Coaching practices for Restoration Orientation Grief
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Restoration Orientation Grief, 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
- I deal with my grief by doing and fixing rather than weeping, and everyone keeps treating that as cold or in denial
- It’s not just the missing them
- 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
- It’s been a few months and everyone around me clearly expects me to be over it by now, and I’ve half-swallowed that timeline myself
Practices that may help
- 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 - 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 - 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 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 - Identify how cultural norms shape your grief
Examine whether cultural scripts about how long and how much to grieve are shaping your experience.
The Dual Process Model of Grief, 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 - Task 4: Find an enduring connection with the deceased
Relocate the relationship from physical presence to an internal, meaningful connection.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - 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 - 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 - 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
Related concerns
- Grief Balance
Know whether you tend toward more loss or more restoration orientation — and compensate accordingly.
Identify your natural grieving style and adjust for it
- Calming Grief Surge
Use gentle touch and brief distraction to lower the physiological intensity of grief surges.
Havening to soften acute grief activation
- Dual Process Model Grief
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.
- Grief Meaning Oscillation
If you are spending too long in one orientation, deliberately shift to the other.
Regulate the oscillation consciously
- How To Move On From 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
- Loss Orientation Grief
Set aside dedicated time to directly face the grief — the emotions, the absence, the meaning of the loss.
Deliberately engage loss-oriented work
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