If grief is bringing thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please reach out before the practice.
US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 24/7) · Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741 · UK: 116 123 Samaritans · AU: 13 11 14 Lifeline · International: findahelpline.com. The practice below is a complement to clinical grief care, not a substitute.
Quick Answer
The Dual Process Cycle Practice teaches the oscillation between loss-orientation and restoration-orientation in grief. Drawn from Stroebe and Schut's 1999 Death Studies paper, the practice notices that healthy mourning is a pendulum, not a single trajectory, both, not one.
What this practice is
Stroebe and Schut's 1999 paper changed bereavement research in a quiet way. The Freudian assumption was that grief was a single trajectory, loss-orientation, then resolution. The Dual Process Model found that healthy grief looks like a pendulum: the work of feeling the loss alternates, day to day and hour to hour, with the work of engaging with the life that continues. Both, not one. The texts agree.
Classical Source
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, "The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement," Death Studies (1999), the seminal paper establishing that healthy grief oscillates between loss-orientation and restoration-orientation rather than residing in either alone
Modern Source
Stroebe & Schut, "The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: A Decade On," Omega (2010); J. William Worden, Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, 5th ed. (2018), where the model is integrated into the tasks framework
Duration
15 to 30 minutes
Difficulty
beginner
When to use it
The texts agree that the practice is matched to the state, the season of grief, the subject of the loss. This page names where the practice fits.
Stages of grief this practice serves
Losses this practice serves best
How to practice
The instructions below run 15 to 30 minutes. Read through all the steps before you begin. If at any point the practice is making things worse, stop. The practice is not the goal; you are.
Sit with a notebook. Date the page. The page is the structure of the practice.
Write the first heading: today's loss-orientation moment. Below it, write one specific thing about the loss you allowed yourself to feel today. One sentence. One memory. One wave that arrived and you did not flinch from.
Write the second heading: today's restoration-orientation moment. Below it, write one specific thing you did today that engaged with the life you are still living, a meal made, a conversation had, a small task completed.
Notice the balance. There is no correct ratio. The point is that both arrived. The grief research is clear: both, not one.
If today was all loss-orientation, that is information. The next day, notice if you can place even one foot in restoration. Not to bypass; to oscillate.
If today was all restoration-orientation, that is also information. Schedule a loss-orientation window, twenty minutes with a photograph, a song, a letter, and let the wave through.
Close the notebook. The practice is the noticing of the oscillation; the artifact is the by-product.
What to notice
The breath is the only thing that lives in the present, and the texts agree that pairing the practice with a matched breath deepens it. For this practice the signature breath is:
Notice the breath without trying to change it. Its pace, its depth, the small pause where it turns around. Whatever it is doing is information, not a problem to solve. Sit with that.
When NOT to do this practice
Crystal companion
In Crystal Cassandra's work, certain stones are the somatic companion to certain practices. The pairing is not magical; it is a steady weight in the palm that becomes part of the noticing.
Lepidolite
Lepidolite is a lithium-bearing mica, and the modern Western canon files it as a stone of transition. Its reputation comes from crystal tradition rather than from that chemistry. The customary pairing is to keep it to hand during the oscillation between loss and restoration. The practice teaches the rhythm; the stone is the steady weight that says, today is one day, the rhythm continues.
Related practices
These practices complement The Dual Process Cycle Practice, they are the practices the texts agree often follow or precede this one in the arc of grief work.
Practices for Carrying Grief
Four practices described plainly, a note on anniversaries and dates, and an honest section on when to reach for a person instead of a practice. Nothing is sold in this guide.
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