What the treatment involves, and why none of it is here

The treatment that works for prolonged grief has a component in it where the person goes back over the story of the death, out loud, with a clinician, repeatedly, in a structured way.

In a room, with somebody trained, at an agreed pace, that component does real good. Alone, off a page, it goes wrong. People push much too hard, frighten themselves badly, and come away certain they are beyond help.

So this course has never asked you to tell the story of the death, to write it down, to go back to the worst part, or to speak to the person who died as an exercise. Not once, and not in a gentler wording. It has given you no schedule for their belongings and no date by which anything should be done.

That is not a gap in the course. It is the line between what a set of lessons can do and what belongs to a trained person, and you are better off knowing where that line is.