of personal completion actions combined with the fundamental principles of Grief Recovery^® demonstrate that this is a practical program, not just a theoretical idea. The training leads to the establishment of Grief Recovery^® Outreach Programs for working with groups as well as individuals.

Grief Recovery^® is an educational, or re-educational program based on the fact that grief is the normal and natural reaction to loss. However, the vast majority of ideas learned in our society about dealing with loss, are not normal, natural, or helpful to people struggling with the incomplete emotions involved with major loss experiences. It is the "intellectualization" of grief that complicates recovery from loss.

Our programs are not "support" groups, nor are they "self-help" groups. They are facilitated groups which use The Grief Recovery Handbook as the basic text, along with a format written by John and Russell. In addition to the text and format, Certificants have direct access to the Institute for guidance and direction. This is especially important in the first few months of implementing the program.

The Grief Recovery Institute is home base for an ever expanding international program, with Certificants in all corners of the globe. There is constant inquiry through our website and published books, for Certified personnel from every community in America, and increasingly, throughout the world. Once you have begun running the program, you automatically qualify to be included in our Referral Network.

Community Education Program & Attraction: Included in the training are materials to develop speeches and in-services to assist you in bringing the concepts of Grief Recovery® to your clients and to your community. There is also a segment on the last day of the training dedicated to helping each participant attract people to the program and to understand what has worked for others in similar fields.

Finally, there is usually time set aside to help customize and adapt the use of the program for different disciplines and adjust for cultural, language, and even distance related issues.

Anyone with a genuine desire to help grieving people is a candidate for Certification. Since the program is directed to the emotions caused by loss, it does not require special degrees or academic achievement. There are four obvious groups that are constantly dealing with grieving people - Mental Health Professionals, Clergy, Funeral & Cemetery Professionals, and Citizens Whose Lives Have Been Altered by Loss. After Certification, organizations and individuals from all four of those areas report tremendous benefits for their clients from the specialized techniques presented in the Grief Recovery^® Certification training program.

Mental Health Professionals: It is logical that mental health professionals who have observed the level and degree to which their clients have been affected by loss, would want to acquire the most effective skills possible for guiding those clients. Many professionals discover that even when their clients achieve an intellectual "understanding" of their grief, or even emotional "acceptance" of their losses, they are not necessarily equipped to re-enter the mainstream of their lives. The Grief Recovery^® Certification training program adds completion methods to the discoveries unearthed by clients with the aid of their therapists. Many therapists believe that Grief Recovery^® is the missing link for completing those discoveries, as well as a major adjunct to effective ongoing therapy.

Clergy: More than any other professional group, the clergy are most likely to be involved when a family has experienced the death of a loved one. And, in today’s world, with a divorce rate exceeding 50%, there is more and more demand that the pastor, rabbi, or minister be able to address the painful emotions attached to divorce and other losses. We often ask our friends in the clergy how often they get this call: "Hi, Pastor Bob, I’m just calling to say that everything is great with my family and at work, and my faith in the Lord is comforting." This is always greeted with a laugh and this reply, "Most calls are about marital struggles, trouble with the children, or a breech of faith in God." All of those, including the breech of faith, are clearly "loss" issues, which can benefit from the principles and actions of Grief Recovery^®.

Funeral & Cemetery Professionals: In addition to the clergy, this is the primary group that is literally there at the time of loss. While the health and medical aspects of funerals and embalming are essential to that trade, the bottom line reality is that a grieving family is sitting in a funeral director’s office the day after the death of a loved one. It behooves all who interact with the bereaved to have the most effective tools for dealing with the emotions caused by death.

Citizens Whose Lives Have Been Altered by Loss: Grief, and the life altering emotions attached to it, tends to create a heightened awareness of the value of life. Many people who have experienced major devastating losses, feel compelled to help others. Generally that desire is borne out of the often lengthy duration of their own suffering in the aftermath of the loss, and the desire to help others reduce the amount of time in which the pain is dominant in their lives. However noble the intentions, that desire must be matched by effective information and a workable program.

The Grief Recovery^® Certification Training and the accompanying Outreach Program and format provide the platform upon which professionals and others can follow their own impulse and desire to help others.

There are organizations that offer certificate programs in the general field of grief and loss, and some even use the words grief and recovery. A question we hear often is, "What exactly is it that distinguishes your program from the others?"

It is a very fair question and deserves an answer. In the section on Who is an ideal candidate for Certification, we talked briefly about the idea that "noble intentions" need to be coupled with effective information. The essential impediment to completion of the pain caused by loss is the mis-information which permeates our society, and is passed from generation to generation with limited regard for the validity of the information

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Grief and more importantly, recovery from the ravages of loss, is often a "stepchild" topic in many professional arenas. That is to say that it is an adjunctive element of other concerns, and gets shunted to the back burner of topics that are taught in many of the disciplines in which professionals are later called upon to help grieving people.

In all the classroom hours spent in professional schools, very few are actually focused on the specific topic of recovery from significant emotional loss. While a reasonable amount of time is spent on the history of death and funerary objects and rituals; and some time is spent studying the potential sequence of emotions involved in the "process" of dying, very little is devoted to the actions of recovery.

It is one thing to identify a problem, it is yet another to provide a practical solution to the problem. Yet, at last report from all of our personnel from all disciplines, there is still very little focus in most training schools, on the major concern - People’s Reaction to Loss and What to Do about It!

The element that most distinguishes our programs from others is the singular focus on helping people deal with the "conflicting emotions caused by the change or end in anything familiar." The list of losses that produce grief includes more than 40 life events, so dealing with loss is a full time task for us.

What is especially heartwarming for us and for the people we’ve trained is the enhanced value of therapy, spiritual programs, and improvements in other life areas for most people after completing the Grief Recovery^® Outreach Programs or working one-on-one with one of our Certified personnel.

Also valuable to our Certificants is the fact that they have direct access to the Institute and its founders, which translates into the greatest possible safety and helpful information for those people whose lives have been painfully altered by losses of all kinds.

Every care giver has spent a considerable amount of time studying and keeping current with their specific area of expertise. Yet there is another area of awareness, that due to its universal nature, must be added to the professional tool kit. While most professionals have a working knowledge of the process of dying as outlined in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ book, On Death and Dying, Grief Recovery^® is a totally separate and distinct field of expertise, requiring very specific knowledge and techniques.

The Grief Recovery^® Certification Program is designed to expand both personal awareness and professional ability in this specific yet universal area of human experience. The program provides education, training, and practical application of Grief Recovery^® counseling skills and techniques.

Where & When ?

Each year we try to present our program in as many cities as possible. No matter how soon we post our annual schedule, we inevitably get a call from someone a week after we’ve been to their town. Frustrating.

As a generality we try to book conference facilities at hotels near major airports to accommodate people who must travel to get to our program. We try to use moderately priced hotels to limit the cost to our participants. There is no requirement that you stay in the hotel we are using, though it sometimes more convenient.