Losing a loved one or any treasured thing can be very painful. Grief is the state of emotional suffering that one goes through, when something or someone they deeply love is taken away. It is just a natural response to a loss. The latter comes with all sorts of difficult emotions, and a person often feels like sadness and pain are to stay. It is normal to react in this manner to a significant loss. Whereas there is no right or wrong way to grieve, grieving in a healthy way is vital. It enables one to cope with pain reasonably, and renews and permits a person to move on.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler (n.d.) developed a framework that can be used to identify grieving people's feelings. They differentiate five stages within it: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. However, individuals are unique and have specific losses. Therefore, they do not go through these stages in the order mentioned above. The framework gives grieving people hope in the terrain of grief, equipping them with necessary strength to cope with losses and come back to their usual way of life again.
The first stage is denial, which helps a victim to survive a loss. At this moment, grief suddenly becomes overwhelming, and the world turns out to be meaningless. The victim's emotions go numb, and a person finds no purpose to go on, since life no longer seems to have sense. This stage helps to maintain feelings.
The second stage is anger. It is very necessary in the process of healing, due to it brings out all hidden emotions. It is good to be willing to harbor the feeling of anger at this stage, because the more it is felt, the more a person begins to dissipate. It results into healing. Anger can get limitless, and one may find oneselve extending it to doctors, family, friends, the self, or even the lost loved one.
The third stage is bargaining, when one feels like he or she would have done anything to have the lost ones or items saved. People begin to plead with God. Common statements include, “Please God, if you let her live again I will love her more”, “if only I could get one more chance to do it right”, and so on. This state makes people remain in the past trying to recollect the life before the loss.
After bargaining, the fourth stage is depression. The patient experiences empty feelings and grief at a very deep level. It is the stage that makes a person feel as though it will last forever. However, it is a very vital process, since if grief is part of healing, depression is also its constituent. The last step is acceptance. The person going through grief slowly accepts events and starts living again.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler's lessons on handling death and other forms of losses can be identified with a great insight provided in The Book of Job. The story of Job illustrates the nature of grief deeply, and the kind of intervention that is appropriate when confronted with a loss. The two sources describing how to handle grief provide solutions that can be considered as the art of healing. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' stages of grief and theoretic framework can be expanded to address issues beyond just death. The story of Job is also inclusive of all types of losses.He lost his family members and property, friends abandoned him, and his body was infested with diseases.
After acceptance, joy is realized. God was satisfied with Job's faithfulness and perseverance through a series of misfortunes. As a result, He rewarded Job with two times, which he had lost. It is only after accepting the new reality that anyone going through grief can experience joy. However, it is very unfortunate that most people spend so much time at the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression. It prevents them from encountering joy in their lives again. When a loss occurs, grieving helps to come to the stage of acceptance, which is like a gateway to happiness.
For a long time, I have been sure that acceptance is very vital in dealing with grief. However, I must admit that I have totally underestimated the relevance of the other four stages. Whenever I or someone I know experienced some loss, the first instinct was to accept an outcome and move on. However, it would never be as easy as I thought it could be. I did not really succeed. The denial and depression feelings always popped up. After doing this research, I have understood that acceptance should indeed be the last stage in the grieving process, and that it cannot come easily without going through the other four stages. After experiencing a loss, it is very normal to deny, feel angry, have a bargaining kind of mentality, and maybe fall into depression.
Reaching the acceptance stage may not necessarily mean that things will go back to the way, they have been before the loss. It means that people may begin experiencing less bad days and more good ones. As much as they can never replace what is lost, they can always make new connections, make new meaningful relationships, and even new interdependencies. Allowing oneself to go through the five stages is actually listening to ones needs instead of denying them. It is very important to start living again after a loss, but that can hardly happen without giving grief its time to pass.