Coaching practices for Psychological Flexibility After a Loss
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Psychological Flexibility 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 treating this like a finish line I’m supposed to reach and then beat myself up every time the old rigid patterns come back, as if slipping means I’ve failed
- It’s been long enough that I can quietly admit something in me has shifted since they died
- I only ever see it afterward
- I deal with my grief by doing and fixing rather than weeping, and everyone keeps treating that as cold or in denial
- I know I keep getting in my own way, but I genuinely can’t tell whether it’s that I believe every anxious thought my mind throws at me, or that I’m bending my whole life around dodging certain feelings
Practices that may help
- Psychological Flexibility, Made Practical
Psychological flexibility — the central construct of ACT, developed by Steven Hayes — is the ability to stay in contact with present experience, hold thoughts and feelings lightly, and keep acting on your values even when discomfort is present. Meta-analyses consistently find it predicts mental health and well-being across a wide range of populations, and that increases in it mediate ACT’s therapeutic effects. - Treat flexibility as an ongoing practice, not a state to achieve
Psychological flexibility is trained incrementally — it is not a destination but a direction.
Psychological Flexibility, 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 - Spot inflexibility as it happens in daily life
Catch fusion or avoidance in real time — before the behavioral consequence — rather than in retrospect.
Psychological Flexibility, Made Practical - 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 - Gauge your current flexibility level
Diagnose which end of the flexibility–inflexibility axis you operate from before you try to shift it.
Psychological Flexibility, Made Practical - 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 - Reframing loss as transformation
When something ends or is lost, practise asking what it is becoming rather than only mourning what it was.
Zhuangzi and the Practice of Perspective Shift - 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
Related concerns
- Accepting Loss Grief
When something ends and you feel grief, recognise that the grief is proportional to the love — and let it be both.
Treating grief as a form of gratitude
- 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
- Focused Vs Diffuse Thinking After A Loss
Barbara Oakley popularized the distinction between focused mode (tight, directed attention) and diffuse mode (relaxed, broadly associative processing) in her learning work. Neuroscience does support that the brain operates in different attentional and default-mode states, and that insight problems benefit from periods of unfocused incubation. Oakley's specific two-mode framing is a simplification intended for learners, not a strict neuroscientific claim.
- Pendulation After A Loss
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
Deliberately engage loss-oriented work
- Restoration Orientation Grief
Give yourself genuine permission to engage with ordinary life — this is restoration orientation, not avoidance.
Deliberately take time off from grief
- Aaq Psychological Inflexibility
Diagnose which end of the flexibility–inflexibility axis you operate from before you try to shift it.
Gauge your current flexibility level
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