We would like to congratulate Kriti Gaur, PhD on the fantastic work on Process Oriented Meaning Making (POMM) for Multicultural Grief Therapy. We would like to honor this work here at Counselor's Choice Award for this tool and let counselors know how much we like it and what we like about it! It's coming out soon to the public!
POMM: Process Oriented Meaning Making for Multicultural Grief Therapy
Therapists using the POMM workbook with their clients are motivated to consciously adopt a thoughtful approach, while keeping in mind the cultural, religious, and client identities which include ethnic traditions for grieving. This aids the therapist in facilitating the development of meaning-making for clients during grief recovery that adapts to their life experience. POMM emphasizes the use of dialectical thinking as an asset to meaning making.
By using a mix of the eight stages, therapists who have used POMM have seen noticeable signs of decreased anguish and suffering through their clients' recovery process.
A summary of the Eight Stages,
Double listening entails paying careful attention to both the client’s and therapist’s narratives simultaneously, ensuring awareness of any cultural prejudices or countertransference within the therapist’s ideology. Counselors who become proficient in this stage can remain transparent, authentic, and genuine.
Exploring and validating emotions. The wheel of emotion (such as Dr. Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions) can be used as a tool to facilitate the client’s exploration of their emotional state during the grieving process. It may help to validate the efforts a client has put into reexperiencing the emotions they had about the loss and expressing those emotions.
Therapists can practice a purposeful combination of refraining from premature introduction of difficult subject matter and broaching difficult subject matter in an effort to uphold the client’s boundaries and autonomy in the session. It is vital that the therapist carefully looks for cues that may indicate that the client is not ready to express certain aspects of their culture and grief and respect their space. Also, honoring the client’s unique mourning process may include a combination of cultural or ethnic practices along with their personal rituals of healing.
Scanning for non-singular emotions includes understanding that clients may present two kinds of parallel emotions: negative feelings regarding the death of their beloved and pleasant feelings which surface while remembering the life their loved one lived. Use the Wheel of Emotion again to help the client to recognize and label specifically adaptive, positive, or happy feelings associated with their loved ones, and encourage them to step away from viewing the person only through the lens of their demise. This is similar to the concept of successfully holding opposing ideas.
Grief tracking and active visualization are techniques that encourage the therapist to pause and analyze the client's progress and increase motivation. Therapists are charged to do so by highlighting the tasks that have already been accomplished in therapy. The client is encouraged to reflect and discuss behaviors or actions they have performed lately that were initially deemed too demanding or overwhelming. Therapists can also use metaphors or analogies to illustrate the concept of healing through the grief recovery process which helps the client see their progress.
The sixth protocol assesses the client’s level of readiness and determines the next steps for recovery. It’s important to remember that moving forward to steps seven and eight or back to a previous step isn’t considered an indicator of success or failure. Each client has their own path, and no timeline can be set as a standard for recovery using the tool. Evaluating clients’ positionality in grief work involves assessing if they have been able to separate themselves from overwhelming, uncomfortable emotions and are able to view the loss with objectivity.
Examine the headway made by the client through steps 1-6 of the POMM workbook.
Assess if the client indicates readiness to detach from overwhelming emotions and can find purpose and meaning in life.
Identifying the by-product of loss due to death is the seventh step. Grief entails two distinct kinds of losses: the death of a beloved and the loss of previously held identities. This exercise outlines steps for counselors to help clients talk about parts of their identity that have been impacted. Open-ended questions can be used to encourage clients to explore how their identities have been impacted.
A meaningful plan of action to remember their resilience and recover hope. Like, discussing with the client the tasks or goals they want to engage in that aligns with the legacy of the deceased. This can be additional to exploring how the activities integrate both the client’s passions and honor the memory of the deceased.
Are you a counselor with a tool you'd like to share with others? Consider applying for the award yourself! It's free to apply. All submissions are reviewed by licensed therapists. https://www.counselorschoiceaward.com/honorees
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