A parent’s suicide creates a major challenge for children: They have to grow up without the presence of this important figure while trying to give meaning to something almost impossible to grasp. A client-centered approach is uniquely fit to support the grieving process of these children. The focus lies on understanding the loss from within and the empathic support for the lived loss. We first look at what contemporary insights on early loss can teach us. Along the lines of a case history of an eight year old girl I then describe some important themes in grief therapy and the way we can work with these in a client-centered way.
traumatic loss, grief therapy for children, suicide of a parent
The tPeP (Journal Person-centered experiential Psychotherapy) is the scientific journal for Dutch and Flemish psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, that work from, or are interested in a client-centered perspective.