The Five Stages of Grief — Which One Are You In?

Previa Alliance Podcast

Hosts Sarah Parkhurst and Whitney Gay, LCSW, explore the non-linear nature of the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression,

Key takeaways

• Grief is not a linear process with checkboxes; people frequently bounce between different stages.
• The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

Main topics

• Five stages of grief
• Non-linear mourning process

Notable quotes

Grief is the price that we pay for the love that we have while we're both here on this earth.

Conclusion

Understanding that grief is a fluctuating, non-linear experience allow

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:09) Hi, guys. Welcome back to PreviewLions podcast. I am with Whitney, our favorite therapist and my friend. So I get lucky to call her both. But she's not my therapist. Disclosure. We know ethically she can't do it. But, you know, we can all hope and dream. We can all hope and dream that Whitney would be our therapist. But, you know, just is what it is. Sometimes I Speaker 1 (0:32) might give you some advice as a friend. Speaker 1 (0:36) Also, so happens to be a therapist, but not your therapist. You Speaker 2 (0:40) know, I always love it when there's some like classmates and friends who are my sons. And then, you know, just friends in general that from my husband's medical school days, they're like, you know, I'm not your physician, but sounds like to me. And it's like, yeah, tell me what it sounds like. And the same thing can be with Whitney. It's like, okay, I know this is not, you're not, you know. Everybody, this is not medical Speaker 1 (1:05) legal advice, but Speaker 2 (1:06) give it to us anyways. Speaker 1 (1:07) Right. Exactly. Speaker 2 (1:09) Love that. But today, since we're kind of on this grief topic, we realize that we have never fully broken down the stages of grief. And I think everybody who's had a loss, and we're not just talking like a death, a loss of a loved one. It could be. situational losses that you grieve, you know, loss of identity, loss of job, relationship. There are stages. And more likely than not, when we're talking about these and naming these, you're going to go, wow, I've went through that. I didn't know it was this stage of grief. Right. Exactly. So start us off, Wendy. What do you say? And we know this can go all different, like. It's not like this order is the order that Whitney goes through and I go through. Exactly. So Speaker 1 (2:04) when we look at the stages of grief, just realize it's not like you have check boxes and like, okay, I've been through this stage. Now I'm going to go through two, three, four, five. And once we get to the fifth one, which is acceptance, I'm done grieving. I'm all good now. No, no, no, no, no. We bounce around these stages of grief. We will eventually live in acceptance more often than we do the other stages. But that doesn't mean that an anniversary or the holidays or something that looks like your loved one or sounds or you have a smell like that doesn't mean that that won't trigger you back into maybe the depression side of it or the anger side of it. But to go into it, the five stages of grief are depression, anger, bargaining, denial, acceptance. And here's the thing. You can actually experience multiple stages at the same time. Speaker 1 (2:59) So you see denial of that can't be true, especially if it was a very sudden, unexpected death, whether it's a car accident or they just passed away in their sleep and they were only in their 40s or something like that. You're going to see a lot of denial of what do you mean? That can't be true with with also the depressive side of it. That shock factor, that sadness, along with bargaining of, well, maybe if I just did this. Or maybe if I had done this differently, or maybe if I had one more opportunity to tell them that I loved them. That is bargaining. So we could have all three stages right there at one time. And you know what? The next day anger may join too. Cause like they were only in their forties. What do you mean they're dead? That's not right. That's not fair. That's not who should have died next. Cause admittedly as humans, we do kind of follow like the natural life cycle. And if a baby dies or a child dies, a parent shouldn't have to bury their child. So that's not right. So that anger comes out because this didn't follow the process it's supposed to follow. So just. be aware that there are stages of grief, but we're not going to go one, two, three, four, five and just say, okay, great. I've accepted it. I'm fine. I'll never grieve again. That that's a lie. That that's denial. That's where Speaker 2 (4:20) denial is Speaker 1 (4:20) a little more sneaky. Speaker 2 (4:23) And I think denial, I think people go through denial a lot more. Speaker 2 (4:29) And then not in the sense of two of just different types of grief when they just don't talk about it. It's like their own denial. It's like if I talk about it, it brings it to life. Or if you check in on that friend, you're like, how are you? It's fine. We're OK. Life's moving on. Why are you asking? That and it's I think, too, sometimes it's almost like our nervous system because it's such a shock, especially those sudden. Right. you can't process it, losses, Speaker 1 (4:59) that Speaker 2 (5:02) you almost, if you took the impact of what happened. Right. You Speaker 1 (5:08) may not get off the floor type of level. Right. Yeah. Well, that's how it was when my dad's dad died in his sleep after my father-in-law had died the month before and my mom's dad died in October. When I got that phone call, and I've told this to my therapist, like, I didn't actually hit my knees on the floor. But every time I remember that phone call, it was that visceral feeling of a gut punch of doubling over. hitting the floor, being in tears, and just the, no, what do you mean? That's, we just saw him three weeks ago. There's no way. Dad just took him to the cardiologist last week and said that he was doing great for a 90 year