Are There Really Five Stages of Grief?

by Peggy Haymes, Pinnacle Associate

“I think I may have skipped a stage of grieving. Have I messed things up?”

“That five stages of grief stuff? It’s all garbage!”

I’ve heard both sentiments expressed with regard to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ (EKR) five stages of grief first articulated in her groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying. Neither sentiment is quite right and neither is helpful.

EKR’s work grew out of a simple request from a colleague at the University of Chicago Medical School. Could she cover one of his classes for him? She agreed, but had no idea of what she was going to do.

Finally, she decided to bring in a dying patient and let them talk to these future doctors about their experience. It was a radical and scandalous idea. At that time, dying patients were relegated to the end of hallways so doctors wouldn’t have to walk past their rooms and be reminded of their “failures.”

It was scandalous, but it was also a revelation for the students.

As Kubler-Ross continued to bring patients into classes to speak, her classes grew in popularity, although not without controversy. Some students told her they wanted to come but feared the impact on their medical career should they be seen there.

As EKR visited with patients she listened to them, giving them space to talk about their fears, struggles and every other aspect of their lives. My colleague and friend Mike Yow was a participant in EKR’s later grief workshops. As he puts it, she developed the stages as a way of making sense of the different things she was hearing in different rooms.

As she formulated them, she never intended for them to be taken as stair steps to be navigated in sequence. Later in her career she said, “The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”

Toward the end of her career she also worked with David Kessler to identify a sixth stage: meaning. How do we find meaning now that our world has so deeply changed?

Why does all of this matter?

A large measure of grief ministry is permission giving. For example, it’s normal to be angry. It’s also normal move from anger to depression to acceptance to denial… all in the course of a day.

Or hour.

Secondly, grieving people can put great pressure on themselves to “do grief right.” Trying to check off stages in some sequential order can get in the way of their healing. It’s good news for people to hear that they’re not “flunking grief.”

In Navigating GriefLand groups, people have the opportunity to explore the various emotions that are a part of the normal grief process and to learn the process is more squiggly than straight.

To learn more about offering a group, go to www.NavigatingGriefLand.com.