Grief

Dealing With Grief

Grief is a complex emotion that we face as humans. We all experience it at some point in our lives. Whether it’s because we lost a job, broke up with a significant other, or lost a family member, grief can significantly impact our lives.

However, there are times where grief can be prolonged, and we go through extended periods dealing with it. Although suffering happens to people in different forms and fashions, there are some stages that we all experience in grief.

Stages of Grief

There are five stages of grief:

• Denial
  • We deny the terrible news that we received so we can slowly form an understanding of what happened
• Anger
  • Anger is used to hide the pain that we’re feeling
  • We use the anger inside and can misdirect it at others because we are angry at the initial thing that made us upset
• Bargaining
  • We try to regain control of our lives by creating “what if” scenarios
  • This can help us with delaying the sadness
• Depression
  • Our lives can feel hopeless, and we lose all sense of motivation because of the pain we’re feeling
  • To deal with the pain, we resort to isolating from other people because the pain can be too much to bear
• Acceptance
  • Although it’s not easy, we’ve come to accept what has happened and try to move on in our lives
  • We haven’t forgotten what has happened, but instead, we choose to push forward while working through our feelings

Through these five stages, we deal with the onset of our grief. Everyone doesn’t experience these stages in the same order. There are also times when a person may go through some or none of these stages.