Coaching practices for The Dual Process Model of Grief with Friends

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Dual Process Model of Grief with Friends, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • I deal with my grief by doing and fixing rather than weeping, and everyone keeps treating that as cold or in denial
  • 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
  • I laughed at something today and immediately felt like a traitor
  • It’s not just the missing them

Practices that may help

  1. 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.
  2. 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
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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

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