Updated December 17, 2019

This is the first of six blogs that we will be doing on this subject. The Stages of Grief is a topic and something that we hear about all the time. Each blog in our series will look at one of these five "stages" of grief in great detail.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist, spent a great deal of her career working with people who were dying and was a pioneer in the field of hospice. In her 1969 book, "On Death and Dying," she wrote that there were five phases very common to terminally ill patients dealing with their impending mortality.

The phases or stages of grief identified were denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She found that while some went through these stages, in dealing with their impending death, in that order, others bounced back and forth between them. It is an excellent study concerning those who are dying and one of the first meaningful studies dealing with any element of grief.

Unfortunately, a large number of people overlook that she was writing about grief strictly from the standpoint of those who were facing their own death. The "five stages of grief" have been used, and sometimes abused, by a variety of people, who have taken her work completely out of the original context. It’s normal to hear them used to describe what a griever goes through after the death of a loved one, or any other significant emotional loss.

Far more has been put forth on this subject. Prior to her work in this area, John Bowlby and Colin Parkes suggested that there were four phases of grieving. In 2007, a Yale study relabeled her phases of grief as disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance. They suggested that failure to complete the grieving process in six months might indicate problems that would benefit from professional intervention.

There has been research disproving the necessity of the first phase and indicating that depression is not inevitable in the grief experienced by those dealing with an emotional loss. The American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 indicates that a Major Depressive Disorder, including bereavement, can be diagnosed for situations lasting over two weeks.

Clearly, there has been a lot of discussion on this topic. The problem comes when people assume that grievers must experience Kübler-Ross' five phases or stages in the order she listed, or worse yet, try to force them into doing so. These "five stages", grief stages, or stages of loss have become something often forced on grievers, that can lead to a great deal of confusion.

Here at The Grief Recovery Institute, we firmly believe that to tell grievers they "must" go through these stages serves no purpose and does nothing to help in their emotional recovery. It would be great if we could fit all grievers into these five boxes, so we would know how to deal with them, but it does not work that way. Each person is different and each loss is different.

Grief is an emotional experience, not an intellectual experience. The Grief Recovery Method is founded on helping people discover what is incomplete and unfinished in each individual relationship and helping them take the necessary actions to deal with that unfinished business on an emotional level. We don’t believe in putting people in convenient boxes or catagories. The Method is about educating people in taking action, rather than simply labeling them.

When I was in mortuary school, I was taught that the families I met would all have to go through the five stages of grief. Many health professionals are also taught this.  When my wife, who is a nurse, had a co-worker killed in an accident several years ago. The licensed professional counselor, who was brought in to provide support, told everyone that they had to go through the five stages of grief.

Funeral directors and nurses are most often the "first responders" in helping grievers after a death. Keep in mind that every major change in life brings with it elements of grief, and yet these five stages of grief are forced on people no matter the loss. This type of misinformation isn’t helpful to someone grieving. What is helpful is accurate information that is easy to understand.

Over the next five segments of this blog series, we will look at how placing these expectations on grievers is an enormous disservice. We’ll also explore how this isn’t helpful to them when dealing with the emotional pain of loss. We will look at how telling people they must experience an arbitrary stage tends to create more problems, rather than helping them through the grieving process.

While you may follow this link to another article published on this in the past, you will find that this series approaches the stages of grief from a different perspective.

You may also be interested in reading other articles we have published on the Stages of Grief:

Stages of Grief: The Myth

Why We Don’t Agree With the Five Stages of Grief

Another valuable resource you may be interested in is our FREE eBook, Debunking the States of Grief; click below to download it today.  You’ll find chapters that look at each of the stages in greater detail. There are also chapters that define grief, what it is and isn’t, and why we grieve any time there is an end, or change in, a familiar pattern of behavior in our lives.

Lastly, you will also see another of our FREE eBooks on the 61 Tips on Grief and How to Help People who are grieving a loss in life.