Seniors For Living

Last month, my Grief & Bereavement Resource Guide was published on SeniorsforLiving.com. If you missed it, check it out now (and please share it with anyone you know that could benefit from it).

I was happy to receive so much feedback on the piece, including a clarification on something I referenced in the guide, something that is referenced quite often in discussions about grief and bereavement…although, as I’ve learned, it is referenced mistakenly.

The stages of grief, developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, were never meant to apply to those in mourning.

Check out this comment from Marty Tousley of the GriefHealing blog. Tousley has more than 40 years of experience – professionally and personally – in dealing with grief:

“Overall your article is excellent, but I must take exception to your comments about the so-called stages of grief. As wonderful as her groundbreaking work in death and dying was, Kubler-Ross’s “stages” model was never meant to apply to those who are in mourning. Her studies were focused on patients who were terminally ill and dying. That is a common mistake you will find repeatedly in the literature still today. But there has been a wealth of research done since Kubler-Ross’s pioneering work that focuses specifically on bereavement, loss and grief. As you accurately observe, grief is the normal response to the death of a loved one, and it doesn’t happen in neatly ordered “stages” as such. Most of us who specialize in grief counseling prefer to think of grief as the personal experience of the loss, and mourning as a process (not a single event) that can affect us in every dimension of our lives: physical, emotional, social, spiritual and financial. We really do the bereaved a disservice by perpetuating the myth of stages.”

I truly appreciated Marty’s comment (and those of several other grief professionals) for setting me straight on the original intent of the five stages. Clearly, the idea that these stages are a guideline for the person dealing with loss is deeply embedded, and further education is needed in order for the general public to understand that grief is a far more complicated process, one that the five stages cannot fully explain/contain.

Therefore, the timing of this piece by Ruth Davis Konigsberg, written in response to the Tuscon tragedy, couldn’t have been better. I highly recommend reading “New Ways to Think about Grief.”

Konigsberg busts the stages myth in her article, along with four other popular myths that pervade our society’s understanding of grief: 1. express it, don’t repress it, 2. grief is harder on women, 3. grief never ends, and 4. counseling helps. Before moving through these myths, Konigsberg discusses the cultural changes which birthed the need for a new “system” to deal with grief. Although Kübler-Ross’s work was very instrumental in ushering in this new era of bereavement, it was not the only basis for what Konigsberg refers to as “the American Way of Grief”.

I love this quote, which really sums up Konigsberg’s take on the issue and seems to echo the mission of professionals like Marty Tousley, professionals who are working hard to remove the box that the five stages incorrectly puts grievers in:

“One unfortunate result of all this mythmaking is that we’ve become more inflexible in our expectations of other people’s grief — quite a paradox, considering that awareness and tolerance were among the primary goals of the death-and-dying movement. Instead of rushing to prescribe ways to grieve, it would be more helpful to spread a different, more liberating message based on what the science is beginning to tell us: that most people are resilient enough to get through loss on their own without stages or phases or tasks.”

This is not to say that you won’t need help, that you can’t take advantage of resources like those mentioned in the Grief & Bereavement Resource Guide.  Just know that you will get through, in your own time and not in the time prescribed by the notorious stages.

In fact, if you’re dealing with grief right now, forget the five stages. Stop worrying about the fact that you’re still in denial, that you never stopped bargaining, that you never felt you reached the point of acceptance. Throw those expectations away, trust your own resiliency to get you through, and wait for the healing that will eventually come.

-Michelle Seitzer