“Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

- Martin Prechtel

IADC

If you have found this page, you are likely navigating something very painful. I am sorry for your loss. Grief often involves adjusting not only to the new landscape of life without someone, but to a world that seems altogether different.  Feelings of loss can comingle with feelings of isolation, anxiety, exhaustion, anger, guilt, and hopelessness.

I combine a compassionate approach to counseling with IADC, a dynamic modality for processing grief, to help guide clients within their experience of loss. IADC is a modified protocol of EMDR therapy. It typically involves just two or three treatment sessions of 90-minutes each, within one week. The process is designed to reduce the intense sadness and emotional distress associated with grief and traumatic loss.

When the sadness surrounding a loss decreases, clients often experience a felt sense of present connection with the deceased loved one and a shift in feelings of separation. Research has shown that this sense of connection, referred to as “after-death communication” (“ADC”), can have significant beneficial impacts to clients processing grief. Individuals often report coming away from these experiences with a greater sense of peace and resolution of any unsettled issues with the deceased. A client’s personal beliefs – whether they perceive the ADC to be spiritual or neurobiological in nature – play no role in the healing capacity of the experience.

While approximately 75% of clients experience this sense of connection in IADC therapy, it is not the primary goal of treatment and is not necessary to reduce the sadness of losing a loved one. Clients report that by the end of their second IADC session they feel significant relief from the weight of their grief and an increased sense of peace within their experience of loss.

Neurobiology of Grief

Mary-Frances O’Connor, neuroscientist and the author of The Grieving Brain, has spent decades researching the effects of grief on the brain. The brain is wired to form and maintain attachments by mapping relationships in terms of space (the physical space between ourselves and another), time (when we last saw the individual, when they are expected to return), and closeness (the depth and intensity of our emotional closeness). When we experience a loss, the brain has to remap that relationship, reconciling the loss of physical presence with the enduring emotional connection. Grief can present as a profound sense of disorientation and difficulty in locating the deceased person in space and time. It is a state of sadness, but also a state of yearning for something that is outside of reach.  Processing grief requires a remapping so that the sense of emotional closeness to a lost loved one can remain and the sense of physical and time-related closeness can be reoriented.

  • IADC therapy is most effective when undertaken at least 6 months after the loss and ideally at least 12 months after the loss. There is no limit to how many years ago the loss has occurred, if you are still experiencing pain and grief. The therapy works equally well for those with modest grief as it does for those in deep psychological pain. A phone interview precedes the session to discern whether the approach might be a good fit.  If other trauma relief work needs to be undertaken first, we would schedule separate, preliminary trauma resolution sessions before beginning IADC.

    • Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) Therapy: An Effective and Quick Intervention to Cope with Grief, published in Psychology International, reports results from a control-group design study led by Fabio D’Antoni et al, comparing IADC with grief therapy that combines talk therapy and the standard EMDR protocol. Conclusions from the study indicate that IADC “facilitates a significant reduction in grief intensity and distress while promoting a more adaptive connection with the deceased. These improvements were observed shortly after the intervention and remained stable over time.”

    • A control group-design research study, Effects of Induced After-Death Communication on Grief, was conducted at the University of North Texas, led by Dr. Jan Holden et al. Findings from the study indicate that those who received IADC therapy “benefited significantly more” over those who received traditional grief counseling.

    • Conducted at the University of Adelaide in Australia, Dr. Tom Nehmy, Director of Healing Grief International, led Efficacy of Induced After Death Communication Therapy for Grief: A Single-Group Wait-List Controlled Trial. Findings concluded that “IADC therapy is an efficacious and efficient intervention for reducing grief symptoms, daily sadness, and depressive symptoms” in grieving individuals.

    • Separately, the phenomenon of after death communications has been the subject of peer-reviewed research since the 1970’s and continues today.

  • IADC therapy costs $165 per hour. It is a very brief, time-limited therapy: the treatment usually consists of 2 x 90-minute sessions conducted within 7 days (3 hours = $495 total). There is no cost for the initial phone screening. Occasionally, a third session may be desired to complete processing.

    If you are seeking IADC therapy and the cost is prohibitive, please reach out to me. I believe in the modality and want it to be accessible for those who are grieving.

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