There 5 stages of grief. Learn what to expect after a loss.
Grief is a somewhat commplicated and misunderstood emotion. Yet, grief is something that, unfortunately, we must all experience at some time or other. We will all inevitably experience loss. Whether it is a loss through death, divorce or some other loss, the stages of grieving are the same.
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance
The stages have evolved since their introduction and they have been very misunderstood over the past three decades. They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives.
The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order. Our hope is that with these stages comes the knowledge of grief ’s terrain, making us better equipped to cope with life and loss.
Denial
This first stage of grieving helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We are in a state of shock and denial. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.
As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you are unknowingly beginning the healing process. You are becoming stronger, and the denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.
Anger
Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this?
Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure – - your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.
Bargaining
Before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one would be spared. “Please God, ” you bargain, “I will never be angry at my wife again if you’ll just let her live.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?”
We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our loved one restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.
Depression
After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.
Acceptance
Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganize roles, re-assign them to others or take them on ourselves.
Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones. As we begin to live again and enjoy our life, we often feel that in doing so, we are betraying our loved one. We can never replace what has been lost, but we can make new connections, new meaningful relationships, new inter-dependencies. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to our needs; we move, we change, we grow, we evolve. We may start to reach out to others and become involved in their lives. We invest in our friendships and in our relationship with ourselves. We begin to live again, but we cannot do so until we have given grief its time.
At times, people in grief will often report more stages. Just remember your grief is an unique as you are.
David Kessler & Elisabeth
Kübler- Ross working on the
five stages of grief
Replies
you are right Esshna ... our thoughts are "another fuel" to our emotions, which creates a ripple effect throughout the universe .... and it does effect people around us as well, some times more than we think.
This rings so true with me, plus other stages not mentioned too, which are too difficult for me to explain. In a years time this past year I lost my father, my mother, and a son. It is so very difficult when you are going through ALL of the different stages all at the same time in different stages. Having a child you have raised to adulthood and beyond murdered is the toughest one to deal with, and I struggle with the anger, denial, and depression every day. Having my parents die was so hard too, because they were the ones that kept me going after my son was found murdered in his hotel bed while coming to Florida to visit me, and if had not been for my father's strength and strong religious faith I think I would not have made it through...Since my parents died two months apart, 8 months after my Markie's passing it has been so very difficult to go on sometimes. I am going through all these stages and trying to keep my head above water and so far am still afloat but emotionally floundering but trying so hard to heal beecause I know I must. I think the rage at God for letting a child of yours get taken in what was supposed to be the best years of his life is by far the toughest for me to deal with because I know it does no good to curse to the heavens for letting it happen...And trying not want vengeance and trying to forgive the one who took his life is so very very hard...I know the anger is bad for the soul, but sometimes all these emotions fills me with burning anger at life itself for letting this happen. That anger cannot be directed anywhere because this is all part of life that is out of my control and I know the anger helps nothing, but still Iit is a struggle...
Acceptance has to come that this is what was supposed to happen and to believe Markie chose this exit when he came into this incarnation, but dammit it hurts like hell. The missing of the people you loved the most in the world is the hardest thing to do, it is an ache inside that just can't be eased by any means...You try not to think of it but everything can trigger those feelings, sights, smells, songs, pictures and memories and it just gets harder every day. I wish I could get to that numb stage at some point and maybe after that can I see the light of day, and begin to heal...
One of the stages that is not mentioned but I have experienced myself is seeing the people after they are dead. For awhile after my Markie died, everywhere I went I would see him, at the store, in my yard...at the mall, in a car just anywhere at all and it would mess my head up so bad. In retrospect it could be that I was seeing his ghost, but at the time it was so real and I knew he was gone but would see him like he was alive and right there in the flesh. Then when I would walk or run to where I was seeing him, he would not be there, it would be someone that looked like him soemtimes or just nobody there at all, and I would get so frustrated at myself because I thought I was going crazy and I would cry so hard. My parents still come to me in my dreams though, and that helps me a lot. They are young again and happy and they tell me how much they love me and that I must be strong. I am thankful for that. I don't see Markie anymore so I am sure he is at peace and has moved on, now I have to move on and forward with life, but it is so hard. It feels like there is just such big chunks of me missing and I am leaking like a sieve.
I wish I had read this before all the deaths in my family came. I thought for a time I was going completely insane, but it is comforting to know that all this stuff I am struggling with is pretty much normal..That helps.
Thanks Ara, this has really helped me. I am sorry everyone that I got on a ramble but this topic has been heavy on my mind, and I try not to talk about it, but sharing my feelings has been a little healing, usually I don't talk about it because it is distressing to people talking about death, but sometimes it helps to just talk and let it out.
Dear Marique … you never stop to amaze me truly … with everything that you have went through … you are one of the few - kind, wise and beautiful individual.
and if you feel anger toward God, there is nothing to be afraid of … He can take it … look at him as your parent … He sees You as You Are … beautiful Soul … we can’t hide anything from Him anyway, so it’s alright … to be you. I have disagreements with Him often myself …
don't know what else to say … just thank you for sharing and your parents are right – You are Loved …
Thank you Ara, you have made me feel so much better. I like that image of me far better than the one that I had of myself. It has always been easier to love others for me, than to love myself. I am still working on that. I look eagerly forward to when we all can love each other and treat each with kindness and be reunited with our loved ones again. I hope it will come some. It is what me keeps going.
and thank you Andy for always being here for me ... ;)
~much peace and energy~
Grief- is a by product of our outlook on life.
Develop a spiritual outlook instead of a materialistic one and accept the universal truths-and there shall be no grief.
to me grief is an emotional withdrawal ... ;)
Gone through grief so much, these 'Light' and 'good' people filled me with grief.
Grief, hate, revenge, wanting to dominate knowledge and life, made me turn to the dark side.
we all have dark side ... and some of us went through this as well OrionWarrior, however our Essence never choose nor change, the light is within, just need a little polishing to shine again ... ;) In my life 'dark' represents my choices, and decisions ... overall it's a Mortal Experience to see both sides. But it will never define me as an individual - we all have our story .... and different chapters ... however the good things is we don't have an end ...;) as our 'book' is Eternal.
~much peace and energy to you~
Orion you are honest, thank you for that.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next