How to Come to Terms With Grief

The loss of a loved one tears a hole in the emotional fabric of those left behind. In the early aftermath of a loss, that emotional rupture can feel like a gaping wound. Words such as "recovery" miss the point - after a bereavement, there is no way back to a pre-loss state of mind. But people can come to terms with grief. In her classic study, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Elizabeth Kubler-Ross suggested that bereavement involves five processes: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Instructions

• 1

  Begin by recognizing that denial functions as a protective mechanism, shielding the grieving person from the full emotional impact of her loss (or anticipated loss) at a time of maximum vulnerability. No one should beat themselves up for temporarily adopting a state of denial following a bereavement. Typically, it kicks in automatically, taking the form of assumptions that the missing person remains alive or will come back after an absence, as though nothing traumatic has happened. Denial only becomes problematic if someone gets stuck in it, persistently refusing all acknowledgement of the painful reality over weeks and months.

• 2

  Expect the rise of anger. Kubler-Ross found that when denial weakens, anger frequently takes its place: anger that a loved one suffered, that the loss was unjust, even anger against the self. People frequently feel anger toward themselves and others for not having done enough, for not preventing the loss, for not "saving" the departed person, no matter how unrealistic and irrational these self-criticisms truly are. Accept that anger forms part of the grieving process and, as with all of the stages described by Kubler-Ross, only becomes pathological when it becomes chronic.

• 3

  Don't feel unduly perturbed by the emergence of desperate attempts at negotiating a "magical" deal. More usually, this stage of grief --"bargaining," as Kubler-Ross describes it -- occurs prior to a loss, for example, during the end phase of a terminal illness. It may take the form of pleas to doctors to "just keep her going until after Christmas," or prayers such as "Let him see his birthday." Many people experience this as they desperately try to forestall the inevitable. It can also follow a loss - for example, in praying to dream about the departed or to see their spirit.

• 4

  Attempt to bear changing emotional states as they arrive without panicking. Kubler-Ross discovered that following anger and bargaining, many people succumb to deep sadness, the ultimate depth of grief. This constitutes a non-pathological form of depression, a necessary and potentially healing sorrow that marks the full emotional acknowledgement of loss. Sigmund Freud warned that the sorrow of mournful sadness could, however, mutate into melancholia. Here, the grieving person appears chronically consumed by lacerating self-reproaches. Freud showed that melancholia involved identifying with the lost person instead of letting go. Self-reproaches were actually aimed at the abandoning figure, now installed in the mind as part of the self.

• 5

  Give "consent" to the loss. Kubler-Ross called this the "acceptance" stage, wherein reality no longer meets with resistance and refusal. The psychoanalyst Darian Leader (a follower of one of Freud's most innovative successors, Jacques Lacan) argues persuasively that acceptance only arrives once the grieving person actively consents to the loss. When a person can truly say "Yes, I know that I must let you go" - a state that may only become possible months or even years after a loss - genuine acceptance replaces denial, anger, bargaining and depression as the dominant emotion.