Ursula Weide, PhD, JD, LPC, FT
Dr. Weide, bereaved as a young spouse, is a Licensed Psychologist and Licensed Professional Counselor with more than twenty years of experience working with individuals, couples, families and groups. (Please click on Home for more of Dr. Weide's personal experience with a traumatic death.) She graduated from George Washington University and Catholic University in Washington, D.C., with degrees in psychology, counseling, and the law. Dr. Weide is certified by the Association for Death Education and Counseling ADEC as a Fellow of Thanatology (grief, death and bereavement specialist). In addition to her general practice, she specializes in individual, couples and family grief counseling for clients of all ages including children, and facilitates small grief counseling groups. Tragedy can happen at any time during our lives! Whether it is the death of a spouse or partner, child, sibling, parent or other loved one, the consequences can be traumatic and far-reaching. Even though individual circumstances differ, many similar issues impose themselves on the survivors. Dr. Weide provides a perspective on what is happening to her clients to assist them with successfully managing the grief. Dr. Weide is a member of the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation ICISF and has received training in Critical Stress Management (Defusing, Debriefing, Psychological First Aid). She has considerable experience working with individuals traumatized by violent death and continuing disturbing thoughts and images. Because of her personal experience, Dr. Weide is intimately familiar with the physical and emotional toll taken by the loss of a loved one. She also understands the difficulties of having to interact with others who JUST DON'T KNOW - but want you to "move on" within a certain period of time, overwhelm you with "good advice", and have ill-conceived expectations of how you should feel and act. Having gone through the experience herself, she is fully aware of the fundamental importance of taking care of oneself, developing new coping skills, learning to live better with the loss, building a future without the loved one who may have been the center of one’s life (as impossible as this may seem), and adjusting to the “new normal" - whatever this may be for a particular individual. In many cases the issue also is, to put it frankly, a decision whether to continue living or not. In addition to providing individual and group grief counseling and management in private practice for
surviving spouses or partners, siblings
,
adolescents
and
parents mourning the death of a child,
Dr. Weide has worked in nursing homes, extensively engaged in grief and end-of-life counseling with seniors. She also took care of her mother suffering of dementia before her death at age 85. Dr. Weide is a proud member of the Maryland State Funeral Directors Association Disaster Response Team (www.msfdadrt.com). This is one of only four such state teams in the nation. It was deployed during Katrina. Much to her regret, she was not a member yet at the time. She has also provided continuing education for several professional organizations such as the Maryland State Funeral Directors Association, the Northern Virginia Funeral Directors Association, the Northern Virginia Licensed Professional Counselors, a national convention of oncology nurses, and has held professional development seminars for hospices and primary care practices. Dr. Weide has lived abroad and provides counseling and psychotherapy services in German and French as well. Because of her in-depth experience with traumatic loss and grief, Dr. Weide brings a particularly insightful perspective to grief arising from other losses such as separation and divorce. As she knows from her own experience, receiving knowledgeable and experienced support at the most difficult times of our lives can make all the difference! Please click here to contact Dr. Weide or call (703) 548-3866 in Virginia or (240) 229-1893 in Maryland for more information. communities and zip code areas: |
