Grief

Have you ever experienced the death of a loved one? Death of a pet? Had a relationship end? You’ve experienced grief. Grief is the complex emotional suffering you feel after the loss of something important to you. When grieving you may experience sadness, anger, shock, denial, etc. which are all normal things to feel when experiencing grief. Grief is very overwhelming and can be debilitating. There is no wrong way to grieve, but grieving is a necessary part of life as it is unexpected and uncontrollable. Let’s learn about the different stages of grief and how they impact us.

The Five Stages of Grief

There’s five stages of grief that we all go through in order to process the significant event that has happened: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You don’t necessarily feel these emotions in this particular order, but this is the main thing people go through when experiencing grief. 

Denial is when you refuse to accept what has happened. Denial is usually the first thing we experience when grieving because you are most likely experiencing shock about the situation. It is the stage in which you are not truly processing what is going on. You’re sitting there thinking “how can I go on?”, “why should I go on?”, etc. Without denial, the grief may be too strong and overwhelming, so pretending that it didn’t happen is a coping mechanism to help us process.

 Anger is the next stage, where you’re just very upset at the situation, yourself, or another person. You might find yourself blaming yourself or others for what has happened. Anger is a necessary part of the process. The more you allow yourself to feel angry, the more you will be able to start healing and moving on to the next stage of the grief process. 

 Bargaining is when you are willing to do anything for the situation to not have occurred. You might find yourself speaking to your Higher Power, asking them for a favor in exchange for something. Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and change what has happened. This is the stage where you might go back to denial, or anger, or depression, then back to bargaining, and back to another stage all over again.

 Depression is when you just feel immensely sad for a long period of time about the situation. You might find yourself crying or isolating yourself from your loved ones. This is one of the most important stages because this is the stage that makes people the most uncomfortable. No one enjoys sitting in sadness, it is a feeling that people often try to escape feeling, but it is a necessary step of grieving in order to get to the last stage.

 Lastly, you have acceptance, which is when you have come to a place of accepting what has happened. That can look like finally being at peace or just being in a place of acknowledgement about the situation without it feeling so debilitating. Sometimes you get to this stage and you’re still not okay and that’s okay. This isn’t about being good, but about being able to process that the event happened and there’s nothing you can do to change it and be okay with that. 

Grief is one of the most difficult things to go through and to process. Sometimes we find ourselves in a cycle of repeating these stages over and over again for several days, weeks, or months, and that’s okay. There is no wrong way to feel. You don’t have to feel these things in this particular order either. All that matters is that you go through each stage and try to process what has happened so you can move on. This is incredibly difficult but with the correct coping skills and a good support system, you should be able to overcome your grief.