Guidance Through the 5 Stages of Grief

Grief is a natural response associated with loss, and everybody experiences it differently.

There is no right or wrong way to grieve, but by understanding the phases of grief, you can equip yourself with healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with painful and unexpected emotions.

This article will equip you with the information that you need to help both yourself, and others in your family, to get through these difficult times.

Your step-by-step guide on what to expect and how to move past it.

1. Denial

Denial is the first of the five stages of grief.

The first stage is one of shock and denial, it helps us to navigate through accepting the loss. It 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. We shut down as it feels surreal. Like we are in a cocoon. 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.

2. 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.

3. Bargaining

Bargaining, this is one, some of us know extremely well!!

During this stage, you may find yourself willing to give up everything you own just to keep your loved one here and see them recover. Thoughts often turn into bargaining: promises that you will never get angry again, that you will give up possessions, or even devote the rest of your life to helping others if only things could be different. The mind fills with “what if” and “if only” thoughts. People can be very hard on themselves, regretting what they did or didn’t do, or wishing they had spent more time with the person they love. Guilt often accompanies bargaining and is a very normal part of the process. It is important to remember that these stages are simply responses to intense emotions and they do not follow a neat, linear order. Feelings may last minutes or hours, and you may move back and forth between them, experiencing one stage, then another, and sometimes returning again to the first.

4. Depression

After the bargaining stage our attention moves into the every day.

Feeling empty can arrive suddenly, and grief can settle into your life on a deeper level than you ever imagined. This depressive stage can feel like it will last forever, but depression here is not a sign of mental illness. It is a natural, appropriate response to losing someone you love. You may withdraw from life, cocoon yourself, shut down, and see the world through a different filter. In many ways, not experiencing depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When the loss truly settles in your soul, the realisation that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably painful and depressing. Having support from your community, family, and friends, and being able to talk, can be deeply helpful as you move through healing and towards acceptance. Depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.

5. Acceptance

As we slowly come to terms with our loss, acceptance is often mistaken for being “ok” or saying “I’m alright”, but that’s not really what it looks like. For most people, the new normal and even everyday tasks can still feel hard. Acceptance is the realisation that your loved one is physically gone forever and is not coming back. The void they leave is never filled. They are constantly missed, and over time we learn to live with that absence. It asks us to live in the present, because we cannot hold on to the past. Life has been permanently changed, and we have to readjust, reorganise, and learn how to move through the world in a different way. Sometimes acceptance simply means having more good days than bad ones.

As we start to live again and find moments of enjoyment, it’s common to feel as though we are betraying the person we lost. But while we can never replace what has been taken, we can make new connections and build new, meaningful relationships. Instead of denying our feelings, we listen to what we need, and slowly we move, change, grow, and evolve. We may begin reaching out to others, becoming involved in their lives, investing in friendships, and rebuilding our relationship with ourselves. Living again does not mean forgetting, and it often can’t happen until grief has had the time it needs. There are no boundaries or set timeframe for grief, but with time we learn to manage it better. Time can be, and often is, a beautiful healer.