Instrumental grieving

Grief Guys is not just about guys.  Although there is a gender-related preference that seems to occur, it has more to do with a personality type, and women can be on the instrumental end of the scale.  Which brings up another point: it is not a dichotomy between intuitive and instrumental grieving, but rather a continuum.  I am a systems analyst, so I am studying both my grief, and grief in general (instrumental) while grieving.  But I have cried a lot over Gloria's absence, and continue to have occasional (and sometimes major) grief bursts (intuitive).

This is one of the reasons why it is so important to get the idea to bereavement counsellors, who tend to be trained primarily on intuitive styles of grief.  The idea of "grief work" seems to be fixated and limited to the concept that grief work is primarily (and often *only*) dealing with emotions.  But O'Connor's idea of grieving, as expressed in "The Grieving Brain," seems to point to a need for cognitive "grief work," possibly related to learning or relearning, and therefore an instrumental type of grief work, as not quite distinct but possibly adjunct to the idea of affective grief work as seems to be universal in the grief industry.  (This is also why the "one size fits all" style of the "Grief Share" program, very deeply invested in emotive "grief work," does not fit at least half of mourners.)  (It is also why I am already regretting having chosen the "Grief Guys" sobriquet, which is catchy, but not exactly accurate.)