Most of us are familiar with the concept that there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In grief, we move through these stages in a nonlinear fashion, often repeating stages many times before finding a deeper level of integration and acceptance. The more we are able to release fully into the many expressions and aspects of grief, the more wholeness and integration we will be able to access on the other side of this sacred journey.
While these stages may be common knowledge, the understanding of how these stages materialize in everyday life is less common. I would like to offer some sub-headings to the 5 stages as a way to add more texture and topography to the map of grief. Each of these aspects of grief should be thought of as stations that we stop at in our grief journey, sometimes revisiting the station several times before feeling complete and ready to move on.
Illuminating these additional roads into the terrain of grief can help us orient ourselves in our journey of grief. When we can better identify the many sublayers of this journey, we can find more compassionate understanding for how we are and where we’re at emotionally and mentally during loss.
DENIAL can materialize as:
Avoidance of what has unfolded. This can express as the felt sense of looking away, not letting life touch you, or walling up against reality (which is also a closing off to all of life). Avoidance can be thought of as a form of starving the Self of the vital nutrients and essential internal irrigation that comes with being with life fully, including being with grief fully.
Dismissal and minimizing of the difficult-to-digest event(s). When we make a difficult event small or almost insignificant we are at the same time inflating ourselves to feel much bigger than the event. This is a way we may be unwittingly protecting ourselves from feeling out of control, small and impermanent. Inflating ourselves to be larger than life is a way we distance ourselves from the true nature of reality, and in turn, from the inevitable pains of loss that come with being in reality.
ANGER can materialize as:
Bitterness about the event. Bitterness can be thought of as a very shallow experience of anger (‘shallow’ is used here as a metaphoric term referring to shallow water, and not intended as a judgment that it is lesser than other expressions of anger). When we linger in bitterness, our grief becomes distorted and festers in surface layers, making cathartic release and integration difficult.
A general sense o irritability in the days, months, or even years after loss. This is also a surface manifestation of a deeper anger that is looking for full expression. Instead of allowing our sacred anger to boil up and cook us through, we seethe and simmer, trying to suppress the transformative fire of grief-induced anger.
BARGAINING can materialize as:
Rearranging of our lives or hasty choice-making soon after loss. Sometimes after a tragic event we can compulsively start to “rearrange the furniture” in our life as a way to distance ourselves from the pain of loss. This can materialize as moving homes, quickly jumping into a new relationship, switching careers, changing our appearance…etc. The unconscious attempt here is to try and drastically change our life as a way to discard painful associations with the version of our life that experienced tragic loss. We subconsciously hope that when everything looks different we will feel differently, and then we can avoid sitting with the raw pain of loss.
Fantasizing. When faced with a tragic event we will typically get lost in fantasy about what we should have done to prevent our loss. Or the fantasy will focus on all the ways things could have been different in the time leading up to the loss. This is also described as negotiating with reality as a way of coping with the unimaginable.
DEPRESSION can materialize as:
Immobility and decision paralysis. This can sound like, “What’s the point in building something, or working hard toward a goal, or making long-term decisions? We all die and everything is eventually lost.” In contrast to great loss, the will to invest in our life can be very difficult to muster in this stage.
Becoming anti-social. An individual who is in deep grief will often recoil from social engagement. They may feel isolated and lonely in their grief, feeling like no one understands what they’re going through. The sense of loneliness is compounded when the griever is met with insufficient condolences, or none at all, by their friends, colleagues, and loved ones. Social contact is then exhausting to someone who feels they need to explain their continued suffering to someone who may not be able to fully understand their pain.
Heightened fear of loss. It is not uncommon for one to develop a heightened fear of loss on the heels of tragedy. The understanding that life is impermanent and human life is very delicate is never more acute than after experiencing a tragic event. This can result in hypervigilance about one’s safety or the safety of their loved ones, or in overly cautious behavior to minimize the threat of danger as one’s tolerance for risk is greatly diminished in this time.
ACCEPTANCE can materialize as:
Peace and a general okay-ness with life as it is. We no longer fantasize how things should be or could have been. We do not protest or resist the truth of our reality. We acknowledge the facts of our loss alongside the pain of it. The quality of our being is open, allowing, and at ease while still making room for free-flowing sorrow at times. We find we have more tolerance for difficult circumstances or emotionally turbulent experiences after passing through the “initiation” that is deep grief.
Greater sense of meaning in life. This has actually been proposed to be the final stage of grief by David Kessler in his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. This is the point of the journey where the previously unimaginable event of loss has somehow found a purposeful place in the storied tapestry of our life. Enough time and distance has passed and we are able to extract deeply profound meaning and insight out of the unfortunate events, and this fundamentally changes not only how we relate to our loss, but how we relate to life and loss in general.
ORIENTING ON THE MAP OF GRIEF
It is a very grounding experience when, after feeling lost for a time, we can locate ourselves on a map. The little red dot indicating that “You are here” delivers a small measure of comfort that we are someplace definable. The same kind of settling happens when we can locate ourselves on the emotional map of grief. It places us somewhere knowable, and we can then relate to the landscape around us, behind us and ahead of us with more understanding of what to expect.
Grief can be such an all-consuming experience that feels like it’ll never end. Being able to point to our present experience of grief can bring some relief amidst the seemingly endless pain. To hear that what we are going through is not only normal and predictable, but it’s also a temporary stage that eventually passes can be like a light at the end of a dark tunnel for a griever.
If you are in the midst of deep grief right now, please know that your grief will not remain at the same intensity forever. In time, the severity of your pain will lessen and the color will slowly return back to your life. Each expression of your grief releases a bit of the pain, metabolizes it, and integrates it.
If your loss was great, your grief will be just as great. Yes, you might grieve this for the rest of your life, but the intensity of your grieving will not be constant. The way you relate to your loss will change over time, too. As you grow and evolve, you will relate to your heartbreak differently, accessing new layers of grief and meaning along the way, further integrating your experience.
If you give yourself fully to this sacred human experience, you may find that grief opens you up to a life of greater depth than you ever experienced before. In this way, deep grief is both an initiation and a blessing.