Nowadays, there is a cult of confidence and success. That is why, people cope with grief, silently clenching their teeth so as not to be judged by others, thus not giving themselves time to assimilate what is happening. In this blog post, we are going to dwell on the 5 stages of grief and transformation.
1. Denial
Faced with something that has not happened to us before, we do not understand what it is and how to be with it, and most importantly – why it happens. In other words, a psychotraumatic situation is a thunder in the clear sky. And the human reaction to this is fading.
In some time, the grief has not gone away, has not evaporated, has not disappeared, and is still there. It is slowly becoming a reality. And then, coming fully to our consciousness, the psychotraumatic situation causes anger.
2. Anger
“Why did it happen? I hate a world that hurts so much. I hate the culprit of this situation, it hurts me, I want to incinerate the reality in which this is happening… », – every person who faces grief thinks so.
Aggression is a marker of loss of value, a marker of pain, you want to break from that pain. And indeed, it is unfair and painful that it happens: children are dying, relatives are leaving, houses are burning, and so on. No one deserves it…
Anger helps to reduce the effect that has accumulated inside. With anger, this effect goes out and decreases.
Sometimes you can look for the culprit, for example, blame the man that he died because he left you… Or blame yourself for the child’s illness – “neglect”. As if finding the culprit will explain the event, reduce the pain, change the event. If the culprit is there, then you can develop a plan of revenge to somehow reduce the pain. But not for nothing does the old wisdom say – revenge will not return a person and will not extinguish the fire inside, it will double the pain and add helplessness.
3. Bargaining
When it is unbearably painful from helplessness, anger, grief, and pain, everyone wants, as in childhood, to turn to the world, God, mother, and at least to green men, only to help restore justice: “return the house, reduce pain, cure the terminally ill, and then belief in a miracle.
4. Depression
After all the objections, anger, and attempts to negotiate with the world, as in childhood, comes a full awareness of what happened. The situation has already happened. There is as there is. There will be no miracle. All.
This realization falls like a stone from above, nailing us to the ground with sharp mental pain. And then there is the real process of mourning the lost value.
This stage is the most important. It symbolizes the farewell to the past and the gradual acceptance of the new, where everything will be new.
5. Acceptance
After saying goodbye to the value, it remains in the memory and experience, the intensity of pain gradually decreases, and the person has the opportunity to look at the world around him and try to live in it with a changed life history. And it is then that the pain stops and the long-awaited relief comes.
Final thoughts
After going through all these stages, a situation of grief or trauma is built into the experience, and life goes on. The difficulty comes when at some stage there is a break or jam. Then comes the same post-traumatic stress disorder: a life-changing psychotrauma or illnesses and symptoms that have never been seen before.