Creating Relationship Trees With Grieving Clients: An Experiential Approach to Grief Counseling

ABSTRACT

The Relationship Tree is an experiential approach to grief counseling combining narrative theory and art therapy, whereby clients create trees representing memories of their relationships with deceased loved ones. The exercise is designed for grieving clients to facilitate processing the pain associated with their losses. Making the tree in a visual, artistic format and then discussing it with a counselor enhances client insight into bereavement. A series of narrative questions posed by counselors helps clients reinterpret experiences with emphases on growth from the past and hopes for the future. The process fosters acceptance of mixed feelings about losses and creates opportunities for bereaved clients to tell new, more empowering stories about lost relationships and their meanings.

KEYWORDS:

• Art therapy
• creative counseling approaches
• creativity in counseling
• experiential activities
• experiential intervention
• grief counseling
• loss and bereavement
• narrative therapy

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge Alicia Moore for assistance with creating the Relationship Tree exercise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

N. Lynn Peterson

N. Lynn Peterson is a counselor with Crossroads Counseling, Columbus, Mississippi.

Rebecca M. Goldberg

Rebecca M. Goldberg works for the Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology & Foundations at Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi.