As part of Dying Matters Awareness Week, the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists is delighted to announce their new self-access masterclass on Keeping the Connection: Maintaining an Intimate Couple Relationship at End of Life.
Dying Matters is a campaign led by Hospice UK to create an open culture around dying, death and bereavement, and break the taboo that stops us from talking about it. The theme this week is the importance of being #InAGoodPlace to die. Intimate relationships are integral to that.
The masterclass is presented by Ruth Hazelton. She is a Psychosexual and Relationship Therapist, and supervisor specialist psychotherapist in the psychological therapies team BSUH. She looks at emotional and physical intimacy and how these connections can get lost when one partner in the couple has an incurable illness and is facing death.
Ruth uses her own experience of working with clients who have incurable cancer. She considers how to help heal ruptures and recognise how attachment issues can surface or resurface within the relationship, making it hard for both parents to come to terms with imminent loss and change. She also considers how the couple relationship can be derailed by grief and fear, and how to help clients to listen to each other and communicate well.
Ruth lives in Brighton where she has a private practice and works with cancer patients at her local hospital. She has developed and run a course for partners of cancer patients, Partners in treatment and facilitates Macmillan Cancer Support courses “Hope” and “take Control” for people affected by cancer. Recently Ruth has also co-founded a small training organisation offering CPD to psychosexual and relationship therapists.
Ruth said: “The aims and outcomes for this masterclass are that experienced therapists already involved in this work will find things to reflect on, some new tools to work with, and will go away feeling confident about their work. For therapists considering doing this type of work the hope is that you will feel encouraged and inspired to try it”.
College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists Chief Executive John Dodd said:
“Dying Matters Awareness Week is vital. It allows us to focus on the importance of thinking and talking about death, dying and bereavement. It highlights how making plans can help protect ourselves, our loved ones and our relationships at the end of life.
Sex is too often taboo and so is death. And the two are intertwined, with bereavement having a huge impact on relationships and desire. As a society, we are not great at talking about these issues and as a result, our death literacy is very poor. This has a huge impact on people’s well-being and their ability to ask for and take support.
It has been a year like never before. The COVID-19 pandemic has put death and loss at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, and we have seen that this impacts people’s relationships and sexual function. It is vital that we take this chance to think about, talk about, and plan for dying and its impacts both before and after”.
You can find the Keeping the Connection: Maintaining an Intimate Couple Relationship at End of Life Masterclass on the COSRTlearn site here.
#DyingMatters #InAGoodPlace