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Grief Counselor
Helps people process loss and bereavement — providing emotional support during life's most difficult moments.
Did you know?
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's 'five stages' (1969) is the best-known model of loss, but it was first written about dying patients, and research doesn't back fixed stages.
How subjects help
- Psychology: Help someone work through sadness, anger and guilt after a death.
- Sociology: Respect how different cultures and families mourn and remember loved ones.
- Communication: Listen patiently and find gentle words when someone is heartbroken.
- Philosophy: Talk through big questions about life and meaning that a loss can bring up.
A famous name
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Psychiatrist who described the five stages of grief in her 1969 book On Death and Dying.
Try it yourself: Practise listening the SHUSH way
- Ask your partner to talk for three minutes about something ordinary and happy, like the best day they've had this year.
- Listen the SHUSH way: Show you care (phone away, look at them), Have patience, Use open questions ("Tell me more"), Say it back to check you understood, and Have courage to let a silence happen.
- Don't interrupt or offer a solution: just listen.
- Swap roles. If there is a third person, they watch and say which SHUSH tip they saw each of you use.
Social workers, counsellors and mediators spend much of their day listening carefully like this, so people feel heard before anyone talks about what happens next.
Adapted from Samaritans: DEAL: developing listening skills (SHUSH listening tips).
Also try: Map the helpers near you.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Netherlands