Coaching practices for External Focus of Attention After a Loss
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For External Focus of Attention After a Loss, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- 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
- This one loss feels like the end of the world when I stare right at it, and I keep checking it obsessively, which only makes it worse
- Everyone keeps telling me to move on and get over the loss, but the grief is huge and it won’t go
- I’ve already faced this pain and talked it to death, but my attention just keeps circling back to stare at it, replaying it on a loop
- Nobody in my life gets this kind of loss, and I’m starting to ache for even one person who’s been through the exact same thing and wouldn’t need me to explain why it matters.
Practices that may help
- 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 - Zoom out from the single loss to the aggregate
A loss looks catastrophic in isolation and trivial across the whole portfolio of your life.
Loss Aversion, Made Practical - Treating grief as a form of gratitude
When something ends and you feel grief, recognise that the grief is proportional to the love — and let it be both.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things - Dereflection: redirect attention from suffering to engagement
Stop staring at the suffering and put your attention fully on something worth doing.
Logotherapy - Find a community that recognises your specific loss
Seek out people who have experienced the same type of loss — online or in person.
Disenfranchised Grief, Made Practical - 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 - 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 - Task 3: Adjust to a world without the person
Actively develop new skills, roles, and identity elements to navigate the changed life.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - Look honestly for what has grown or changed for the better
Without minimising the loss, notice any growth, change, or perspective that has emerged from it.
Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical - Orient toward another person’s need
When hyperreflecting, ask: who needs something from me right now, and what specifically do they need?
Logotherapy: Dereflection
Related concerns
- How To Cope With Loss Of Both Parents
Actively develop new skills, roles, and identity elements to navigate the changed life.
Task 3: Adjust to a world without the person
- Make Time After A Loss
Tell the full story of the loss — who the person was, what happened, and what life is now.
Construct a coherent narrative of the loss
- Systems Thinking After A Loss
Name the practical, identity, and relational challenges the loss has created — and work on them as restoration.
Identify and address secondary stressors
- Adjusting To Loss
A loss looks catastrophic in isolation and trivial across the whole portfolio of your life.
Zoom out from the single loss to the aggregate
- Dennis Klass Grief Theory
Continuing bonds theory, developed by Dennis Klass and colleagues, holds that maintaining an ongoing inner relationship with the deceased — through memory, ritual, and internalised connection — is a normal and often adaptive part of grief, not a sign of pathology. Observational research supports this for many types of connection, though some forms (active searching, idealisation) are associated with poorer outcomes.
- How Can Grief And Loss Affect Your Work
Know whether you tend toward more loss or more restoration orientation — and compensate accordingly.
Identify your natural grieving style and adjust for it
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