17/11/2021
Grief is a natural response to losing a connection to someone we love.
Most of us will have heard of the ‘5 stages of grief’ by Kübler-Ross. But what few of us know that these stages weren‘t actually based on the experience of people in bereavement, but on interviews with people in the final stages of lives themselves.
Over the years, different models have been formed which mat better capture what the experience of grief in any form can look like.
Tonkin, a grief counsellor from New Zealand, found when talking to people in bereavement that their grief doesn‘t “go away” - instead, their lives expand around the original pain.
Stroebe & Schut, Dutch psychologists, came up with the ‘dual-control model’, whereby we continuously go back and forth between actively feeling the loss, and focusing on recovery of our life after losing a loved one.
There are more models of griefs, but what’s most important to know, is that there’s no ‘one way’ that captures everyone’s experience. What matters most is gently accepting the back and forth of our feelings, in whatever duration and shape.
