When we lose a beloved, the pain we have will feel intolerable. Clearly, grief is sophisticated which we have a tendency to generally avoid not experience the pain. We have a tendency to bear a spread of emotional experiences like anger, confusion, and unhappiness.
The 5 Stages of Grief
A theory developed by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggests that we have a tendency to bear 5 distinct stages of grief when we suffer loss: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
1. Denial
The first stage during this theory, denial helps us minimize the overwhelming pain of loss. As we process the truth of our loss, we also are trying to survive emotional pain. It will be hard to believe we’ve got lost a vital person in our lives, especially after we may have just spoken with this person the previous week or perhaps the previous day. Our reality has shifted completely during this moment of loss. It can take our minds your time to regulate to the current new reality. We are reflecting on the experiences we’ve shared with the person we lost, and that we might find ourselves wondering a way to move forward in life without this person. There is plenty of knowledge to explore and plenty of painful imagery to process. Denial attempts to slow this process down and take us through it one step at a time, instead of risk the potential of feeling overwhelmed by our emotions. Denial isn’t only a shot to pretend that the loss doesn’t exist. We are trying to soak up and understand what’s happening.
2. Anger
It is common to experience anger after the loss of a loved one. We try to regulate to some replacement reality and that we are likely experiencing extreme emotional discomfort. There’s most to process that anger may want, it allows us an emotional outlet. Keep in mind that anger doesn’t require us to be very vulnerable. However, it tends to be more socially acceptable than admitting we are scared. Anger allows us to specific emotions with less fear of judgment or rejection.
Unfortunately, anger tends to be the primary thing we feel once we start to release emotions associated with loss. This will leave you feeling isolated in your experience and perceived as unapproachable by others in moments after you may gain advantage from comfort, connection, and reassurance.
3. Bargaining
When addressing loss, it is not unusual to feel so desperate that you simply are willing to try and do almost anything to alleviate or minimize the pain. Losing a beloved can cause us to think about any way we will avoid the present pain or the pain we are anticipating from loss. There are many ways we may try and bargain.
Bargaining can are available a spread of promises including:
- “God, if you’ll heal this person I will be able to turn my life around.”
- “I promise to be better if you may let this person live.”
- “I’ll never get angry again if you’ll stop him/her from dying or leaving me.”
When bargaining starts to require a place, we are often directing our requests to the next power, or something bigger than we are that will be ready to influence a unique outcome. There’s an acute awareness of our humanness in these moments after we realize there’s nothing we will do to influence change or a higher effect.
This feeling of helplessness can cause us to react in protest by bargaining, which provides us a perceived sense of control over something that feels so out of control. While bargaining we also tend to target our personal faults or regrets. We would reminisce at our interactions with the person we are losing and note all of the days we felt disconnected or may have caused them pain.
It is common to recall times after we may have said things we didn’t mean, and need we could return and behave differently. We also tend to create the drastic assumption that if things had played out differently, we’d not be in such an emotionally painful place in our lives.
4. Depression
During our experience of processing grief, there comes a time when our imaginations cool down and that we slowly start to seem at the fact of our present situation. Bargaining does not look like an option and that we are faced with what’s happening. We start to feel the loss of our loved one more abundantly. As our panic begins to subside, the emotional fog begins to clear, and therefore the loss feels more present and unavoidable.
5. Acceptance
When we come to an area of acceptance, it’s not that we now not feel the pain of loss. However, we do not any longer resisting the fact of our situation, and that we don’t seem to be struggling to form something different.
Sadness and regret can still be present during this phase, but the emotional survival tactics of denial, bargaining, and anger are less likely to be present.
Here, 5 distinct stages of grief when we suffer loss: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.
