Tag: Kubler-Ross

There Are No Stages of Grief

I first shared this several years ago and while it’s absolutely true that Kubler-Ross did not intend for her model to be applied to grieving parents it has been nonetheless.

And the damage that has been wrought in the name of interpreting the traumatic loss of out of order death through the lens of the “Stages of Grief” is undeniable and incalculable.

So, so many people have been judged or marginalized because the way they processed their loss didn’t follow a predetermined path. So, so many hearts have been hurt because they’ve been deemed “abnormal” or “pathological” or “maladaptive”.

I’m here to tell you that there are NO stages of grief-at least not the way they have entered common parlance or even common therapeutic practice.

Grief is a complex process that makes its own way through a person’s psyche. It’s unpredictable and untamable.

Grief after child loss is doubly so.

Don’t let anyone circumscribe your experience by outdated and disproved ideas about what you should or should not be feeling.

❤ Melanie

Ever since Elizabeth Kubler Ross published her best-sellling book, “On Death and Dying” both professionals and laypersons have embraced her explanation of the “five stages of grief”.  

The model has been used as a faulty standard to measure grievers’ “progress” for decades.

Trouble is, she got it wrong.  

And it is especially wrong for bereaved parents or anyone who suffers traumatic or sudden death.

Read the rest here: Stages of Grief ? Nope.

“Acceptance” Isn’t a Stage. It’s a Lifetime.

In all fairness, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had no idea her research would be taken out of context and plastered across professional literature and media outlets as a definitive explanation for the grief experience.

But she didn’t mind the notoriety.

And ever since, counselors, pastors, laypersons and the general public have come to expect folks to politely follow the five (sometimes described as six) stages of grief up and out of brokenness like a ladder to success.

It doesn’t work that way.

❤

Sometimes those that walk alongside the bereaved are biding time, waiting for that “final” stage of grief: Acceptance.

And some therapists, counselors and armchair psychiatrists are certain that if the grieving mother or father can simply accept the death of a child, he or she can move on–they can get back to a more “normal” life.

But this notion is as ridiculous as imagining that welcoming a new baby into a household doesn’t change everything.

And new parents have months to prepare.

Read the rest here: Loving well: Understanding “Acceptance”

“Stages of Grief”? Not Really.

In all fairness, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross never intended her book, “On Death and Dying” to be adopted as a proscriptive model for walking hearts through grief.

It was a compilation of observations and interviews with those who were facing death or actively dying not a study of those left behind to mourn.

Sadly, however, it’s been used as a standard to measure grievers’ “progress” for decades.

It’s time to let it go.

❤

Ever since Elizabeth Kubler Ross published her best-selling book, “On Death and Dying” both professionals and laypersons have embraced her explanation of the “five stages of grief”.  

The model has been used as a faulty standard to measure grievers’ “progress” for decades.

Trouble is, she got it wrong.

Read the rest here: Stages of Grief ? Nope.

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