Five Things You Should Know About the 'Five Stages of Grief'

Understanding Grief / Understanding Grief / All Resources : Eleanor Haley



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Once upon a time (1969) a psychiatrist name Elisabeth Kubler Ross wrote the book ‘On Death and Dying’ which introduced the world to the five stages of grief  - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

The five stages of grief are at the basis of the 'Kubler-Ross Model', a theory based on Kubler-Ross’s experience and interviews with terminally ill patients. Originally this model was applied to those facing the reality of their own death, but before long, practitioners found the constructs of this neat and tidy model fit nicely with the analysis and treatment of grieving individuals.

Despite the fact that the stages are often refuted in academia, the 'Kubler-Ross Model' seems to be the grief model for the masses.  It’s intuitive, easy to grasp, and easy to prescribe.  And prescribed it is - by that old guy at the church coffee hour, Aunt Barb, and Jimmy who lives down the street.

In fact you may be here by way of a Google search prompted by your Aunt Barb who told you you’re stuck in the ‘Anger Stage’ (which only made you angrier). Thanks Aunt Barb!

I should probably tell you, if you’re waiting for me to explain the five stages, I’m not going to. You may now be asking your computer screen, "then what the heck is this post about?"  Well, I figure you already know a bit about the model. And many of you have already guessed how it should be applied. But unfortunately, many people get it wrong and end up feeling confused and abnormal when their grief doesn't follow the pattern.

So, before you decide that grief has literally made you crazy, there are a few things I think you should know.


1.  It is just a theory

There are many (many, many) grief theories; we just happen to hear about the five stages of grief so often that those unfamiliar with grief models (i.e. pretty much everyone) tend to believe it’s the gold standard.

The five stages of grief are not absolute truth.  Like all theory, it’s based on a hypothesis (an educated guess). There is a bit of research to support the theory, but there is also a bit of research to contradict the theory. In reality, other grief models may fit your experience exponentially better than the 'Kubler-Ross Model'.

At the end of the day, you may take the stages or leave them. Just please (please, please) don’t expect your grief to fall into a neat and easy pattern, formula, or timeline, and don't think you’re abnormal or crazy if your grief doesn’t transition through the stages in an orderly fashion.  It just doesn’t work that way.


2.  It is not linear

Grief is not a one way tunnel, it’s more like a labyrinth. It’s very easy to hear the stages rattled off and think they will all happen in a particular order, when in reality some of them don't even need to happen at all.

The stages are just a framework to help you understand and identify how you feel.  It completely normal to realize weeks after a death that you began at a different start point, passed over a step, or even moved backwards.


3.  Stages may repeat

As we established, the five stages of grief are not linear.  A part of this means stages may repeat and you won’t necessarily be waving goodbye to ‘anger’ or 'depression' in your rearview mirror.

Again, these are tools to help identify and understand how you're feeling so don't fret if you feel like you're taking two steps back.  People commonly feel like they're making progress in grief one day, and regressing the next.


4.  It is not all encompassing

Grief is really complex.  We detailed the wide range of emotions grievers deal with in our recent post 'Grief Makes You Crazy'.  You will feel 1 million things after a death, the five stages of grief talks about…well…five.

Of course stages like ‘depression’ and ‘anger’ are vague and could encompass a whole range of feelings and emotions, but even still the stages don’t cover everything.

Don’t feel confused when you find yourself in regretsville and can’t find it on your five stages of grief map.  Hint: make a U-turn at ‘acceptance'; and double back towards ‘anger’, it’s somewhere in there.


5.  There is no end point

Analogies like ‘grief journey’ and ‘grief path’ give us the feeling there’s some finite end point to grief.  The five stages leave you with a similar feeling. You think, "Once I transition through these stages I will reach the end of my grief."

Though the theory may reach its end point, your experience with grief won't. You don’t get to close the book on grief and forget the story. The story will stay with you and sometimes you'll relive the sadness, anger, hurt, and longing contained within its pages. The good news is, your story should also eventually feel a little more colorful, hopeful, and maybe even optimistic as time goes on.

We wrote a book!

After writing online articles for What’s Your Grief
for over a decade, we finally wrote a tangible,
real-life book!

After writing online articles for What’s Your Grief for over a decade, we finally wrote a tangible, real-life book!

What’s Your Grief? Lists to Help you Through Any Loss is for people experiencing any type of loss. This book discusses some of the most common grief experiences and breaks down psychological concepts to help you understand your thoughts and emotions. It also shares useful coping tools, and helps the reader reflect on their unique relationship with grief and loss.

You can find What’s Your Grief? Lists to Help you Through Any Loss wherever you buy books:

Let’s be grief friends.

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17 Comments on "Five Things You Should Know About the 'Five Stages of Grief'"

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  1. Benedict K  September 27, 2022 at 5:53 am Reply

    Hello.This post was extremely interesting, especiallysince I was looking for thoughts on this issue last week.Here is my blog post (URL removed per site guidelines)

  2. Chris  August 14, 2019 at 6:58 pm Reply

    I don’t know why we americans think there are solutions for everything, including grief.
    This idea got us in enough trouble long time ago by our creation of deities.

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  3. Cathy  August 8, 2018 at 5:31 pm Reply

    I really relate to all your arricles and they have been saying EXACTLY how I have been feeling these 7 months since my long term partner died. Thank you so much and keep up the great work and very interesting articles.xxxx

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  4. Jane Jordan  June 27, 2016 at 5:52 pm Reply

    The five stages as posited by Kubler-Ross were meant to be used as a helpful tool back in a time where there was NO easily accessible information about what people go through when they experience loss. Doctors would not talk to their patients about death and families that had moved beyond the model of multiple generations living and dying under one roof had lost the skills handed down by direct experience. (Much the same as we have lost the knowledge and ability to birth safely at home – (more safely than in a hospital). Terminally ill patients finally had a voice and their families had a guide to let them know that they were not crazy, or weird or bad for feeling the things they were feeling. Not too many people went to therapists back then. If they sought any counseling at all it was from the clergy who more than likely told them it was God’s will and shamed them for being angry or feeling anything other than faithfulness in God. Of course it has become widely used because it was easy to understand and easily accessible. AND it IS translatable to other loss situations. Nowhere was it ever stated that the stages were the only things you might feel or that they were linear and she always taught that you could be feeling multiple things at once. The main thing about knowing about the five stages is that it helps people know how to hold space for someone who is grieving or dying. For crying out loud, how many books have been written about baby care? Just because there is no way you can cover every scenario or symptom doesn’t mean it isn’t appropriate to try to understand the basics. If there is a problem with the stages it is that people these days WANT, expect, even DEMAND a quick prescription for their distress. There is no tolerance for ambiguity or unanswered questions. It is not the fault of the stages theory or Kubler-Ross that the stages have been taught and interpreted concretely. It still remains the most easily understood and relatable guide out there. If people are taking them literally and not grasping the nebulous nature of grief and loss then they probably would benefit from therapy. But for the most part it remains an accurate guide for most uncomplicated loss situations. I’m tired of hearing Kubler-Ross dismissed. The medical and nursing professions, not to mention a generation or two of non-self-reflective people owe her a great debt of gratitude.

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    • Eleanor  June 27, 2016 at 6:39 pm Reply

      Hey Jane,

      Thanks for your comment. If you read the post hopefully you see that we don’t disagree with you. The five-stages were indeed ground breaking and their impact continues to be seen today. Regardless of intent or merit, though, the fact remains that the five-stages are often misunderstood and misinterpreted. Everyone’s heard of them, yet they are far more complex than most people realize. That’s why we felt the need to write this post, to provide a little education about the nuances of the five stages.

      Although I do agree that there are many people out there who long for a quick fix to their grief, I am hesitant to agree that those who feel flummoxed by grief’s confusing nature need therapy. Everyone enters grief with their own unique set of assumptions and expectations about how grief will feel and how effectively they will cope. These expectations are, in some part, based on the attitudes of their broader culture and society and our society (generally speaking) encourages a neat and tidy grieving process. So it makes perfect sense that regardless of a person’s distress tolerance that days, weeks, and months after a loss they might say to themselves – “This was not what I expected, I’m not sure this is normal.”

      Eleano

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      • Anna  June 29, 2016 at 12:52 am

        Totally agree. Grief is unique to each of us. So many things play into our each individual grief.

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  5. Alex  September 22, 2015 at 8:39 pm Reply

    What about the sense of not wanting to move through the process? Of feeling the need and inevitability to stay in the grief because it’s all that’s left? Is there some theory or part of a theory that addresses this? I’m not in denial of what happened (most of the time, I think), but anytime I get a sense of “feeling okay,” I immediately want to return to not feeling okay because the okayness is too unsettling. Because I can at least bend my mind around not feeling okay.

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  6. Pat Flynn  October 29, 2014 at 12:28 pm Reply

    I think it important to also state that EKR never intended the ‘stages of grief’ to be used as a linear program or journey. It was a per peave to have it presented as such. She had it correct that the stages were not in a set order to be completed. She herself presented them as stages that were visited, revisited or skipped in no certain order with no certain end. She was a brave and compassionate woman that opened the door for so many of us.

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  7. samodzielnia stolarka  March 25, 2014 at 6:03 pm Reply

    Heya i’m for the first time here. I found this board and I find It truly useful & it helped me out much.
    I hope to give something back and help others like you aided
    me.

    1
  8. Sally Brooks  February 10, 2014 at 4:48 pm Reply

    Hi, I just thought I would say how easy to understand and informative your blogs on grief are. I volunteer for a Bereavement charity in England as well as studying for a Counselling Diploma, and I like the lively way you have written about what I think is a fascinating subject, but unfortunately most of my fellow students don’t agree-they think it is depressing! Any chance of explaining Continuing Bonds by Klass and Silverman? Thanks for a great website.

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    • Eleanor  February 11, 2014 at 8:34 am Reply

      Sally, thank you! I think your fellow students are depressing! =) Just kidding, I’m sure they’re lovely. I know not everyone feels comfortable with the topic of grief, but I think once they’ve had some first hand experience with it many start to feel a little differently. We will absolutely tackle a post on Continuing Bonds. We love taking requests.

      Eleanor

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    • Eleanor  February 17, 2014 at 2:30 pm Reply

      Hey Sally,

      Yes, we take requests! Check out our latest post on ‘Continuing Bonds’ =)

      Eleanor

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      • Sally Brooks  February 19, 2014 at 9:13 am

        That’s brilliant, I am very impressed! I am studying for a Diploma in Counselling and we are near the end of our unit on bereavement which most students have disliked, but a handful of us are fans. Perhaps you would consider doing a post on Stroebe’s Dual Process Model too, that’s another one of my favourites?
        I am glad I came across your website, I have recommended it in class but like I said, bereavement isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
        Thank you,
        Sally.

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      • Litsa  February 21, 2014 at 11:46 am

        Absolutely! We have a whole series in grief theories, so we will definitely tackle that one in the coming months. Glad you have found out site helpful and thanks for spreading the word!

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  9. Nathalie Himmelrich  January 1, 2014 at 2:50 pm Reply

    Great article, Eleanor. In my personal and professional experience with grief I have come to understand models and theories being just that: models and theories.
    Having said this, I often describe the different emotions and feelings experienced while grieving in circular fashion: The emotions/feelings come and go, at different length in time and with varying intensity.
    What shapes those experiences is our mental/emotional/spiritual meaning making process which changes over the time of being in the ‘grieving tumbler’.
    Grief is so personal and individual and so would the model need to be to fit: One for each person grieving.

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  10. Joan Hithens  April 30, 2013 at 1:01 pm Reply

    Nice, Eleanor! I always look at the fact that Kubler-Ross wrote On Death and Dying – such groundbreaking work for the world to begin this conversation – and decades later On Grief and Grieving with David Kessler. Facing one’s own death in the original studies and then applying it to everything about loss is way too simple as you note. I do subscribe to the models of universality in grief, along with a heavy dose that the loss itself is individual. A holistic approach, using the varying models that resonate to the personal journey through grief, can only serve us all better in helping ourselves and supporting others along the way. Thanks for writing and sharing!

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  11. Marty Tousley (@GriefHealing)  April 29, 2013 at 1:06 pm Reply

    Thank you, Eleanor, for helping to debunk the myth that grief occurs in neatly ordered stages. Seeing this decades-old theory touted so often in the popular media just sets my teeth on edge. So much research on bereavement has been done in the years since EKR published her ground-breaking book On Death and Dying (1969!) Do the journalists and writers who help to perpetuate this myth really think we’ve learned nothing new about grief in the last 45 years?!

    I look forward to the rest of the posts in your series on grief models!

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