Identify your natural grieving style and adjust for it

Know whether you tend toward more loss or more restoration orientation — and compensate accordingly.

Why it works

People differ reliably in their natural grieving style: intuitive grievers (more loss-oriented, emotional expression predominant) and instrumental grievers (more restoration-oriented, action and cognitive processing predominant) are recognisably different types. Neither is pathological by default, but each risks getting stuck in their dominant mode. Knowing your style allows deliberate use of the opposite orientation.

How to do it

1. Reflect: when you are distressed, do you typically seek to express and feel the emotion, or to analyse and solve the problem?
2. If you are predominantly expressive: make sure you are also attending to practical restoration tasks.
3. If you are predominantly action-oriented: check that you have not been avoiding the emotional dimensions of loss.
4. Share your style awareness with support people so they can offer the type of support that helps rather than frustrates.

Evidence

Martin and Doka’s intuitive/instrumental grieving style model is an established clinical typology in the bereavement field; it aligns with the DPM’s dual orientations and has been used in grief counselling education. (clinical)

The intuitive/instrumental distinction is a continuum, not a binary; most people use both styles and the research is mostly observational and clinically descriptive rather than experimentally validated.

Sources

• Martin & Doka (2000), Men Don’t Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief

Common mistake

Judging your grieving style against a cultural standard (e.g., men who grieve instrumentally judging themselves as cold, or women who grieve analytically judging themselves as unfeeling) rather than recognising both styles as valid.