Coaching practices for The Orienting Response After a Loss

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

  • The hard meeting ended an hour ago but my body is still buzzing from it, like the adrenaline never got the memo that it’s over
  • Even sitting safely in my own living room my eyes keep darting around, checking, like part of me is still waiting for something to go wrong
  • Sometimes I get so flooded that I float off out of my own body
  • Part of me is still bracing for danger even though I’m sitting somewhere perfectly safe
  • Even in a perfectly safe room my eyes keep darting to the doors and corners scanning for threat that isn’t there, my body braced like something’s about to happen

Practices that may help

  1. The Orienting Response, Made Practical
    The orienting response (OR) is the reflexive turning of attention — head, eyes, body — toward a novel or potentially significant stimulus. When it completes naturally, it ends in a brief "ahh — not a threat" relaxation. In stress and trauma, this completion is often interrupted. Deliberately performing slow, curious orienting movements — scanning the room, letting the eyes settle — can help the nervous system complete the interrupted check and signal safety to the body. The basic reflex is classical science; the therapeutic application is established clinical practice.
  2. Deliberate orienting after a stressful event to complete the cycle
    After a difficult experience, do a slow orienting exercise to help your nervous system register that it is now over.
    The Orienting Response, Made Practical
  3. Slow, deliberate orienting to the room
    Slowly turn your head, let your eyes move at their own pace, and let them land on safe objects in your environment.
    The Orienting Response, Made Practical
  4. Multi-sensory grounding as extended orienting
    Systematically name what you see, hear, feel, and smell to provide the nervous system a full-spectrum "here and now" update.
    The Orienting Response, Made Practical
  5. Use the orienting response to signal safety
    Slowly look around the room to let the nervous system update its threat assessment.
    The Freeze Response and How to Thaw It
  6. Orienting response practice
    Let your eyes and head move slowly around the space to signal to your nervous system that the environment is safe.
    Trauma-Informed Yoga: Movement as a Path to Safety
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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

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