Screw Grief Expectations: Let’s Rethink the 5 Stages Framework

The 5 Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance 

The guaranteed super easy process that ensures complete healing in a timely fashion. A linear totally smooth 5 step process to healing! 

Wrong….

Greif is messy!! Nothing about it is smooth and easy! This framework can be helpful for some people but as a whole, it is a restricting picture of how people process death. 

There are 3 big issues with the 5 Stages of Grief. 

1. It frames grief as linear

2. It villanizes some emotions

3. It creates an expectation that grief has a finish line

So let’s break it down

1. Grief is not linear. All of the “stages” of grief could have a place in someone’s process but they are not guaranteed, especially not in a specific order. Emotions are complex and we are often feeling more than one thing at a time. We are able to be joyful and sad at the same time. Hopeful and angry. We can hold them simultaneously. So do not feel pressured to feel things in any specific way, be present and feel whatever you are feeling. 

2. The 5 Stages of Grief framework says “Steps 1-4 are bad and acceptance is good”. Which yes, acceptance, peace, or whatever you want to call it is good, but the other stages of grief do not have to be bad. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression carry a more negative weight but are not the enemy here. They are normal and often necessary. Anger specifically. In my experience, if you are not a white male you are not allowed to be angry! You are not allowed to show anger because it disrupts. People of color especially are not given the space to feel their true emotions because of fear of living into the negative stereotypes placed on them. The Stages of Grief create a hierarchical system, valuing some emotions and downgrading others. All it really does is make people feel bad when they do not feel the textbook feelings in the textbook order. 

3. Acceptance. What does this mean? The word makes it seem as if it is the finish line. It makes it seem like you’re done grieving! Here’s a gold medal! But once again… wrong! There is no “finish line” with grief. Greif changes as time goes on. There is a lifelong emptiness where the person you lost dwells and I believe that it is unrealistic to assume that it will eventually go away. 

After all of the posts I have made about grief, I hope that you come away knowing that grief does not look the same for everyone, that you can grieve however you need, and that you are not alone.