Progressing Through Grief: Guided Exercises to Understand Your Emotions and Recover from Loss

by Stephanie Jose, Cécile Rêve (Foreword)

-From the clinical perspective of a licensed mental health counselor...some of the questions we are often asked include 'Is this normal?' or 'Am I going crazy?' Progressing Through Grief answers these universal questions and others, and illustrates how personal and unique each person's experience is with loss.-

Cecile Reve, LMHC and Co-founder of ARTrelief, an expressive arts therapy center

Grieving is a highly personal experience and reactions differ from person to person. Feelings of loss are arguably the most unique, confusing feelings with which to cope. Therapist and grief expert, Stephanie Jose, understands this. She wrote Progressing Through Grief as an interactive resource to gently meet you wherever you are today, as you move through your grief and towards healing. Stephanie has spent countless hours working with grieving clients, and she saw the need for a resource that would address the various feelings of grief that occur at any stage of the process.

Twenty years ago, Stephanie Jose became well acquainted with grief when she suddenly lost her best friend. She has experienced first-hand many of the same feelings as her patients. Progressing Through Grief provides practical methods for coping with immediate feelings of loss, as well as the difficult emotions that can persist over time.

Progressing Through Grief is divided into three sections, each focusing on key factors that create a powerful process for healing:


Understanding why grieving is important, and how grief affects your body
Identifying complicated feelings and learning skills for coping with them
Journaling to move through overwhelming feelings and practicing self-care through relaxation techniques, nutrition tips, and meditation practices
Designed to be a companion as you courageously confront and process your feelings, Progressing Through Grief is intended to help you progress through your grief and into healing.

Genres: Grief, Audiobook, Psychology, Nonfiction

174 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2016

Reviews

[Kym Gamble]

A good way to journal through your grief. Short and to the point.

[Luna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite quotes:
"We are never all good or all bad. And it does us no good to focus on all of the perceived mistakes that we have made in our lives. If you have made mistakes, they were important for you to learn from so you could grow to be a better person. We are all flawed human beings that deserve to be loved and accepted."

"Do not feel guilty about taking care of yourself. Don't view it as self-indulgence or shame yourself. You are important. And if you care for your own needs, you can better tend to those of others."

"Instead of identifying the things you want to improve about yourself, focus on cultivating the strengths you already have."

"Electronics are often the antithesis of mindfulness."

"Perfectionism stems from a belief that you need to be in control of your feelings and behaviors and must only respond in specific ways. You believe others rely on you to be the cornerstone and things would fall apart if you were not the stabilizing force."

"The longer you maintain perfectionism, the more likely you are to fear rejection for being who you are or develop feelings of inferiority."

"Unfortunately, if you push people away long enough, you will find yourself alone."

"But attempting to have perfect interactions and be a perfect person will only lead to more feelings of guilt and failure."

"The key to overcoming guilt is realizing it is self-imposed. Certainly someone can say something to make you feel guilty, but only you can allow yourself to feel guilty. Forgive yourself for not being perfect, for not making the right decisions or not saying the right things. Someone I know says of mistakes: 'That's what happens when humans are involved!'"

[Ola · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I'm marking this as read because I did technically finish this, but I'm going to be coming back to certain passages and chapters in the next weeks)

I lost my grandmother to covid. I dont wish for anyone to lose their loved ones like this- you have no contact with the person while they're still in the hospital, you can't even say goodbye to them or hold their hand. Hell, you don't even see their body after they died. What's more, if you wanna stay safe, you can't visit family or friends, because the world is still locked up. It is an incredibly lonely, painful grief.
This book helped me with guiding through all the confused emotions I felt- and am still feeling, and probably will be feeling for a while still. It's not anything you wouldn't expect from a book on grief, and it probably won't be a book for everyone who needs help, but it was just right for me. I'm really thankful I got to read it.

[Gini · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful book for those who are grieving a loss of any sort. The focus is primarily on death of someone close, but it also extends into the loss of dreams, plans, or life expectations of any sort.
Simply written, straightforward descriptions and advice. The exercises are not difficult, but do require honest appraisals from the person working through them.
I found it to be a gentle starting point on the walk to recovering stability after a loss.

[Jane Ellen Nachreiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

This book helped me with my grief when I lost a dear friend in a house fire. It also was a tremendous help when I was fired from my job after 15 years - I needed to grieve the loss of my "work family" .

[Tyeshia Donaldson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guidance through Grief

Truly helps one figure out what they are truly feeling deep down within them. It's great that it's an interactive book and that it provides enough space to write out more than just a couple of thoughts.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read a few books on grief recently, this has been my least favorite. It starts off well but they lost me when it said that whilst grief is challenging it is just as important to spend time smiling, laughing and being silly (not a direct quote)

[Staycie Aida · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book as a supplement reading for grief and loss class. The book was a simple, easy read. Provides information regarding grief and loss in a concise and sinsictic manner. Has similar information provided in the textbooks I'm reading in my master's counseling program.

[Jodi Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helpful and practiful

Find the ideas and topics presented to be very useful as I grieve the loss of my son. Recommended to anyone experiencing los.

[createitlibrarian (Amanda) · Rating 3 out of 5]

While prayer is legitimate, please acknowledge more clearly that secularists may grieve differently.

[Ruthann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very helpful points here that really helped me process my own grief and loss. Good basic book with journaling prompts to help one process.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple, not unhelpful, also not groundbreaking

[Sian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and I liked it, but honestly, I don’t remember anything about it now.

[Becky Bartram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coping with a loss just got a little easier!

I had two losses in a week and working in the medical field I feel like I handle things a little differently than others. This book helped me separate the feelings I had as a professional and as a family member. There were exercises in here that I never would've thought about doing. She also helps explain why not everyone grieves the same and that it's okay if you don't go through the stages of grief like you're "suppose" to. I definitely recommend this book to help you understand all the feelings that come with the loss of a loved one.

I received this book for free in exchange for this unbiased review and I must say that it came at the perfect time in my life.

[Debbie Hoskins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slight. If you need a journal for grief, I would recommend this. It is attractive, has pretty good writing prompts, and lots of space to write. I found it to be contradictory. She says to grieve in your own way and gives a lot of good examples of what you feel when you're grieving. Then in the chart in the end of the signs of normal grief and signs of clinical depression, I read some of the signs of clinical depression to emotions she said were normal in the beginning of the book. She also says she does not recommend online grief groups, but then lists some online grief groups.