What are the steps of grieving?!
Question: How many are there? How long do they typically last? Can you describe them for me?
Answers: How many are there? How long do they typically last? Can you describe them for me?
There are 5 stages of grieving. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. There is no length of time or order associated with the stages. You will go through the stages as often as you need to to resolve grief. Typically, denial is the first stage - that cant happen, its not true, etc. Anger can take many forms, anger at the loss, at God, at yourself or others. Bargaining is thoughts of: if only, what if......
In depression you lose interest in things you usually enjoy, feel down or have no energy, cry, etc. After you have gone through the other stages and resolved the loss for yourself, seen that life still goes on and is still worth living, you will work your way to acceptance ( of the loss) where you will feel whole again and go on with life, develop new interests, etc. Hope that helped.
Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening."
Anger: "Why ME? It's not fair!" (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as "responsible")
Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my child(ren) graduate."
Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"
Acceptance: "It's going to be OK."
Length of time varies significantly person to person and situation to situation.
Grieving is a personal thing. Everybody grieves differently, the general concensus is there are 5 steps to grieving.
Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression and acceptance. You may not experience these steps in that particular order, and sometimes people do not experience some of the "steps".
The steps are quite straightfoward
Denial - you deny to yourself that this person is not gone, you may feel that they will walk in the door at any moment, they're away on a trip, ect.
Bargaining - some people especially during denial will try to bargain a deal to extend the life of someone who has been lost, eg; With a doctor just let them live til .... God if you let them live I wil.... ect.
Anger - Some will feel anger towards the circumstances of the death or something/someone that they think is responsible or lead directly or indirectly to the death. Why did it happen to me? Why did they have to do this? If they hadn't done this then...
Depression - You feel the loss, there are many symptoms to depression. Lethargy, sadness increased/decreased sleep or eating loss of motivation etc.
Acceptance - You have accepted the loss, and are "ok" about it - you know that you will be ok.
Some people will go through the steps quickly, a couple days, weeks, some may take longer there really is no typical length of time for each step as some go through all of them and some don't.
Hope this helps
My mother died 3 years ago and someone gave me the steps for grieving. It was all backwards. I was relieved first, then angry, then relieved again, then angry again. It took 2 years before I could just be sad and then my sister died and brought it up again.