When our clients are facing their own mortality, how can we guide them in a way that's both compassionate and realistic? In the following video, therapist David Kessler, an expert on healing from grief, shares the story of his work with a terminally ill client and what it took for her to come to terms with her illness and finally reach a place of acceptance.

By Daphne de Marneffe - After decades in practice, I still find myself blindsided by certain clients in ways that both humble and mystify me. I’ve learned that if I’m going to be helpful to these clients, I have to work through something difficult in myself. Our ability to inhabit our clients' experiences is part of what makes us good therapists, but there’s always a delicate balancing act in not getting too involved.

By Yvonne Dolan - Favoring positive emotions and subtly trying to subdue negative ones can sometimes backfire. Though focusing on mundane tasks in the present can seem impossibly beside the point for someone who has suffered a life-shattering event, it can help build, inch by inch and then yard by yard, a pathway out of despair and into the fullness of life.

By Sameet Kumar - While grief may never entirely fade, and the loss that caused it certainly won't be forgotten, it almost always changes and becomes incorporated into life, so the grieving person can move on. There are times, however, when grief doesn't take this relatively straightforward path toward resolution.

By Candyce Ossefort-Russell - I was appalled when I encountered the heavily publicized resilience book by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy. Their book’s consistent message seems to be that grievers need to stop feeling dangerous “negative” emotions and bounce back to “normal” as quickly as possible, so that they don’t become “trapped” or “broken” by their pain. My experience as a widow and a grief counselor has taught me exactly the opposite.

By Michael Hoyt - A man reflects on the death of a beloved pet, his burial, and the ones that came before.

By David Kessler - Although many people experience common responses to loss, the stages—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance—were never meant to tuck messy emotions into neat packages. Still, the stages can provide a practical framework to help us identify what clients may need in their journey toward healing. Here, we explore two of these stages: denial and acceptance.

By Hedy Schleifer - Many people wonder how therapists manage to do the work they do. Of the thousands of meaningful sessions that take place in a therapist’s office, certain ones stand out. In the following storytelling piece, couples therapist Hedy Schleifer shares a memorable moment from her own work.

New investigations are beginning to shed new light on a question that's hounded psychotherapy for more than a century: what's the relationship between nature and nurture, and what does it mean for the human project of change? As we come to understand more about the complex process of temperament development, therapists may be able to better help clients master one of life's trickiest balancing acts---making peace with one's inborn nature while knocking against its boundaries, in search of a larger self.

For 17 years, managing responses to death has become part of my work, whether originally my intention or not. I’ve aspired to helping families hang tough through medical crisis, but now spend some of my time hanging crepe. I’ve now accepted the variety of ways people react to their dying. All of these ways of facing death are utterly ordinary and human. Throughout it all, I've learned that as difficult and awkward as confronting death can be, this work also gives me a richer sense of my client, the cast of characters in their world, and the drama of their life.