🆕BRAND-NEW PRESENTER & WORKSHOP!🆕
Counts as Health Equity, Law & Ethics, or Cultural Competence CEs!
Death Planning and Acceptance: Breaking Down Stigma and Fear with Clients
Presented by: Kylani St. Clair, LMHC, CCTP, RYT
When: Friday, September 12th, 2025 | 9:00 am – 4:30 pm Pacific Time
Where: Live on Zoom. You will receive your Zoom link/invitation the week of the workshop.
Continuing Education Credit Hours: 6 CEs, 2 of which meet criteria for Cultural Competence and/or Health Equity CEs and 2 meet Law & Ethics criteria| $199.00
When a client says “The thought of my family dying keeps me up at night,” or “I’m terrified of death,” a clinician tends to have their own moment of fear or hesitation. Sometimes we don’t know how to respond, what we’re “allowed” to say, what we can offer without activating our own countertransference, or we’re afraid to broach the cultural/religious beliefs. As a society, we used to be more comfortable with death, literally and figuratively. Not long ago, we were planning for the inevitable much earlier in life. We even displayed the deceased in our living rooms for mourners to visit- sometimes for a week or more! The U.S. has especially stigmatized death and it’s palpable in our sessions. That existential dread and anxiety that sometimes leads to panic attacks and depressive episodes often has death at the core.
Further, grief and loss are often compounded when we don’t know what the deceased person wanted, how to pay for after-death services, and contacting the people who need to be informed. For example, do you know if your partner wants to be cremated or buried? Is it important to you to be buried in another state? If so, do you know what the protocols are for being transported across state lines? Do you have enough money to pay for what the service the deceased wanted? If we don’t have these conversations in our personal lives, how can we hold space for them with our clients?
In this training, we will break down some of the barriers to discussing death. We will learn about the process of dying, identify laws and regulations to navigate options, and de-stigmatize death. We’ll navigate the how, what, when, and why of these conversation in session and how to continue the conversations at home. Throughout this process, you will ease your own countertransference about death, making death planning and acceptance with clients more meaningful.
OBJECTIVES:
- Reduce existential dread and anxiety regarding death.
- Reduce levels of depression seated in despair about death.
- Navigate clinical history at a multicultural level, providing both clients and clinicians with options for how to handle their own death, burial, funeral, etc.
- Share artifacts and resources for various death professionals.
- Apply cultural, religious, and familial traditions.
- Identify differences between tradition types. Explore learner’s experiences. Identify any countertransference and how to hold space for it during session. Practice self-disclosure.
- Revisit Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief and introduce David Kessler’s Needs of the Dying affirmations.
- Discuss pre-grieving, second-grieving, disenfranchised grief, and normalize the process of grief.
- Improve client advocacy via communication and understanding rights.
- Practice communication around goals, desires, needs for end-of-life care, including, but not limited to, funeral and burial details.
- Model the practice self-advocacy via the “Caregiver’s Bill of Rights,” including gaining a thorough understanding of laws and regulations around death and dying.
- Navigate grief and loss