Identify your natural grieving style and adjust for it
Know whether you tend toward more loss or more restoration orientation — and compensate accordingly.
Key takeaways
- What it is: 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.
- Evidence: Established clinical or therapeutic practice.
- Avoid: 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.
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
- 1Reflect: when you are distressed, do you typically seek to express and feel the emotion, or to analyse and solve the problem?
- 2If you are predominantly expressive: make sure you are also attending to practical restoration tasks.
- 3If you are predominantly action-oriented: check that you have not been avoiding the emotional dimensions of loss.
- 4Share your style awareness with support people so they can offer the type of support that helps rather than frustrates.
What the evidence says
Clinical practiceMartin 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.
Honest caveat: 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.
- — 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.
IX Coach assesses your natural grieving style early in the process and tailors the balance of loss-oriented and restoration-oriented prompts to your style, gently introducing the underused orientation as needed.
Practice this with IX Coach →