Coaching Guide

Grief is not a disorder. It is a debt owed for the relationship. But when someone you care about is grieving — whether they lost a parent last month, a child last year, or a partner to suicide — you are watching them suffer and you don't know what to do. You say the wrong thing. You avoid them because you're afraid of saying the wrong thing. You try to fix it. You get frustrated when they're "still not over it." You feel helpless.

This manual exists because grief illiteracy is the norm. Our culture has no framework for supporting someone through loss. We get three days of bereavement leave and a casserole. Then we're expected to "be there" for someone without any training in what "being there" actually requires.

What This Manual Covers

This is not a grief recovery program for the person who is grieving. This is a supporter's education — a 12-week structured curriculum that teaches you:

• What grief actually is (neurobiologically, psychologically, relationally)
• The difference between normal grief, complicated/prolonged grief, and traumatic grief
• What helps, what hurts, and what is not your job
• How to hold space without fixing, rescuing, or collapsing
• When to encourage professional help and how to recognize danger signs
• How to sustain yourself through someone else's grief without burning out

Three Types of Grief

Good Grief (normal bereavement) is painful but adaptive. The griever moves through waves of intense pain interspersed with periods of functioning. Over months, the waves become less frequent and less consuming. Most people (90–97%) navigate grief without clinical intervention. Your job is to not interfere with this natural process while providing consistent presence.

Complicated Grief (Prolonged Grief Disorder — now a formal diagnosis in DSM-5-TR and ICD-11) occurs when grief remains intense, preoccupying, and functionally impairing beyond 12 months. The griever cannot integrate the reality of the loss. They are stuck — not because they loved more, but because something in the grief process has become blocked. Approximately 3–10% of bereaved people develop PGD.

Traumatic Grief occurs when the death itself was traumatic — sudden, violent, witnessed, or horrific in its circumstances (homicide, suicide, accident, disaster). The trauma symptoms (intrusion, avoidance, hyperarousal) interfere with the grief process. The person cannot mourn because they cannot think about the deceased without being flooded by traumatic imagery. This requires addressing trauma before or alongside grief.

The Dual Process Model

This manual uses Stroebe and Schut's Dual Process Model (1999) as its organizing framework. Healthy grief involves oscillation between two orientations:

• Loss-orientation: Grief work, yearning, crying, remembering, looking at photos
• Restoration-orientation: Attending to life changes, new roles, new identity, practical tasks, distraction

Both are necessary. Neither is pathological. Your job as supporter is to allow oscillation — not to force either orientation. Don't say "you need to move on" (forcing restoration). Don't say "you need to feel your feelings more" (forcing loss-orientation). Let them move between the two at their own pace.

A Critical Clarification

This is a 12-week program for your education as a supporter. The person you're supporting will not be "done grieving" in 12 weeks. Grief has no timeline. Worden's Task 4 — finding an enduring connection with the deceased while embarking on a new life — is lifelong work. You are learning skills that you will use for months or years. The 12-week structure gives you a framework; it does not give grief a deadline.

Clinical Foundation: This manual integrates Worden's Four Tasks of Mourning (2018), the Dual Process Model (Stroebe & Schut, 1999), Shear's Prolonged Grief Disorder Therapy protocol, Continuing Bonds theory (Klass, Silverman & Nickman, 1996), and polyvagal-informed nervous system education (Porges, Dana). All translated into plain language for non-clinicians.