Deliberately take time off from grief

Give yourself genuine permission to engage with ordinary life — this is restoration orientation, not avoidance.

Why it works

Restoration-oriented processing attends to the secondary stressors created by loss: changed roles, practical adjustments, new identity formation. It also provides temporary relief from the emotional intensity of loss-orientation, which prevents the overwhelm that makes grief untenable. The DPM specifies that time off from grieving is not pathological — it is a necessary part of the oscillation that makes sustained grief work possible.

How to do it

1. When you are not in a scheduled loss-orientation window, give full permission to engage with ordinary activities without guilt.
2. Attend to one practical task related to the changed life situation (financial, logistical, social) per week.
3. Allow yourself to laugh, be interested in something, or enjoy a moment — these do not signal indifference to the loss.
4. Notice and name the inner critic that calls restoration "moving on too fast" — it is often inaccurate.

Evidence

The DPM explicitly theorises restoration orientation as healthy and necessary; research on the role of positive affect in bereavement (Bonanno et al.) supports the idea that positive experience alongside grief predicts better long-term adjustment. (observational)

The positive-affect findings are correlational; some resilient grievers may naturally experience more positive affect, rather than positive affect causing resilience.

Sources

• Bonanno & Keltner (1997), facial expressions of emotion and the course of conjugal bereavement, Journal of Abnormal Psychology

Common mistake

Experiencing guilt whenever grief is not active, interpreting ordinary moments of engagement or pleasure as disloyalty — which paradoxically makes grief more prolonged by removing the restoration phases that sustain the process.