Coaching practices for Pendulation After a Loss

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Pendulation 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
• I’ve been stuck in one gear for weeks
• It’s been long enough that I can quietly admit something in me has shifted since they died
• I deal with my grief by doing and fixing rather than weeping, and everyone keeps treating that as cold or in denial

Practices that may help

1. 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
2. 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
3. Regulate the oscillation consciously
   If you are spending too long in one orientation, deliberately shift to the other.
   The Dual Process Model of Grief, Made Practical
4. 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
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. 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
7. Havening to soften acute grief activation
   Use gentle touch and brief distraction to lower the physiological intensity of grief surges.
   Self-Havening: Calming the Nervous System Through Touch
8. The Loss Frame: How Framing Shapes Decisions
   Yes, and substantially. Prospect theory (Kahneman & Tversky) established that people feel losses about twice as intensely as equivalent gains, so a message framed around what you stand to lose tends to be more motivating than one framed around what you stand to gain — especially for risk-averse decisions. The effect is real and well-replicated, though its size depends on the stakes, the audience, and the domain.
9. Practice speaking about the loss to people outside your immediate circle
   Gradually widen the circle of people who know about the loss and can offer recognition.
   Disenfranchised Grief, Made Practical
10. 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.

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