Are there 5 stages of grief?

The 5 stages of grief is a popular way of thinking about the process of grieving. It suggests that in turn we will experience denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. This idea can be helpful but it can also be limiting. The reality is we each have a unique grief journey which over time we find for ourselves.

Kubler-Ross and the 5 stages of processing a terminal diagnosis

In 1969 Elizabeth Kubler Ross, an American psychiatrist who specialised in working with the dying, wrote her book On Death and Dying.  She suggested that those faced with a terminal diagnosis would go through these 5 stages of grief in facing their own mortality.  This was recognised as a new way of thinking about grieving and Kubler Ross was seen as a pioneer in her field.

Kubler Ross, with others, went on to apply this idea to the grief we feel when someone close to us dies.  Over time the 5 stages of grief was seen as the way of thinking about how we process grief in numerous contexts, from bereavement to relationship breakdown to the loss of a job.

How it helps

Using the 5 stages helps us understand that there is a sense of change and progression with grief.  It can be unhealthy for us to be stuck in any particular position and so remembering our grief changes over time can help and guide us.

And the stages we experience may well look something like the 5 stages Kubler Ross put forward.  There is often an initial sense of ‘this can’t be true’ (denial), with anger and sadness flowing from this and, at some point, an element of acceptance of how our world now is.

So keeping the 5 stages of grief in mind helps us locate ourselves at any one time with the hope of a more settled state of mind to come.

How the idea of 5 stages might be just too simple

The idea of grieving in these 5 stages it can be a limiting idea as well.  Our grief is rarely this simple.

In reality we cycle round stages of grieving many times and in different ways.  We may be emotionally blocked (in denial) one week, raging the next, then deeply sad and finally we might fall into a strange sense of calm.  This cycle will then repeat itself, perhaps over a few weeks or even over just a few hours, with variations which are hard to account for.  So rather than feeling reassured that we are progressing through a cycle we may feel trapped in a cycle.  We may conclude we just aren’t grieving properly.

And are these the right 5 stages?

The words used for the 5 stages of grief aren’t always helpful. 

The word ‘depression’ has overtones of an illness that a GP might talk to us about, whereas what we might experience is sadness, a healthy response which could look like depression. 

And the word ‘acceptance’ can be unhelpful. Often we don’t ‘accept’ a loss but we may ‘adjust’ to the loss as we learn to live with our grief.  We learn to live with our loss; its doesn’t make it somehow okay.

And the idea of bargaining, while it works well in the context of a diagnosis of a terminal illness, it doesn’t really work in the context of processing a loss.

Hold the idea flexibly

The idea of 5 stages of grief is helpful if we use it to remind us that grief changes over time and if we want to think about some of the key emotional reactions we will experience.  But we need to hold this idea flexibly.  We will experience the cycle many times and in many different ways.

In fact Kubler Ross was clear that the 5 stages would not always be experienced in the same order and she said that other emotions such as shock, hope and guilt would also be experienced.  She recognised that there is no one way of doing it.   She invites us to use her ideas as a starting point for finding our own path. Our grief is unique.