Coaching practices for Dual Process Model Restoration

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Dual Process Model Restoration, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I laughed at something today and immediately felt like a traitor
  • It’s not just the missing them
  • I deal with my grief by doing and fixing rather than weeping, and everyone keeps treating that as cold or in denial
  • I keep my head down and stay busy so I never actually feel the loss, and now it ambushes me at random and won’t metabolize
  • We’re trying to settle this just between the two of us, but the truth is a whole group felt the fallout and their trust took a hit too

Practices that may help

  1. The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
    The Dual Process Model (DPM), developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, describes healthy grief as oscillation between two orientations: loss-oriented (engaging with the pain of losing the person) and restoration-oriented (attending to the practical and identity challenges of life without them). The model is well-regarded in grief research and provides a framework for understanding why taking breaks from grief is healthy, not avoidant.
  2. Deliberately take time off from grief
    Give yourself genuine permission to engage with ordinary life — this is restoration orientation, not avoidance.
    The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
  3. Identify and address secondary stressors
    Name the practical, identity, and relational challenges the loss has created — and work on them as restoration.
    The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
  4. The Two-Process Model of Sleep
    Alexander Borbély’s two-process model describes sleep as the interaction of two independent systems: Process S (homeostatic sleep pressure, which builds throughout waking hours like a battery draining) and Process C (the circadian clock, which gates sleep propensity in a 24-hour rhythm). Good sleep requires both processes to align — sleep pressure high and the clock in its nighttime phase simultaneously. The model is well established in sleep science.
  5. Identify your natural grieving style and adjust for it
    Know whether you tend toward more loss or more restoration orientation — and compensate accordingly.
    The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
  6. Attention Restoration in Nature
    Attention Restoration Theory (Rachel and Stephen Kaplan) holds that directed attention — the effortful focus you use for work — fatigues with use, and natural environments help it recover because they hold attention gently ("soft fascination") without demanding it. There is real experimental support for cognitive and mood benefits, though effect sizes and mechanisms are still debated.
  7. Deliberately engage loss-oriented work
    Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
    The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
  8. Involve the affected community, not just the two parties
    Harm rarely affects only two people — include those affected by the ripple.
    Restorative Justice (Howard Zehr)
  9. Keep verbal and visual channels separate
    Avoid presenting spoken narration and dense text at the same time.
    Working Memory: How Your Brain Holds Thoughts in Play
  10. Recognize the difference between titration and flooding
    Learn to distinguish "processing within the window" from "flooding outside it" — the difference determines whether the session helps or harms.
    Titration in Somatic Practice, Made Practical

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