The Common Sense Model of Grief

As a new widow, you will have periods of time when the heartbreaking realization of what you have lost demands your undivided attention, interspersed with periods of time when you must confront and process all the ways in which your life has irreparably changed.

And sometimes you may need to plan an escape from all of it for a short time.

Guess what? This seemingly natural and common way of dealing with loss has a fancy name: The Dual Process Model of Bereavement, which was proposed by psychologists Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut in 1999.

In a previous post about the most well-known grief models of the past one hundred years, I wrote that the Dual Process Model was deserving of a separate blog post. Why? Two reasons: 1) my experience with studying grief theories and talking to fellow widows over the past decade has led me to believe that if it’s even possible to shoehorn “grief” into the confines of a “model,” this one makes sense; and 2) the updates Stroebe and Schut made in 2016 to their original Dual Process Model make even more sense.

The language most experts use when discussing grief can be confusing, and perhaps slightly more so in this case. When they presented their original Dual Process Model in 1999, Stroebe and Schut wrote, “This model identifies two types of stressors: loss- and restoration-oriented, and a dynamic, regulatory coping process of oscillation, whereby the grieving individual at times confronts, at other times avoids, the different tasks of grieving.”

So what does all that mean? Let’s break it down:

“Loss-oriented activities” – This would include crying, ruminating about your life together, mourning your lost future together, yearning for your spouse or partner, fixating on the manner of death, experiencing the weight and pain of your sorrow, and all the other overwhelming emotional responses to your loss.

“Restoration-oriented activities” – This would include secondary sources of stress and coping mechanisms. They use the example of “loneliness” as a secondary source of stress and “avoiding solitariness” as a coping mechanism. Thanks to the internet, these days we have the ability to connect with other widows online as a coping mechanism. Seeing a grief counselor is another restoration-oriented activity. Other examples of restoration-oriented activities might include ways of coping with the stressors of taking on new household roles or mastering the tasks your spouse or partner handled. A mother whose husband died may need to seek guidance (a “restoration-oriented” activity), for example, about ways to solo-parent her kids.

“Oscillation” – This just means going back and forth between the two activities. Time spent on each can vary due to many factors.

“Avoiding tasks of grieving” – This is when you just need to distract yourself from grief insofar as it’s possible. Maybe it’s watching a funny TV show or spending the day gardening. (In my case I plunged myself into the addictive abyss of genealogy research. Tracing my great-great grandparents’ journey from Kildare, Ireland, to America provided me with an entire day of no tears.) In the Death Studies article, Stroebe and Schut write about “the benefits of denial.”

It should be noted that in the article, Stroebe and Schut also acknowledge the differences in grieving between genders and among different cultures. Not every grieving individual spends as much time on “loss-oriented” activities as they do on “restoration-oriented” activities. You may be reading this as a widow from a culture that focuses on getting on with life and not spending too much time on “loss-oriented” activities like crying and ruminating. This grief model takes that into account.
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In 2016, Stroebe and Schut published an article entitled, “Overload: A Missing Link in the Dual Process Model?” in which they conceded that years of research and study of their Dual Process Model had revealed a “major shortcoming.” They had not factored in “overload.” They defined the term “overload” as “the bereaved person’s perception of having more than s/he feels able to deal with—too much or too many activities, events, experiences and other stimuli.” While a griever still needs to attend to both loss and restoration activities, their updated Dual Process Model includes the importance of acknowledging that “stressors may accumulate in a way that is too much to manage.”

A more in-depth examination of Stroebe and Schut’s new research regarding “overload” will be discussed in a future blog post.

I ended my previous post about grief models and theories with the sentence, “We are all still learning.” The recent revisiting and updating of the Dual Process Model of grief by its proponents certainly represents the truth of that statement. One wonders, however, why it took nearly twenty years for the experts to acknowledge what us Ordinary Widows could have told them all along.

We cry when we can, we try to figure out how to rebuild our lives, we occasionally escape from our pain, and we try not to drown in a sea of overwhelm. My one-sentence Grief Model.

​Hang in there, fellow widows.

Copyright ©2023. S. Larkin/Seattle Widow Resources

Sources:
Stroebe, Margaret; Schut, Henk (1999). "The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description." Death Studies. 23 (3): 197–224.
Stroebe, Margaret; Schut, Henk (2016). "Overload: A Missing Link in the Dual Process Model?" Omega: Journal of Death and Dying.  74 (1): 96-109.