Stages of grief how many

We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months.

They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever.

It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response.

To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way. This is not the case. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it.

We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. We must try to live now in a world where our loved one is missing. Our reality has shifted completely in this moment of loss. It can take our minds some time to adjust to this new reality. We are reflecting on the experiences we have shared with the person we lost, and we might find ourselves wondering how to move forward in life without this person.

This is a lot of information to explore and a lot of painful imagery to process. Denial attempts to slow this process down and take us through it one step at a time, rather than risk the potential of feeling overwhelmed by our emotions. Denial is not only an attempt to pretend that the loss does not exist.

We are also trying to absorb and understand what is happening. It is common to experience anger after the loss of a loved one. We are trying to adjust to a new reality and we are likely experiencing extreme emotional discomfort.

There is so much to process that anger may feel like it allows us an emotional outlet. Keep in mind that anger does not require us to be very vulnerable. However, it tends to be more socially acceptable than admitting we are scared. Anger allows us to express emotion with less fear of judgment or rejection. Unfortunately, anger tends to be the first thing we feel when we start to release emotions related to loss.

This can leave you feeling isolated in your experience and perceived as unapproachable by others in moments when we could benefit from comfort, connection, and reassurance. When coping with loss, it isn't unusual to feel so desperate that you are willing to do almost anything to alleviate or minimize the pain.

Losing a loved one can cause us to consider any way we can avoid the current pain or the pain we are anticipating from loss. There are many ways we may try to bargain. Bargaining can come in a variety of promises including:. When bargaining starts to take place, we are often directing our requests to a higher power, or something bigger than we are that may be able to influence a different outcome.

There is an acute awareness of our humanness in these moments when we realize there is nothing we can do to influence change or a better end result. This feeling of helplessness can cause us to react in protest by bargaining, which gives us a perceived sense of control over something that feels so out of control. While bargaining we also tend to focus on our personal faults or regrets. We might look back at our interactions with the person we are losing and note all of the times we felt disconnected or may have caused them pain.

It is common to recall times when we may have said things we did not mean, and wish we could go back and behave differently. We also tend to make the drastic assumption that if things had played out differently, we would not be in such an emotionally painful place in our lives. During our experience of processing grief, there comes a time when our imaginations calm down and we slowly start to look at the reality of our present situation.

In the early stages of loss, you may be running from the emotions, trying to stay a step ahead of them. By this point, however, you may be able to embrace and work through them in a more healthful manner. You may also choose to isolate yourself from others in order to fully cope with the loss.

Like the other stages of grief, depression can be difficult and messy. It can feel overwhelming. You may feel foggy, heavy, and confused. Depression may feel like the inevitable landing point of any loss.

A therapist can help you work through this period of coping. Acceptance is not necessarily a happy or uplifting stage of grief. You may feel very different in this stage. The seven stages of grief are another popular model for explaining the many complicated experiences of loss. These seven stages include:.

The key to understanding grief is realizing that no one experiences the same thing. Grief is very personal, and you may feel something different every time. You may need several weeks, or grief may be years long. If you decide you need help coping with the feelings and changes, a mental health professional is a good resource for vetting your feelings and finding a sense of assurance in these very heavy and weighty emotions.

For some people, intense grief after the death of a loved one can lead to depression or make underlying depression worse. Here's a look at approaches…. Job loss for people in the United States can be an extremely traumatic experience, often leading many to depression.

Try reminding yourself that underneath your anger is pain. And even if it might not feel like it, this anger is necessary for healing. Anger might also be a way to reconnect to the world after isolating yourself from it during the denial stage. Irritability, bitterness, anxiety , rage, and impatience are just some other ways you might cope with your loss. Guilt might be an accompanying emotion during this stage as you inadvertently might be trying to regain some control, even if at your own expense.

As hard as it might feel, this helps you heal as you confront the reality of your loss. Just as in all the other stages of grief, depression is experienced in different ways. Understandably, this realization may lead you to feel intense sadness and despair. As overwhelming as it may feel at this point, this stage is a necessary part of your healing journey. You may also feel like you accept the loss at times and then move to another stage of grief again.

This back-and-forth between stages is natural and a part of the healing process. Some of these professionals, such as British psychiatrist John Bowlby , have developed their own work around the emotional responses to loss. It extends the five core stages of grief to seven overlapping stages:. One of the most common misconceptions about grieving is that everyone goes through it in the same way. Not everyone experiences all the above-mentioned stages or even goes through these emotions the same way.

For example, maybe the depression stage feels more like irritability than sadness for you. And denial could be more of a sense of shock and disbelief than an actual expectation that something out of the blue will fix the loss. This is no indication that your healing journey is faulty in some way. Your healing experience is unique to you and valid nonetheless.

You could move along the stages one by one, or you could go back and forth. Some days you might feel very sad, and the very next day you could wake up feeling hopeful.

Then you could go back to feeling sad. Some days you might even feel both! Maybe your first emotional reaction is anger or depression. Coping with a loss is ultimately a deeply personal and singular experience. Many factors affect how long it takes. Some people navigate through grief in a few days. Others take months or longer to process their loss. If you feel your emotions stay or increase in intensity and frequency, this might be a good time to seek professional support.

This means that even though some symptoms might be similar, there are still key differences between both. For example, in grief, the intense sadness will lessen in intensity and frequency as time goes by.