24/07/2025
🔴 STAGES OF GRIEF 🔴
👉 When we lose a loved one, the pain we experience can feel unbearable. Understandably, grief is complicated and we sometimes wonder if the pain will ever end. We go through a variety of emotional experiences such as anger, confusion, and sadness.
The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief, was first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.
✨DENIAL —
The first stage in this theory, denial helps us minimize the overwhelming pain of loss. Our reality has shifted completely in this moment of loss.
✨ANGER —
It is common to experience anger after the loss of a loved one. We are trying to adjust to a new reality and we are likely experiencing extreme emotional discomfort. There is so much to process that anger may feel like it allows us an emotional outlet.
✨BARGAINING —
Losing a loved one can cause us to consider any way we can avoid the current pain or the pain we are anticipating from loss. While bargaining we also tend to focus on our personal faults or regrets.
Eg : “God, I promise to be better if you will let this person live.”
✨ DEPRESSION —
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 the loss feels more present and unavoidable. We tend to pull inward as the sadness grows. We might find ourselves retreating, being less sociable, and reaching out less to others about what we are going through.
✨ACCEPTANCE —
When we come to a place of acceptance, it is not that we no longer feel the pain of loss. However, we are no longer resisting the reality of our situation, and we are not struggling to make it something different.
Note 📝 : Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a “roller coaster” effect—switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.
☀️🌻