When it’s at its worse, grief can feel like you’re stuck in quicksand. When you’re grieving a loss, such as the death of a loved one, the pain can seem unbearable, and you may feel like you will never move on. However, with time, patience, and support, you can learn to cultivate resilience as a character trait that will help during the grieving process and beyond.
You’ve probably heard of the stages of grief. Virtually everyone in bereavement finds that grief is a process with stages you must go through. The five stages of grief model was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and became well known after she published her book On Death and Dying in 1969. Kübler-Ross’ model was originally designed to describe the process that people with terminal illness face. In the years that follow, psychologists embraced her stages of grief as a common process that everyone goes through after a big loss. The following are Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief.
Denial
Feeling numb is common in the early days after a bereavement. Denial can be so strong that some people at first carry on as if nothing has happened. Even if we know that someone has died it can be hard to believe that someone important is not coming back. It’s also not unusual to feel the presence of a loved one has died, hear their voice or even see them.
Anger
Anger is a completely natural emotion, and very common after someone dies. Death often feels cruel and unfair, especially if you believe that someone has died before their time or you had plans for the future together. Many people also feel angry towards the person who has died, or angry at ourselves for things we did or didn’t do before their death.
Bargaining
When pain become too big, it can be hard to accept that there’s nothing we can do to change it. Bargaining occurs when we start to make deals with ourselves or God if we’re religious. Because we want to feel better, we hope that if we act in a particular way we get some relief. It’s also common for a grieving person to have significant anxiety, thinking over and over again about things that happened in the past, asking a lot of ‘what if’ questions, and wishing we could go back and change things in the hope things could have turned out differently. There are some people that believe anxiety should be the six stage of grief because it occurs by itself and in conjunction with the stage of depression as well as the other stages.
Depression
Sadness is what we think of most often when we think about grief. This sorrow can be very intense and come in waves over many months or years. The sadness can become so deep that it feels as if life no longer holds any meaning. In this stage, we begin to realize the true extent of the death or loss. Common signs of depression include trouble sleeping, poor appetite, fatigue, lack of energy, and crying spells. This stage can also include self-pity and feelings of loneliness, isolation, emptiness, and anxiousness.
Acceptance
Grief and its stages come in waves and can feel like nothing will ever be right again. Gradually most people find that the pain eases and it’s possible to accept the loss. We may never completely get over a profound loss or the death of someone precious, but we can learn to live again. In time, we can come to terms with all the emotions and feelings we experienced when the death or loss happened. Healing can begin once the loss becomes integrated into our set of life experiences.
The five stages are often talked about as if they happen in order, moving from one stage to the other. You might hear people say things like ‘Oh I’ve moved on from bargaining and now I think I’m entering the acceptance stage’. In fact Kübler-Ross believed that the stages are non-linear and that people can experience these aspects of grief at different times and they do not happen in one particular order. Someone may not experience all of the stages, and might find feelings are quite different with different bereavements.
Resilience and Grief
In order to become more resilient while grieving the five stages of grief and ay associated anxiety needs to be experienced and processed. Your degree of resilience is based on your ability to cope with changing events, situations, and identity. It’s your adaptability to changing conditions or your acceptance that you need to move in a new direction. Coping doesn’t happen immediately, but you can choose to build your resiliency during your struggle with grief. Resilience means pushing forward and advancing during the stages of grief.
Adaptively coping is pushing yourself forward and doing things you know will help even if you don’t want to. Recovery practices include different ways of working through feelings. The goal is to work towards a place of acceptance. The following are some ways you can build resiliency and move through grief at the same time.
Developing your social network during grief can feel challenging and overwhelming at first. But we all need interaction with others. You can start slowly by joining a grief support or seeing a grief counselor. If you’re religious, you can seek out a chaplain, pastor, priest, or other spiritual leader for compassion and guidance. Once you feel ready to take another step forward, find a group that enjoys an activity or hobby that you do. Consider joining the local YMCA and taking some exercise classes. Exercise has the additional benefit of triggering endorphins and making you feel better.
Journaling is a tool that many therapists recommend for processing difficult feelings such as grief. Journaling can help you keep moving through difficult times. Your journal can become the daily place meditate and write out your thoughts and feelings in private. You can also make it a prayer journal and write to God daily if you like.
Consider setting up a memorial altar or grief shrine in a private area of your home. Start by identifying a table, dresser or garden area on which to set up your altar. You may want to choose a place that was particularly treasured by your loved one such as a chair or a spot in the garden. Sometimes, people turn entire bedrooms into shrines. The first rule of making an altar o is that there are no strict rules on how to go about it.
To start your altar, find your sacred objects. Popular items include talismans, candles, crystals, flowers and photos. Personalize the grief shrine with things unique to the person or animal you’re memorializing. Write down sayings or affirmations that remind you of the person, or compose a farewell letter. Find a way to honor that person’s spirit in the choice of objects, colors and textures. This creative process has been proven invaluable in processing grief.
Of course, grief counseling is always helpful after a loss. Most therapists understand the devastation someone feel when a loss occurs. The goal of therapy is to help someone through the process that occurs after a significant loss or a death.
Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
References
O’Connor MF (October 2019). “Grief: (stages of grief) A Brief History of Research on How Body, Mind, and Brain Adapt”. Psychosomatic Medicine. 81 (8): 731–738.
Bonanno G (2009). The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us about Life After Loss. Basic Books.
Kübler-Ross E (1969). On Death and Dying. Routledge.
Kübler-Ross E, Kessler D (2014). On grief & grieving : finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. New York: Scribner.
Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth (1974). Questions and Answers on Death and Dying. Macmillan.
Kessler D (5 November 2019). Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1501192739.
Prigerson HG, Maciejewski PK (December 2008). “Grief and acceptance as opposite sides of the same coin: setting a research agenda to study peaceful acceptance of loss”. The British Journal of Psychiatry. 193 (6): 435–437.
Bonanno GA (January 2004). “Loss, trauma, and human resilience: have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events?” The American Psychologist. 59 (1): 20–28.
Stix G (March 2011). “The neuroscience of true grit”. Scientific American. 304 (3): 28–33.
