December 2022
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross did a tremendous service and disservice in identifying what she saw as the stages of grief in her work with the dying. It’s unfortunate that people sometimes give themselves a hard time because they think the way they’re handling their experience is wrong in some way and this idea is sometime supported by helping professionals.
Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist in the 1960s, identified in her book “On Death and Dying” what she saw as the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. This stage theory suggests that one moves from each stage in an orderly way, but in reality this isn’t the case. Nevertheless, let’s pretend this isn’t so and examine what she had to say about each stage.
Stage 1: Denial. Quite often we respond to sudden loss or change by pretending it isn’t happening. This serves a purpose in numbing our feelings and giving us time to process it. You can call it a defence mechanism, or just accept it as a natural way of dealing with loss.
And then you move from denial to Anger when your suppressed emotions start welling to the surface. In this anger, there is a lot of sadness, bitterness, or resentment, hidden away under the projection of rage onto the situation, other people, or even inanimate objects.
Then, you move to Bargaining and you find yourself creating lots of “what if,” “if only,” statements. These helps you postpone the sadness, confusion, or hurt. If you are religiously inclined you are likely to try and bargain with God to get relief from your feelings that are welling up: “I promise to be a loving daughter of God, if you will take away my pain” kind of thing.
Stage 4 describes Depression. Here there are profound feelings of despair and loss. You feel heavy, confused, foggy and really sad. You want to isolate yourself, and just feel the feelings as they dump upon you. This phase often feels like what people say about the nature of loss, that it is inevitable and that is something that must be taken care of, maybe through medication. But, hang on, maybe there is more afoot here and maybe then is the time to talk about it all with a counsellor.
And then, according to Kubler-Ross, you may enter Stage 5: Acceptance. Now this doesn’t mean you’ve moved beyond grief or loss, but have accepted it and have come to some understanding of what it means for you in your life.
Now this stage theory of grief is all very well, but, in my experience and the experiences of many other therapists, feelings of loss do not follow a clear cut pattern; rather we dip in and out of such feelings throughout life. One therapist I know who suffered tremendous personal loss when her twelve year old daughter died of a brain tumour thirty years ago, and who now works as a grief counsellor, suggests we consider another way of thinking about the process of grief. She sees the process of grieving not in a stage form but as an infinite loop where feelings of sadness arise and diminish in an accepting kind of way, and accordingly she continues to celebrate the life of her child with each of the deceased birthdays and the day of her death.
I acknowledge the wisdom of this infinite loop model and utilize it with my clients. I might, for instance, recommend spending thirty minutes a day giving mindful space and time to feelings of loss and sadness, suggesting to my client that it’s actually ok to feel such feelings for the rest of their life, or not, however they feel. There is no time limit on feelings of loss, and such feelings are not negative, dark entities, but part of the richness of life itself. There are no rules here, and our experiences matter. By spending just thirty minutes a day also safeguards our experiences from overwhelming us into a contained and special place. We can make this time beautiful, with flowers and candles, or not, as we wish. It’s ok to feel sad, to grief.
