Grief Counselling - 5 June 2024

COURSE BRIEF

Grief Counselling has become vital in today’s world. With its relentless pace and rate of change, the world says, without emotion, “Hurry up, you gotta catch up. Otherwise, you’ll be left behind”. So we push ourselves along life’s highways, always going faster. But we don’t know where we are going. And then we experience a slow down - the loss of someone close, a mother, aunt, brother, or friend. It could also be the end of a relationship or the parting of ways that foretells we have ended a phase in life and need to move on. And COVID-19 too. They all spell GRIEF - the absence of someone we love, the loss of job and predictability and then we bury it in ourselves. Handling grief is critical. We need to know how to handle it ourselves before we can help others as counsellors or therapists. What are some valuable theories? How do we approach grief, given that we will all experience it? What is there to learn? Am I open to change? Who should I turn to? Will I allow myself to feel the pain, or do I just numb it? 

About Your Speakers

Ian Poulier is a trained counsellor with extensive experience in counselling youth and young adults. As a counsellor, Ian believes it is important to understand the client in the context of their value systems. Applying a person-centred approach undergirded by a social emotional learning framework (SEL), Ian is continually challenged to bring the clients he engages with to be empowered to reach their fullest potential. He is currently working at The SEL Network LLP and a well-known facilitator and speaker at workshops, conferences, seminars, in both educational and corporate settings. He hosted TEENTALK on 93.8LIVE and mentored focus groups with different schools. He is also actively called upon to give advice and opinions by the journalists of the New Paper. Ian has been a professional Counsellor serving both local and international schools and in a VWO. He has coauthored a book, HeartWarmers, a collection of prose and poetry.

Andrew Ponniah first started his career in audit at Arthur Young, after completing his BACC at NUS. He then moved into education where he taught at Temasek Junior College and Ngee Ann Poly. From there and after his MBA, he took on the mantle of entrepreneur and set up a private international school under the Methodist Mission. He moved into counselling after his Masters at James Cook University. Having set up the SEL Network in 2010 as a counselor training enterprise, he now works part-time as a Counsellor in church. He finished hisGraduate Diploma in Christian Studies at BGST in 2015. Author of two books, Trust or Rust? on Emotional Quotients and HeartWarmers, an anthology of prose and poetry, Andrew is an avid reader and believer in new ideas. Married with four children, he loves the active and balanced life. He is a also a Narrative Therapist who delves into DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) too. 

Charlie is an educator-counsellor with a Master of Arts in Counselling. He uses an integrated therapeutic approach, drawing from Motivational Interviewing change-talk strategies, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and mindfulness practices, assisting individuals with life’s complexities, negotiating interpersonal, professional and personal life growth goals. He is also trained to administer and counsel using the Taylor Johnson Temperament Analysis instrument for individuals and couples. Before his call to counselling, he practiced as a dental hygienist in the US and in two local clinics here in Singapore. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education and Fine Art and an Associate of Applied Science RDH degree. He has been married to his wife, Yeng, for 19 years and apart from counselling, enjoys exercising on the Green Corridor, drawing animal portraits, bike riding with his wife