Many people expect grief to gradually become easier with time. They hope that as the weeks and months pass, the intensity of their grief will steadily lessen and life will begin to feel more manageable. Yet grief rarely unfolds in such a predictable way.
One day you may feel able to focus on work, enjoy time with family, or complete practical tasks. The next day, a song, photograph, anniversary, or unexpected memory may bring a wave of grief that feels as raw as ever. This experience can be confusing and may leave people wondering whether they are coping as well as they thought.
The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement, developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, offers one explanation for why grief often feels this way. The model suggests that people adapt to loss by moving between two different forms of coping: loss orientation and restoration orientation. Rather than remaining focused on one or the other, people often move back and forth between them over time. Stroebe and Schut described this movement as oscillation.
Moving Between Loss and Restoration
Loss orientation involves attending to the loss itself. It may include remembering the person who died, looking at photographs, reflecting on the relationship, longing for what has been lost, or allowing difficult emotions to be felt and expressed.
Restoration orientation focuses on adapting to the changes that accompany loss. This may involve learning new skills, managing finances, returning to work, caring for a household alone, reconnecting with friends, establishing new routines, or responding to the many practical and personal adjustments that often follow bereavement.
Rather than progressing neatly from one orientation to the other, people frequently move between them. A person may spend the morning sorting paperwork related to an estate, find themselves unexpectedly tearful while making lunch, and later enjoy a conversation with a friend. Grief and adaptation often occur alongside one another, sometimes within the same day.
Why Grief Feels So Inconsistent
One of the most reassuring aspects of the Dual Process Model is that it recognises grief rarely moves in a straight line. There are times when the loss feels close to the surface and other times when attention is drawn towards everyday life. Anniversaries, birthdays, familiar places, songs, photographs, conversations, or seemingly ordinary moments can suddenly bring the reality of the loss back into focus.
At other times, work, family responsibilities, hobbies, social activities, travel, or practical tasks may occupy most of a person’s attention. This movement between grief and daily life does not necessarily mean someone is coping well one day and poorly the next. Nor does it mean they are moving forward and backward in their grief. Rather, it reflects the reality that people often find themselves responding to both grief and life simultaneously.
Holding Two Realities at Once
One of the challenges of bereavement is that life continues while loss remains present. A person may be planning a holiday while missing the person who died, laughing with friends while wishing someone were still there to share the moment, or caring for children while carrying a deep sense of sadness.
At first glance, these experiences can appear contradictory. Yet grief and life are not opposites. Part of adapting to loss involves learning how to carry both the reality of the loss and the ongoing demands, opportunities, and responsibilities of everyday living.
Understanding oscillation can help reduce the pressure to grieve in a particular way. It offers permission to move between remembrance and restoration, sadness and enjoyment, reflection and activity, without assuming that one experience somehow invalidates the other.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps one of the most reassuring aspects of oscillation is that it recognises something many bereaved people already know from experience: grief is rarely absent, yet neither is life.
The movement between grief and everyday living may be gradual or unexpected, gentle or intense. A difficult day does not erase the days that came before it, just as a good day does not mean the loss no longer matters. Rather than indicating inconsistency or failure, oscillation reflects the reality that people continue to remember, love, miss, adapt, and live, often all at the same time.
Reference
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement: Rationale and Description. Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.
Related Reading
Why Grief Is Not a Straight Line: The Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement
Using Nature to Create Space for Loss Orientation
