💫 Dual Process Model of Grief – Overview
The Dual Process Model of Grief (Stroebe & Schut) suggests that it’s natural to move back and forth between focusing on your loss and focusing on daily life. Grieving isn’t a straight line – it’s a process of oscillation between confronting and avoiding the pain of loss. This is something many people also recognise in the Five Stages of Grief – the sense that emotions can change and overlap rather than follow a clear order.
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🙌 How It Helps
The Dual Process Model explains why we naturally move in and out of grief. It shows that spending time with your grief (feeling, remembering, mourning) and taking time away from it (functioning, distracting, even enjoying) are both important for coping and healing. The rhythm of oscillating between being loss-oriented and restoration-oriented isn’t fixed – it’s shaped by life circumstances, emotional capacity, and what each day demands of you.
🤍 May Be Helpful If…
- You feel torn between grieving and getting on with everyday life.
- You sometimes feel guilty for having moments of relief or distraction.
- You’re seeking balance between remembering and rebuilding.
- You are having a different grief response to a family member.
📌 Tips for Using This Model
- Give yourself permission to feel grief when it shows up – and to step back when you need a breather.
- Notice what helps you engage with grief, and what helps you recover from it.
- Reflect on what “loss-oriented” and “restoration-oriented” days look like for you – both are important parts of your healing.
📖 Further Reading
Remember: this model is simply one way of understanding grief. You are the expert in your own experience, and you never need to fit yourself into any single model.
Take what’s helpful and leave the rest.
Explore more models over on our Grief Models Hub 👉
❓Dual Process Model FAQs
The Dual Process Model of grief by Stroebe and Schut explains that people cope with bereavement by alternating between two processes: loss-oriented coping and restoration-oriented coping.
The model suggests that healthy grieving is not a constant focus on the loss. Instead, people naturally oscillate between confronting the pain of the loss and adapting to life changes after the loss.
The two processes are:
Loss-oriented coping: Focusing on the deceased person, memories, emotions, sadness, and the meaning of the loss.
Restoration-oriented coping: Adjusting to changes, managing new responsibilities, rebuilding routines, and finding ways to move forward.
The Dual Process Model challenges the idea that grief happens through fixed stages. Instead, it views grief as a flexible process where people shift between grieving and adapting.
The main criticisms of the Dual Process Model of grief are that it may not explain every person’s grief experience, is difficult to measure, and may not fully account for cultural and individual differences.
Common criticisms include:
Limited evidence across different cultures: Some researchers argue that grief responses vary widely across cultures and communities, meaning the model may not apply equally everywhere.
Difficulty measuring oscillation: It can be challenging to identify or measure exactly when someone is engaging in loss-oriented or restoration-oriented coping.
Less focus on individual differences: Factors such as personality, relationship with the deceased, trauma, social support, and circumstances of the death may influence grief in ways the model does not fully capture.
Not a universal roadmap: The model describes common patterns in grief but does not predict exactly how every person will grieve.
Despite these criticisms, the Dual Process Model remains influential because it recognises that grieving involves both emotional processing and adapting to life after loss.
Further reading: Why Grief Models Matter (Even When They Don’t Fit)
The Dual Process Model of grief can be used by recognising that grieving often involves a natural balance between remembering the loss and rebuilding life after the loss.
Ways to apply the model include:
Allowing time for loss-oriented grief: Giving yourself space to feel sadness, remember the person, talk about memories, or process emotions.
Allowing restoration-oriented coping: Returning to routines, solving practical problems, connecting with others, and creating new goals.
Accepting movement between the two: Understanding that feeling okay one day and overwhelmed the next can be part of normal grief.
For therapists and grief counsellors, the model can help support people by validating both emotional pain and the need to adapt.
Further reading: blogs on coping strategies after bereavement
Yes, the Dual Process Model is considered an evidence-informed model of grief that has influenced bereavement research and practice since it was introduced in the late 1990s.
Research has found support for the idea that many grieving people move between confronting their loss and focusing on restoration and life adjustment. Studies have also explored how this pattern relates to coping, emotional wellbeing, and adaptation after bereavement.
However, the model is not a diagnostic tool or a guaranteed description of every person’s grief journey. Researchers continue to examine how it applies across different types of loss, cultures, and circumstances.
Further reading: What Does Research Say About Grief and Processing Loss?
The first set of stressors in the Dual Process Model are called loss-oriented stressors.
Loss-oriented stressors include experiences directly connected to the person who died, such as:
Missing the deceased person
Feeling sadness or longing
Thinking about memories
Processing emotions related to the loss
Trying to make sense of what happened
Adjusting to the reality that the person is gone
These stressors involve facing and processing the emotional impact of the loss.
The second set of stressors are restoration-oriented stressors, which involve adapting to changes and managing life without the person.
Further reading: Who Might the Dual Process Model of Grief Help?
Yes, oscillating in grief is considered a normal part of the grieving process according to the Dual Process Model.
Oscillation means moving between:
Loss-oriented moments, where you feel sadness, miss the person, or focus on the loss.
Restoration-oriented moments, where you focus on daily life, responsibilities, relationships, or future plans.
Someone may cry one day and laugh the next, feel overwhelmed and then experience moments of peace, or switch between remembering the person and focusing on everyday tasks.
The Dual Process Model suggests that this movement between grief and adaptation can help people gradually adjust after a loss.
