So many people think they’re messing grief up.
Maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re wondering why you’re still crying after so long. Or why you haven’t cried at all. Why one minute you’re totally fine, and the next you’re sobbing in your car because you saw their favorite snack in the shop.
Or maybe you’re trying to support someone who’s grieving and you’re quietly thinking, Is this normal? Shouldn’t they be… further along by now?
Here’s the thing no one says loud enough: grief is REALLY messy. And unpredictable. And confusing.
That stages of grief model, it’s so pervasive, still. It’s so misleading. It makes people feel like they’re failing if their experience of grief doesn’t follow the script.
(Wait, am I supposed to be angry now? Did I miss that part? What stage is “can’t stop scrolling Instagram but haven’t showered in three days”?)
In the real world grief doesn’t line up in a tidy sequence. One moment you’re laughing with a friend, the next you’re in the bathroom having a panic cry because you remembered how they used to laugh at your laugh.
It’s not linear. It doesn’t always make sense. And that’s not a glitch – it’s just how grief works.
Which is why we love the Dual Process Model.
Basically, instead of pretending grief moves through predictable stages, this model says we move between two different kinds of grief work:
Loss-oriented: missing them. Feeling the hole they left. Crying, remembering, hurting.
Restoration-oriented: figuring out how to do life now. Taking on new responsibilities. Adapting to everything that has changed.
And you move back and forth between the two. Sometimes several times in the same day.
That doesn’t mean you’re avoiding your grief when you laugh, work, watch television or spend an afternoon thinking about something completely ordinary. And it doesn’t mean you’ve gone backwards when the pain suddenly crashes back in after a relatively good week.
That movement is part of grieving.
The Dual Process Model can be useful because it takes away some of the pressure to work out where you are supposed to be.
You don’t need to identify which “stage” you’re in.
You don’t need to be making visible progress.
A good day doesn’t mean you’re finished grieving.
A terrible day doesn’t mean you’re back at the beginning.
You’re allowed to miss someone desperately and still enjoy something. You’re allowed to get on with practical life and then be completely floored by something small. You’re allowed to have periods when grief takes up almost every inch of the room, and others when it sits quietly in the corner.
None of that means you’re doing it wrong.
If you’d like to understand the Dual Process Model in a bit more depth, we have a free taster module that explains it in plain English, with videos and examples.
But the short version is this: grief is allowed to move. And so are you.