Pet Bereavement Counselling – How to Terminate a Meeting

Ensuring that the meeting is ended with some positive conclusion which should be beneficial to both you and your client

Pet Bereavement Counselling – How to Terminate a Meeting

A person who has recently lost a pet is likely to be emotional and even unreasonable. The job of a pet bereavement counsellor is to help your client cope and be able to come to terms with their loss, gradually being able to resume their normal life.

Dealing with Bereaved Clients

A major part of pet bereavement counselling is setting up meetings with clients. This can be compared to fixing an appointment with a psychiatrist; in fact, there are many common factors between the two.

Just as a psychiatrist would evaluate a patient before communicating with them, in the same way, a pet bereavement counsellor should also listen to the client, maybe take notes, and then speak to the client.

Some clients will have a lot to speak about, while others may just say a few words and then withdraw into themselves, leaving you to do most of the talking. Either way, you need to control the meeting, and should also be able to terminate it in a diplomatic way.

Here are a few pointers on how you can terminate a meeting:

Avoid Lengthy Meetings: A long, drawn out meeting is no use to anyone. Set a timer for about ten minutes before the scheduled end of the meeting, so that you can start to wrap up in a subtle way towards the end.
Positive Thoughts: Keep positive energy going throughout the meeting by inserting some optimistic opinions and advice. This will help your client feel better by the time you are ready to end the meeting.
Seeming Nice and Meaning it: A good way of ending a meeting is to stand up, but give a warm smile and a firm handshake or a light touch on the shoulder in such a way that your client gets the feeling that you really mean it.
Summing up: Towards the end of the meeting, ensure that you sum up accurately, the things that you discussed, with particular emphasis on your client’s concerns. That way you can terminate the meeting with your client feeling that their best interests are being considered.
Keep Within Focus: Try to stick to the point. If you see that your client is meandering, you need to steer them gently back to the issue in question.
End on a Positive Note: While summing up the meeting in way of terminating it, ensure that you part on an optimistic note, which will ensure that the meeting is ended with some positive conclusion which should be beneficial to both you and your client.

If you follow these basic steps while pet bereavement counselling, you will become quite adept in the matter of how to terminate a meeting with a client, when required.

Pet Bereavement Counselling - How to Terminate a Meeting

The Blackford Centre

Pet Bereavement Counselling – How to Terminate a Meeting

Dealing with Bereaved Clients