The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement helps us find the balance between facing the reality of our loss and learning how to live again.
Many people wonder whether their bereavement is normal.
One day they feel flattened by sorrow. The next day they are answering emails, paying bills, picking up groceries, or even laughing at something ordinary. Then the sadness surges again, and they worry they are going backward.
This is one reason the Dual Process Model of Coping With Bereavement has been so helpful. It gives us a more realistic picture of how bereavement actually unfolds. Instead of treating grief as a straight path, it describes it as a dynamic movement between two different kinds of coping. That dynamic quality is one of the reasons the model became so influential. Stroebe and Schut developed it partly in response to older grief theories that did not adequately reflect the shifting, lived nature of bereavement.
It is also one of the grief theories that supports my Mindfulness & Grief System. In that framework, grief is not something you move through in a neat sequence. It is something you learn to meet with awareness, compassion, and practical support. The Mindfulness & Grief System is meant to be a map, not a rigid formula, and the Dual Process Model fits naturally within that approach because it helps explain why grieving people move back and forth rather than in a straight line.
What is the Dual Process Model of Coping With Bereavement?
The model describes bereavement as involving two broad categories of coping:
- loss-oriented coping
- restoration-oriented coping
Loss-oriented coping involves turning toward the loss itself. Restoration-oriented coping involves turning toward the life changes that come after the death. The model proposes that adaptive bereavement includes moving between these two processes over time, rather than staying locked in only one. Stroebe and Schut described this as a regulatory process of oscillation, where the bereaved person sometimes confronts and sometimes avoids different grief-related tasks and stressors.
This is why bereavement can feel so inconsistent. You may spend part of the day missing the person intensely, then spend another part of the day dealing with practical responsibilities. Neither state cancels out the other. Both are part of coping.
What does loss-oriented coping look like?
Loss-oriented coping includes the emotional, relational, and cognitive experiences tied directly to the death and the person who died. In the research, this includes things like yearning, ruminating about the death, revisiting the meaning of the loss, confronting grief-related emotions, and adjusting the bond with the deceased to the reality that the person has died.
In real life, that can look like:
- crying in the car
- replaying the final days
- feeling waves of longing
- looking at photos
- wishing you could call them
- feeling anger, disbelief, guilt, or deep sadness
- trying to make sense of what happened
These experiences are often what people think grief is supposed to look like all the time. But the model says that is only one part of bereavement.
What does restoration-oriented coping look like?
Restoration-oriented coping focuses on the secondary stressors that come with bereavement. These are the changes and demands of life after the death. The research describes these as practical, social, relational, and identity-related challenges, such as handling legal matters, managing finances, taking on new roles, and rethinking goals or plans for the future.
In daily life, that may include:
- figuring out bills or paperwork
- parenting alone
- going back to work
- returning to social situations
- learning how to do tasks your person used to do
- rebuilding routines
- discovering who you are now in this changed life
This side of coping can also carry emotional distress. It is not the “easy” side of grief. It is simply a different kind of stress and adaptation.
Oscillation is not a flaw, it is part of adaptation
A core idea in the model is oscillation, the movement between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping. Stroebe and Schut proposed that this back-and-forth helps people cope in manageable doses, so the demands of the loss do not completely overwhelm their resources. They also argued that adaptive coping includes both confrontation and avoidance, not endless immersion in pain.
That matters, because many grieving people worry that they should either be “dealing with it” constantly or “moving on” more efficiently. The model offers a kinder alternative. It suggests that bereavement often involves dosing. You turn toward the loss, then toward life, then back again.
How does the model apply in real life?
This is where the more recent lived-experience study adds something important.
In a participatory study on the Dual Process Model published in 2024, bereaved participants generally recognized the loss-oriented and restoration-oriented processes in their own lives. But they also said the model can feel too tidy if taken too literally. Early in bereavement, they did not experience the two processes as clearly separate. They often felt them overlapping. Someone could be at work, in the grocery store, or doing an ordinary task while still feeling the physical pain and emotional force of grief at the same time.
That is a very important application point.
In real life, grieving people are not always moving neatly from one mode to the other. In the early period especially, they may feel as if everything is happening at once. The lived-experience study describes this as an initial phase where both processes overlap heavily and the person may feel overwhelmed, disconnected, and low in control.
So if you are trying to apply the model, it helps to think of it less as two tidy boxes and more as two dimensions of bereavement that may overlap, especially early on.
Early bereavement can feel like overload
A useful addition from later work on the model is the concept of overload. This happens when the demands of grief and all its consequences outmatch a person’s coping resources, leading to pressure, exhaustion, anxiety, and distress.
The lived-experience study supports this. Participants described the first several months as intensely difficult and often marked by a loss of control. Some described existing in a kind of “parallel world” or feeling unreal, automatic, or disconnected from ordinary reality. They could still perform tasks, but often without feeling fully present.
This has real application.
If someone is early in bereavement and feels chaotic, foggy, emotionally flooded, and unable to separate grief from daily functioning, the model still applies, but in a more overlapped, less orderly way. That does not mean they are doing bereavement wrong. It means the burden is heavy.
Does “time off from grief” really happen?
The original model includes the idea that people may need breaks from grief, periods when they relax or engage in non-bereavement activities.
But the 2024 lived-experience study complicates this. Participants did not feel they were ever truly “off” from grief. They described grief as ongoing and woven into who they had become, even when they were functioning or focusing elsewhere. What changed was not that grief disappeared, but that it became less dominant and more integrated into life over time.
That nuance is helpful.
In practice, many grieving people do not experience a clean break from grief. They may experience moments of relief, focus, connection, or ordinary life, but grief can still be present underneath. So when I apply this model, I would not force the idea of “time off” if it does not resonate. I would talk more about less dominant grief, temporary relief, or more capacity for life alongside grief.
Oscillation can become more intentional over time
Another useful application point from the lived-experience study is that oscillation may be mostly involuntary at first, then become more deliberate over time. Participants said that early on, the shifting happened automatically and often outside their control. Later, they became more able to influence the “dose” of grief or restoration they could tolerate in a given moment.
This matters in bereavement support.
At first, people may simply be surviving. Later, they may become more able to choose when to journal, when to rest, when to connect, when to work, when to remember intentionally, and when to step away from grief-heavy material for a while. That is one reason mindfulness can be so supportive here. It increases awareness of what is happening right now and helps people respond with a little more intention and compassion.
What helps people adapt over time?
The lived-experience study identified several themes that seemed to matter over time:
- acceptance or acknowledgment of the death
- learning through lived experience
- time
- contextual factors, including responsibilities and social realities
- moments of normalcy
- growing ability to feel present in real life again
Participants described a broad progression from surviving the initial crisis, to learning to live with loss and grief, to living a changed life in which loss and grief had become integrated into identity. They also noted that after about a year, something often felt different, not because grief was gone, but because they felt more settled in the new reality and more able to attend to ordinary life again.
That does not create a deadline. It simply suggests that time and repeated lived experience often matter. People learn, not just endure.
The model is especially helpful for self-compassion
One reason I like the Dual Process Model inside the Mindfulness & Grief System is that it reduces self-judgment.
It reminds people that:
- crying does not mean you are failing
- functioning does not mean you are forgetting
- sorrow and adaptation can coexist
- grief may still be present during ordinary life
- practical coping is not emotional avoidance by definition
- emotional grief is not the only valid form of bereavement
That fits closely with the heart of the Mindfulness & Grief System: first we notice what is happening, then we tend to it with compassion. The goal is not to force calm, erase pain, or fit grief into a fixed timeline. It is to respond more skillfully to what is here.
How I would apply it in the Mindfulness & Grief System
Inside your framework, the model works well as a grief theory lens that helps people make sense of their shifting experience.
It pairs especially well with:
- mindful awareness, because it helps people notice whether they are in a more loss-oriented or restoration-oriented moment
- skillful courage, because it validates both turning toward pain and stepping back when needed
- getting unstuck, because it reduces shame about inconsistency
- journaling, because writing can help people see patterns in their oscillation over time
- perpetual mindfulness, because it supports the long view of living with loss, not “finishing” grief
So rather than presenting the model as a stand-alone theory, I would position it as one of the maps that helps explain what people are already living.
A practical reflection exercise
You could keep this simple.
Divide a page into two columns:
Loss-Oriented Coping | Restoration-Oriented Coping
Then ask:
- What has loss-oriented coping looked like for me lately?
- What has restoration-oriented coping looked like for me lately?
- Where do the two overlap?
- Do I judge one as more valid than the other?
- What am I learning about my bereavement?
That last question matters, because the 2024 study suggests oscillation is not only movement. It may also carry learning from one side of coping into the other. What someone learns in sorrow can support them in daily life, and what they learn in daily life can help them tolerate grief.
References
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197-224.
Larsen, L. H., Hybholt, L., & O’Connor, M. (2024). Lived experience and the dual process model of coping with bereavement: A participatory research study. Death Studies.
