The Five Stages of Grief

An agonizing part of life that everyone at sometime must experience is grief. The definition of grief is mental suffering over a loss of some kind. That loss can be either the death of a loved one or the break up of a relationship like a marriage. Every human goes through the same stages but not necessarily in the same order or for the same amount of time. These stages were identified by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist from Switzerland. To be able to recognize the stages that you will go through might make the grieving process easier.

Denial

Denial is usually the first stage of the process of grief. We don't want to believe something awful has just happened to us. By doing this, it is the mind's way of not feeling emotions immediately. We might isolate ourselves from other people or find different ways to numb any pain we feel might happen.

Anger

We could be angry at the person that just passed over or possibly angry at ourselves for that relationship that just ended. Maybe we didn't work hard enough at it when in reality it's possible nothing could be done. We might take it out on other people.

Bargaining

In this stage, we will try to bargain with someone. If we lost a loved one, we might try to bargain with God to take away the deep emotional pain that we might feel. In a lost relationship, we try to bargain with that person to win them back out of desperation, wanting things to be exactly how they were before.

Depression

Depression is described as a sense of inadequacy and a loss of feeling any pleasure. You are plagued with feelings of deep sadness, guilt or hopelessness. You want to withdraw from everything around you and go inside yourself. This is the most painful and extremely difficult of the stages to go through.

Acceptance