Coaching practices for At My Kid's Graduation at a Goodbye I Feel Proud and Gutted in the Same Breath and I Don't Know What to Do with Both So I Shove One Down to Make Room for the Other and the Moment Ends Up Feeling Thinner Than it Should
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For At My Kid's Graduation at a Goodbye I Feel Proud and Gutted in the Same Breath and I Don't Know What to Do with Both So I Shove One Down to Make Room for the Other and the Moment Ends Up Feeling Thinner Than it Should, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- At my kid’s graduation, at a goodbye, I feel proud and gutted in the same breath and I don’t know what to do with both
- I keep trying to decide whether I’m happy or sad about this, like I have to pick one
- Something I love is clearly ending
- Everyone keeps telling me to move on and get over the loss, but the grief is huge and it won’t go
- Something big happened and I feel two opposite things at once
Practices that may help
- Holding joy and sadness simultaneously
When you notice a joyful experience that also carries loss, resist the urge to choose one emotion over the other.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things - Allow mixed and blended feelings
Say "grateful and grieving at once" instead of forcing a single, tidy emotion.
Emotional Granularity: Precision as a Regulation Skill - Full presence with something passing
Deliberately be present for the last or near-last moment of something — a season, a stage, a relationship — without numbing.
Mono no Aware: The Pathos of Things - 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 - Notice and name mixed or contradictory emotions simultaneously
When something significant happens, look for two or more emotions that coexist — even contradictory ones.
The Feeling Wheel: Building Emotional Vocabulary - Recognise when loss is ambiguous, not just unacknowledged
Some losses have no clear end point — a relationship that faded, a parent with dementia, a country left behind.
Disenfranchised Grief, Made Practical - Use symbolic objects as tangible continuing bonds
Keep meaningful objects that represent the person and use them consciously, not compulsively.
Continuing Bonds in Grief, Made Practical - Write a gratitude letter to someone you also resent
In complicated relationships, write separately about what you received and what you resent — do not mix them.
Gratitude Letters: Writing Your Way to Deeper Appreciation - Task 1: Accept the full reality of the loss
Move from intellectual acknowledgement to full emotional acceptance that the person is gone.
Worden’s Tasks of Mourning, Made Practical - Adjourning: close the team with intention
How a team ends shapes how each member begins the next one.
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development
Related concerns
- When Emotional Granularity Name Mixed Emotions
Say "grateful and grieving at once" instead of forcing a single, tidy emotion.
Allow mixed and blended feelings
- Detached Mindfulness After A Loss
Detached mindfulness, developed by Adrian Wells in Metacognitive Therapy, is a mental stance of observing thoughts without engaging, analysing, or believing them — like watching clouds drift past without chasing any of them. It directly targets the extended rumination and worry that drive anxiety and depression, with growing clinical trial evidence supporting MCT overall.
- Emotional Intelligence After A Loss
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
- Holding Mixed Emotions
Say "grateful and grieving at once" instead of forcing a single, tidy emotion.
- Joy And Sadness Simultaneously
When you notice a joyful experience that also carries loss, resist the urge to choose one emotion over the other.
Holding joy and sadness simultaneously
- Mono No Aware Grief
When you notice a joyful experience that also carries loss, resist the urge to choose one emotion over the other.
Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.