The Grieving Therapist Caring for Yourself and Your Clients When It Feels Like the End of the World

For readers of No Cure for Being Human and Simple Self-Care for Therapists, a witty and compassionate field guide to the 10 realms of grief--and how to navigate them yourself and with clients.

How do you practice good therapy when it’s the end of the world as we know it…and no one feels fine?

The planet is burning, friends and family are falling to QAnon and cultic groups, and we’re all living through the collective trauma of a global pandemic. Among therapists and healers, burnout is rampant; hopelessness and despair are common now, too. In The Grieving Therapist, psychotherapists Larisa Garski and Justine Mastin give voice to the difficulties of therapising in today’s world--and offer a grief-informed framework for taking care of yourself as you take care of others. 

Informed by narrative, internal family systems, fanfic, and trauma-sensitive therapy, Garski and Mastin examine what it means to be a therapist at the end of the world (or what feels like it). They break down 10 realms of grief that are critical to understand and work with today, but likely weren’t taught to you in therapy school: the realms of our plague, our earth, our kin, our chosen kin, our faith, our love, our health, our panic, our work, and our meaning. Each chapter includes:

• A self-of-the-therapist section to help you explore your own experiences and relationship to the topic at hand, whether it’s climate change, family dynamics, or meaning-making amid crisis and uncertainty.
• A client section that explores how you can hold space and work with clients who are navigating the same issues.
• A grieving tool to equip you with the tool of the “neutral zone,” and teach you how to use it inside and outside sessions.

Garski and Mastin also share helpful guidance around working with clients whose social or political beliefs differ from yours; when therapeutic self-disclosure makes sense; how to notice the information that countertransference is trying to give you; and how to sit with (or step away from) triggers in your work. With compassion, irreverence, and more than a little whimsy, The Grieving Therapist shows you how to show up for yourself and your clients--in your own full humanity, amidst it all.

JUSTINE MASTIN, MA, LMFT, LADC, E-RYT 200, YACEP is the owner and founder of Blue Box Counseling; creator of YogaQuest, an organization that blends narratives with yoga and mindfulness; and co-host of the Dark Side of the Mat podcast. Mastin serves as an adjunct instructor at St. Mary's University of Minnesota in the MFT Master's program.
LARISA A. GARSKI, MA, LMFT, is a psychotherapist and Chief of Clinical Staff at Empowered Therapy in Chicago, IL. Garski is an AAMFT-approved supervisor. Find her at www.empoweredtherapy.org.
Both authors specialize in working with clients who identify as being outside the mainstream, like those in the geek, secular, and LGBTQIA+ communities. They co-authored Starship Therapise and co-host the podcast Starship Therapise.