Every pattern has blind spots. Doka and Martin were careful to describe the instrumental pattern's weaknesses as well as its strengths, and knowing them in advance makes them easier to handle.
The tasks run out
The first weeks after a loss are full of jobs. Then, often around the second or third month, they stop. The accounts are closed. The paperwork is done. Everyone else has gone back to normal. For a man who has been coping by doing, this is often the hardest point, and it can arrive without warning.
Some things cannot be fixed
The instrumental pattern is built for problems with solutions. A death is not one. A man can find himself working harder and harder at the parts that can be fixed because the central thing cannot be.
Other people misread you
If the people around you expect the intuitive pattern, they may think you are cold, in denial, or not affected. That can leave you more alone than you need to be, and it can strain relationships with people who grieve differently.
It can slide into something else
Doing can become overwork. Staying busy can become never stopping. And sometimes what looks like coping by doing is covering something that needs more attention. Heavier drinking, constant anger, or not sleeping for weeks are signs worth taking seriously, whatever pattern you think you are in.
Coping by doing is legitimate. Never stopping is a different thing.
The other half
Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut's model, covered in the next course, suggests that healthy coping moves back and forth between the loss itself and all the practical changes around it. A man who only ever works on the practical side may be leaving the other half untouched. The next module is about how to make room for it in a way that still fits how you work.
Your task
Write one sentence for each gap in this module that sounds familiar. If none do, write that down too.