The Five Stages Of Grief. And Five Reasons Why They Are Wrong.

There is no formula for grief. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.

Apparently, as I am sure most of you know, there are stages of grief. Five in case you want to know. And these are the five stages of grief after the loss of a loved one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

Photo by Amadej Tauses on Unsplash

What are the five stages of grief?

This theory of the five stages of grief was created by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, MD in her book On Death and Dying published in 1969. 

Okay, I don’t want to knock Dr. Kübler-Ross. She was incredibly wise, inspiring, and was a pioneer who did remarkable work on death and dying. She was a woman who deserves nothing but credit. But these stages are bullshit. There is already so much misunderstanding of grief and these are an example. From what I understand she later said that these were never meant to be a formula, but were a summary of consistent responses that people had to grief. And also I am thankful to anyone normalizing and tackling this taboo topic that we are all supposed to “get over.” 

There is so much misunderstanding of grief in our society.

However, since people and our society are so awful about the reality of grief (if you have had a loss this needs no more explanation), we all know many people deeply hurt us when they tried to package our grief into timelines, formulas, and platitudes. So this myth that a formula exists helps no one. There is no formula. Trust me, I wish there was.

So in response to this myth of five stages of grief, I will give five things (among many) that the stages of grief gets wrong.

There are no set stages and there is no set stages for formula for grief.

1 - The idea of stages in the first place is so wrong. There is no order to the multiple emotions of grief. I do relate to all five but they came in no specific order. There were moments in my early stages of grief where I felt complete acceptance and there are moments today (five years later since  the loss of my dad) where I still feel denial or anger. I still bargain. And I still have days of depression. All five are present at different moments and probably will always be. 

There are so many crazy emotions when in grief.

2 - The number five. There are so many more emotions. Fear, Bewilderment. Shame (since many people often seem inconvenienced or uncomfortable with your grief), exhaustion, desperation, panic, anxiety, insomnia, exhaustion. Also unexpected emotions such as gratitude (not in that annoying toxic positivity way but a deep appreciation and love for some people), joy, a different way of feeling love. Maybe a deep spiritual connection? 

Everyone handles grief differently.

3 - That grief is the same for everyone. There is a way people who have had a significant loss understand and relax around each other in a way that you can’t always with someone who hasn’t. There are similarities but also major differences, even among people who have lost the same person since that person had a unique relationship with each person. Some people might never have experienced denial or never anger. Maybe one experienced total acceptance at first and a year later was hit with denial. Maybe someone didn’t experience any of the five and only experienced deep loneliness and fear. And maybe someone out there of the billions of people on the planet did experience these five in exactly this order. 

There is no timeline for grief.

4 - Placing these emotions in the order of stages adds to the misconception that grief has a timeline. “You will feel better in a year,” and the various forms of “shouldn’t you be over it by now,” that grievers have to deal with from people makes us feel worse. There is no timeline. Maybe a month after a loss someone is feeling great and wants to have a fun day or night out with friends and people judge them (or even worse they judge themselves), as if having this good time and being happy too early means they didn’t really love them. Maybe four years later (or even 20 years later) one is hit with missing their loved one so much they can’t even get out of bed for a day (or more. Or less) 

Grief doesn’t ever go away but it does change over time.

5 - That grief has a peaceful ending. According to these stages you go through deep pain and emerge with a sense of peace and acceptance. There is no “deep, peaceful” acceptance at the end. Yes, it gets better. A LOT better. I enjoy my life as much, if not more since I did change my priorities, since the loss of my dad, but I can’t say I have gotten to a peaceful acceptance of his death. I miss him. It hurts. I’m mad about it. Sometimes I accept it. Sometimes I don’t.