Coaching practices for Problem Solving Grief

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

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

  • It’s not just the missing them
  • I’ve been keeping it together by staying busy and not letting myself fall apart, but the grief I keep shoving down isn’t shrinking
  • The grief ambushes me at the worst times
  • 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
  • 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. 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
  2. Task 2: Work through the pain of grief
    Allow and process the emotional and physical pain of loss rather than bypassing it.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
  3. Create a deliberate grief window
    Schedule bounded time to grieve, protecting both the grief process and the rest of life.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
  4. 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
  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. Task 1: Accept the full reality of the loss
    Move from intellectual acknowledgement to full emotional acceptance that the person is gone.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical
  7. Problem-solve together once the child is calm
    After the emotional storm passes, invite the child to find a solution with you.
    Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
  8. Build a positive problem orientation
    Treat problems as normal, solvable challenges rather than signs of personal failure.
    Problem-Solving Therapy, Made Practical
  9. 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
  10. Construct a coherent narrative of the loss
    Tell the full story of the loss — who the person was, what happened, and what life is now.
    Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical

Related concerns

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.

Practice this with IX Coach

Try this practice