Coaching practices for Sense Making Bereavement
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Sense Making Bereavement, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep swinging between drowning in the raw grief and trying to make sense of it, and I think I lean too hard on the sense-making because feeling it is unbearable
- Everyone keeps telling me to move on and get over the loss, but the grief is huge and it won’t go
- 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.
- My memories of them and of how it happened come at me in scattered, jagged pieces with no order to them, and I keep replaying the end on a loop
- The day they died still plays in my head in jagged pieces
Practices that may help
- Oscillate between grief and sense-making
Allow periods of pure grief alongside periods of meaning construction — both are necessary.
Meaning Reconstruction in 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 - 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 - 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 - Retell the story of the death and its aftermath
Construct a coherent, detailed narrative of the loss — including your experience before, during, and after.
Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical - Meaning Reconstruction in Grief, Made Practical
Robert Neimeyer’s meaning reconstruction model holds that significant loss shatters the assumptive world — the implicit beliefs about self, others, and the future on which daily life depends — and that healthy grief requires rebuilding a coherent, meaningful life narrative that can integrate the loss. This framework is supported by observational research on grief outcomes and underpins narrative grief therapies with growing trial evidence. - Share the continuing bond in community
Talk about the person with others who knew and loved them, keeping the relationship alive in shared memory.
Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical - Receive meaning through beauty, love, and nature
Meaning flows not only from what you do but from what you allow yourself to fully receive.
Meaning-Centered Therapy, 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 - 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
Related concerns
- Meaning Making Bereavement
Allow periods of pure grief alongside periods of meaning construction — both are necessary.
Oscillate between grief and sense-making
- The Shared Meaning System After A Loss
The shared meaning system is the top layer of John Gottman’s Sound Relationship House — the rituals, roles, goals, and symbols that give a couple’s life together a sense of shared purpose and identity. Gottman’s longitudinal research found that couples with a rich inner life of shared meaning were more resilient during conflict; the practices below show how to actively build one.
- Grief Narrative
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
- Grief Narrative Retelling
Construct a coherent, detailed narrative of the loss — including your experience before, during, and after.
Retell the story of the death and its aftermath
- How Can I Help Someone Over The Loss Of Their Dog
Seek out people who have experienced the same type of loss — online or in person.
Find a community that recognises your specific loss
- Meaning Making After Loss
Robert Neimeyer’s meaning reconstruction model holds that significant loss shatters the assumptive world — the implicit beliefs about self, others, and the future on which daily life depends — and that healthy grief requires rebuilding a coherent, meaningful life narrative that can integrate the loss. This framework is supported by observational research on grief outcomes and underpins narrative grief therapies with growing trial evidence.
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