Five Stages of Grieving for Adolescents

There is a model for the stages of grief that was made by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her famous book "On Death and Dying." In that book, she discusses the five major stages of grief people must experience to get over a horrible sadness or loss. The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

Denial

• Denial is the first stage of grief. People refuse to believe that something so horrible could happen to them. They will not accept it as true at first. By denying it to themselves, they hope to keep the loss from becoming their reality.

Anger

• In the second stage of grief, people become angry. They have gone past the denial stage and are now angry that something bad (for example, a fatal diagnosis or death in the family) could happen to them. They are angry because it is not fair and that they did nothing to deserve it.

Bargaining

• In the bargaining stage, people have turned their anger into a will to change the situation. They will attempt any type of bargaining they can think of that may change their current predicament. For example, if a girlfriend is breaking up with her boyfriend, the teenage boy may beg, plead and bargain with his girlfriend to stay. However, it is most likely at this stage that the other person's decision is already made. The bargaining stage helps people who are grieving feel like they are doing something to fix their problems, but it rarely actually fixes anything.

Depression

• Depression is the fourth stage in the grieving process. In this stage, people essentially give up. They have tried to deny the issue, they have gotten angry at the issue and they have tried to bargain to fix the issue. Nothing up to this point has worked, and people become depressed and deeply saddened over the whole situation.

Acceptance

• The acceptance stage is the first positive step in the direction to overcoming grief. In the acceptance stage, people have come to terms with the reality of the situation and have decided to stop letting it completely control their lives. In the acceptance stage, people learn to move on with their lives and put the sorrow behind them.