Many people are familiar with or, at the very least, have heard of the five stages of grief. I, myself, have seen images of this model plastered in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices, in psychology textbooks, within medical journals, and, largely within the last decade, scattered amongst various social media outlets. I have been appropriately acquainted with the stages of grief.
For the purposes of this post (and because I take too long to tell a story), I am going to focus on the most popularized model of grief, that which I referenced above. The five “stages of grief” model was developed by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler- Ross. The model became particularly famous after she published her book On Death and Dying in 1969. What most people don’t know about this model is that it was not at all based on people who were grieving the loss of a loved one. In fact, the 1969 book explored the experience of dying through interviews with terminally ill patients from which Kubler-Ross outlined the five stages of dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
Kubler-Ross and others later applied this model to the experience of loss in many contexts, including grief and other significant life changes (e.g., a breakup, serious injury, job loss, etc.). The stages were adapted and soon popularized as a way of thinking about grief and loss in general. The narrative surrounding these stages became seemingly linear, as if one could pass from denial to acceptance and be miraculously healed. Kubler-Ross, herself, said that this was never her intention. She stressed that the stages of grief are non-linear, and she explained that individual patients could manifest each stage differently, if at all.
Despite the author’s best efforts and intentions, the five stages of grief became the bible of grief literature and resources. You might have even seen an infographic at some point in your life that depicts these stages like a flowchart or your weekend to-do list- something that we can systematically make our way through and be done with by the end of the long weekend. However, those who have either experienced grief firsthand or known someone going through it understand that this is typically not the case. Sure, it could be. But the reality is that people experience a range of emotions, in no particular order, at different stages of the grieving process.
For instance, after losing my sister in 2015 I struggled a lot with anger. Unfortunately, like most people, I had become acquainted with grief from a very young age. I had learned to process things within my own family of origin like divorce, severe injury, severe mental illness, addiction and death. However, the experience of losing my sister brought forth a whole different type of grief that I had not yet experienced. I would go weeks at a time feeling rageful about her death and every time I thought I was moving on or finding any semblance of “healing” the anger would rear its head once again. While I have had much better years as of late, there are days where something in particular can still spark that same anger once again.
While I wholeheartedly believe that model’s such as Kubler-Ross’ provide helpful insights into the grief process, I also know, firsthand, that such models can do a grave disservice. They place unrealistic expectations on people who are in the depths of loss. Personally, I found that this model (and every last related platitude) made me feel more hopeless (and sometimes angrier). Each time I was transported back to feeling angry or depressed, I felt like I hadn’t made any “progress” at all. I know now that a lack of progress or “healing” was never really the issue. The issue is that we have tried to categorize and simplify something that can be hard to put into words, even on our best days.
If you take anything from this post, I hope it is the idea that grief cannot be fully understood, and certainly not felt, through the confines of any model. The reality is that grief is not easy to go through nor to understand. Grief is a complicated, layered experience and everyone’s reaction to it will be uniquely different. So, if you’re in the depths of it, just know that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. And if you know someone who is going through it then, kindly, leave the platitudes at the door.
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