Grief and Loss Theory
17 theories available
In-Depth Explanation
Grief and Loss Theory
Grief is love with nowhere to go. Understand the many paths through loss, from traditional stages to modern models that honor continuing bonds—helping you navigate bereavement in your own unique way.
Grief & Loss Theory
These are detailed in other sections of the app:
Mind-Body Release (MBR)
A powerful method combining bilateral stimulation with body awareness to release grief stored in your nervous system—helping process loss held in the body.
Radical Accountability Theory (RAT)
A belief-focused approach that identifies and removes the problematic beliefs and emotional associations complicating your grief—dissolving pain at its root.
In-Depth Grief Theories
Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief
Understand the classic model of grief through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—including practical exercises for each stage and real-life examples of how grief rarely follows a linear path.
Cognitive Behavioral Grief Therapy
How grief activates hidden beliefs and creates secondary suffering—and practical CBT techniques to identify and reframe unhelpful thought patterns while honoring natural grief.
Dual Process Model of Grief
Learn how healthy grieving involves oscillating between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping—with practical exercises for both modes and guidance on recognizing when you're stuck in one pattern.
Continuing Bonds Theory
Discover how maintaining an ongoing connection with the deceased is healthy and healing—including practical ways to honor the relationship while still engaging fully with life.
Worden's Four Tasks of Mourning
An empowering active approach to grief work: accept the reality, process the pain, adjust to life without them, and find an enduring connection—with practical exercises for each task.
Meaning Reconstruction
When loss shatters your worldview, learn to rebuild meaning through sense-making, benefit-finding, and identity reconstruction—with narrative exercises and journaling prompts.
Non-Finite Loss / Living Loss
Grief for ongoing losses that have no clear endpoint—chronic illness, disability, infertility, caregiving. Learn to live with loss that continues to unfold over time.
Assumptive World Theory
How major losses shatter our core beliefs about safety, meaning, and self-worth—and practical steps to rebuild a worldview that can hold both the loss and life.
Six Stations of Divorce
Bohannon's framework for understanding divorce as six distinct processes—emotional, legal, economic, co-parental, community, and psychic—and how to navigate each.
Disenfranchised Grief
When society doesn't recognize your loss—ex-partners, pets, estrangement, stigmatized deaths—learn to validate your own grief and find healing without external permission.
Anticipatory Grief
Grieving before death occurs—understand this natural response to impending loss, use the time wisely, and care for yourself while caregiving.
Traumatic Grief
When loss and trauma collide—sudden, violent, or horrifying deaths require processing both the trauma and the grief, often with specialized treatment approaches.
Ambiguous Loss
When someone is gone but there's no closure—missing persons, dementia, estrangement—learn to live with uncertainty using "both/and" thinking and resilience strategies.
Collective/Cultural Grief
When communities mourn together—public tragedies, cultural loss, historical trauma—understand how shared grief shapes us and how to participate in collective healing.
Disability Identity Integration
After acquiring a disability, learn to incorporate this new reality into an expanded sense of self—moving from grief toward a whole, integrated identity.