Dual process model of coping

The model that I actually really love, and your question was kind of about whether there's a turning point.

The model that I find really helps people the most with that sense of like, how am I supposed to do that is the dual process model.

And the dual process model describes grieving as this vacillation like a fan.

and this is my my language not theirs what you're basically doing and you start to notice in your life is that you're vacillating between being sort of forward thinking which is that part where you're asking questions and wondering you know who am i now what's next what am i building what's the next job what's the next version of me where am i going to live next whatever it is that's the forward thinking part and then you vacillate to the grieving part or the the rear view part where you're thinking about the person and you're really in the emotions of it all and the messy, gooey part of it all.

What I love about that model, when I learned about it in my training, in my grief educator training, I was like, that's what I've been doing.

I've been living the dual process model.

Because you do find that vacillation, right? Where it's like, no, right now, I actually am not present really to my grief at all.

I'm busy doing the things, keeping the family going, you know, holding down my job, getting through the to-do list, all of the things.

Think of them as three anchors.

First, there is a model called the dual process model, described by Margaret Strobe and Henk Schutt in the journal Death Studies in 1999.

Their research suggests that healthy grieving often involves a kind of oscillation.

You swing between confronting the pain and taking a break from it, between the sorrow and the ordinary tasks of living.

If the stages do not describe grief, what actually happens in the mind and body after a loss? That is our first deep dive.

So if Kubler-Ross's five stages were never meant to be a staircase, what actually happens when we grieve? That's where two researchers named Margaret Strobe and Hank Schute come in.

Back in 1999, they published a model in the journal Death Studies, and it's called the Dual Process Model.

I know that sounds clinical, but stay with me, because this model describes grief better than almost anything else I've come across.