Everything You Need to Know About the Process of Grieving

Learning more about the process of grieving may be beneficial if you or a loved one has recently suffered a loss. Here, we will go over the five stages of grief and present some suggestions for supporting someone who is mourning a loss.

It is crucial to note that everyone's grief process is unique and may be complicated. You may experience new emotions after you realise you have passed through the stages of grief. You start recovering from a loss by giving yourself permission to feel sadness in your own way.

A common feeling triggered by loss is grieving. When a person you love permanently leaves or you get deprived of a valuable possession, it causes you emotional pain. Grief causes agonising pain that may frequently seem unmanageable.

While grieving, you can go through an array of feelings that are difficult to understand and process, such as shock, guilt, bewilderment, or heartbreaking sadness. Grief induced pain can also affect your physical health and make it difficult to perform day to day activities normally. These are common responses to loss. The greater the loss, the more severe the pain will be.

Stage 1: Denial

Denial empowers us in lowering the impact of loss, especially during the initial moments of the mourning process. By denying the reality, you are enduring emotional setback which should be a normal response to our loss. Accepting the loss of a significant person who you may have last spoken to within the past week or a short while ago can be extremely challenging.

In this phase of the mourning process, your world changes entirely. Your headspace needs some time to get used to the new parameters. When someone close to you passes away, you think back on the experiences you shared with them. This makes it hard to comprehend how you are going to manage everything without them.

Stage 2: Pain

Stage 3: Anger

Anger is the second phase of grieving. You probably catch yourself constantly denying the truth which increases the struggle to adjust to a new reality.

Besides becoming angry on one’s own self, a grieving person can also become angry on:

• The deceased person for leaving them back
• Doctors and other medical officials who were in charge of treating or caring for the concerned individual
• Specific close people who may have left at times when their presence mattered the most
• God or fate in general 

During this phase, you get annoyed frequently because of experiencing a loss. Besides this, you cannot deny the growing instances of feeling lonely. You seem distant to people, particularly when their support and assurance should matter to you the most.

Stage 4: Bargaining

To overcome the disturbing situation, during this phase you offer to do something in exchange for relief from the anguish you're experiencing. It is not strange to have such desperation as you will be willing to try anything to lessen the suffering. 

When you begin to bargain, you frequently pitch your demands to a higher power that may be able to squeeze out a different result. Here are a couple of practical scenarios of bargaining which many people have probably practised in the past:

• “God, if you spare my dad’s life, I will always abide by his words.”
• “I will never do anything bad to my brother again if he you let him live healthy for the rest of his life.”

A person chooses to bargain desperately because they feel powerless while attempting to grab something that is so out of their grasp. Normally you stress on your shortcomings or regrets when bargaining.

Stage 5: Depression

There comes a point when your illusions settle down and you begin to gradually consider the realities. You feel like negotiation is no longer an option.

As you go through depression, you sense the loss of your beloved person more intensely. Your anxiety starts to lessen, the emotional haze starts to lift, and the loss starts to become more tangible and inevitable. As the sadness intensifies, you tend to remain in isolation. You choose to remain less sociable, and speak to no one regarding what you are going through.

Stage 6: Reconstruction

Stage 7: Acceptance

Acceptance brings you to the end chapter of grief. You continue feeling the sorrow of loss when you reach a point of acceptance. But instead of devising defence mechanisms, you learn to live normally dealing with the facts.

At this stage of the process of grieving, the emotional coping mechanisms of denial, bargaining, and anger cease to exist.

If a close friend or family member is going through the phases of grief, bear in mind the following measures to make their life better.

In an effort to support, many consider encouraging the victims or even crack jokes to try to make them feel better. Despite having the best of intentions, this strategy may make people feel as though their suffering is not understood, heard, or valued.

In addition, if you find yourself mourning for too long, hold fruitful conversations frequently with your preferred confidant. Finally, you must acknowledge that the process of grieving is a normal consequence following a severe event. This ensures timely recovery to normal proceedings so that your actions do not affect you as well as your loved ones for long.