Understanding intuitive & Instrumental Grieving
It’s about that time for many of us: that time when we’re going to come into close quarters with family and friends, wondering how we’re each going to show up with our grief (Is so-and-so going to cry? Is so-and-so going to avoid talking about it?).
Gathering with loved ones can heighten the ways we all experience the same loss in different ways. With that in mind, I’d like to share a framework that may be helpful as we prepare to gather with family and friends – the concept of intuitive and instrumental grieving.
Intuitive grieving and instrumental grieving are two grieving patterns identified and developed by psychiatrists Kenneth Doka and Terry Martin.
Intuitive grieving is what commonly comes to mind when we think of how we grieve: processing our feelings, experiencing grief as waves of emotion, and expressing our internal emotions externally through talking, crying, screaming, etc.
But there is also instrumental grieving, which is a more physical and cognitive style of grieving. This style relies more on thinking and on quiet, internal processing than on expressing emotions. It may lend itself to more physical actions in response to grief, such as planting a tree, creating art, fixing things that are broken, or wearing the jewelry of someone who’s died.
Both of these styles of grieving are valid, and it’s not an either/or - you may fall somewhere along the spectrum of these two styles, or you may switch between them. As I’ve said many times (and you’ll hear me say it many times over), there is no wrong way to grieve.
Why does it help to understand these different patterns?
If you lean towards intuitive grieving, you may have a bias that the best way to grieve is to talk about it and to cry it out. If the people in your life aren’t sharing their feelings, you may assume that they aren’t feeling and expressing their grief, but that may not always be the case.
If you tend toward more instrumental grieving, you may not understand - or feel overwhelmed by - another person's need to express their emotions, to share, and to connect emotionally around their loss.
As you might imagine, sometimes this can create friction. Conflicts and isolation can sometimes occur - especially during heightened times like holidays and death anniversaries - when people who are experiencing the same loss are expressing their grief in different ways.
What helps?
Pay attention to how you grieve and honor that, while also recognizing that others around you may grieve differently. It’s easy to believe that the people around us aren’t feeling their grief, when it may be simply that they are processing it in a different way. Seek out spaces and practices that support your own ways of grieving, and when you can, make room for others’ expressions of grief as well.
It can also help to talk ahead of time about holiday expectations. Asking questions of others (and of yourself) can help: questions like, “What do you have in mind for the holiday? How would you like the day to feel? Is there anything specific that you would like to do, or something you would like to avoid doing?” Understanding everyone’s expectations can help create a holiday that better meets the needs of everyone involved.
