The Grieving Process: You Can Get Through It!

To be, or not to be. Yes, Hamlet, that is the question.

Life is a series of ups and downs, whether those downs are from failing a chemistry test or the death of a loved one. The cons of living life can be hard, bringing us to our lowest lows and causing us to ask questions like Hamlet asks in the play Hamlet. In the moments after a big loss, some do ask themselves a big question about mortality and whether or not it’s better to live or die, but getting through those tough times is what makes us stronger as human beings. It lets us experience the highs that occur on that roller coaster of life, and getting through the grief of loss is a vital part of everyday life. In this post, we’ll analyze grief and explore how psychology interprets it. We can’t stop tough life events from happening, and we can’t stop the pain we feel when they occur, but we can get through it the best way we can.

The American Psychological Association defines grief as "the anguish experienced after significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person," but everyone experiences grief in different ways. The most common way that grief is described is through the 5 stages of grief. Whether or not you are familiar with these stages, you've probably heard the phrase referenced in one part of your life or another. The 5 stages of grief, first elaborated in Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's book titled On Death and Dying, include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The stages provide a framework of how grief can be experienced, but grief can happen in all shapes and forms and they don't typically follow a nice and cohesive path. One may feel denial about a death that just happened and go straight to feeling a sense of hopelessness after that person is gone, or they can feel angry at the world for a long time and then start wondering if they'd done something different they could've changed things. The truth is, there is no true set path of grievance, and realizing that can help someone not feel isolated in their way of grieving.

The five stages of grief are widely accepted by most people, but there are some common misconceptions about the five stages of grief that people make. One of those common misconceptions is that the five stages of grief happen in a specific order. In my opinion, the concept of the five stages of grief being linear should be demolished like paper through a shredder. It’s important to know that grief is unique to every person who experiences it and won’t happen in a specific order or time frame. Another misconception is that each stage will only occur once or all of them will happen at some point. Some people may never go through an anger or bargaining stage, and someone could have a depression phase more than one time in their grieving process. One last misconception that people believe is that each of these stages has one clear-cut emotion attached to it, but denial can make you feel shock and anger can contain annoyance and bitterness. All of these misconceptions about the 5 stages of grief lead to one conclusion, there is no clear-cut path for grievance. Grief is a big, twisted knot with different twists and squiggles throughout and each of our paths with it is different.

While the five stages of grief are a guideline many therapists use when helping someone through a loss, it has been established that the layout for the five stages of grief isn’t specific enough and not generalizable. On top of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief, more stages have been added by psychologists who believe that her 5 stages of grief don’t necessarily fit in all of the emotions you feel after loss. This updated model includes 7 stages of grief, which are shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, testing, and acceptance, with shock being one of the first things you may feel after a loss and testing is trying out different things to help you continue with life without that key person. This is the seven-stage model listed in Medical News Today, but some 7 stage models often list other stages like guilt, hope, reconstruction, integration, and the list goes on. Even with the common additions to the original 5 stages of grief, it’s still important to note that grief is extremely messy and might not fit into any outline any psychologist makes, showing that grief is a complicated concept that can be different per person and even per personal experience.

Grief is complex, and feeling grief will never really pass. You may feel some sort of grief in flashes for the rest of your life, and that’s normal too. Our grief for our lost ones will never truly go away, but its intensity will lessen over time. No matter what happens, you will come out the other side of grief stronger than when you entered it. In the words of George Eliot, “Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.” At the end of the emotional rollercoaster of grief, we get to look back on the joyful memories, and our dedication to the remembrance and embracement of the memories of our loved ones is what keeps them alive.

Resources:

https://www.apa.org/topics/grief

https://grief.com/misconceptions/

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/5-stages-of-grief-coping-with-the-loss-of-a-loved-one

https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/death-quotes

https://ecorial.org/blogs/articles/what-are-the-stages-of-grief-after-a-death

https://www.hcf.com.au/health-agenda/body-mind/mental-health/moving-through-grief#:~:text=What%20are%20the%20stages%20of,there's%20still%20room%20for%20debate.

https://www.healthline.com/health/stages-of-grief#7-stages

https://www.health.com/stages-of-grief-7482658

https://www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/change-curve/