Getting Unstuck #21 - Addressing Grief

This is an excerpt from my #1bestselling and award-winning book: Business & Personal Secrets for Getting Unstuck.

It is also a portion of a talk I give to businesses, organizations, colleges, and universities.

Grief is a normal response to loss. If you've lost a loved one, lost a job, suffered a heartbreaking end to a relationship you know the process is painful and can seem unending. We all journey through grief in differently. Many of us try to avoid the grieving process. We can delay it, but we can’t avoid it. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote about the five stages of grief in On Grief and Grieving, which she wrote with David Kessler. These feelings are a normal part of the healing process. While this book focused on the death of a loved one, grief occurs whenever we experience a significant emotional loss. The end of a substantial relationship is a death of a different kind.

The five stages outlined in the book are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost.

1.???? Denial

2.???? Anger

3.???? Bargaining

4.???? Depression

5.???? Acceptance

They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order. At times, people in distress will often report more stages. We hope that the knowledge of grief‘s terrain comes with these stages, making us better equipped to cope with life and loss. Just remember your grief is as unique as you are.

Our logical mind might say, OK, I will give myself a month to deal with each stage”—big mistake. There is no timetable, and grieving does not always go in order. Worse yet, we will often go back and forth between the stages. For example, my father died on January 7, 2020. At times, over the four years, I still find myself in bargaining and depression because I wasn’t there when he died.

Once we reach acceptance doesn’t mean the thoughts or sadness will never return. To me, it means the loss no longer overwhelms my ability to function. My cousin, Sandra’s daughter, died at age 20. She told me in a radio interview, “The pain and the grief never go away, but I can get up in the morning and do what I have to do.” This interview had nearly 25,000 downloads. You can hear it now https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/118832/remembering-our-loved-ones

Four stages of grief- denial, anger, depression, and acceptance are relatively self-explanatory. However, what does bargaining mean? Per Elizabeth Kübler-Ross:

In the bargaining stage of grief, you attempt to postpone your sadness by imagining “what if” scenarios. You may also feel a sense of guilt or responsibility, leading you to bargain for ways to prevent more emotional pain or future losses.

For example, before a loss, it seems like you will do anything if only your loved one were spared. “Please God,” you bargain, “I will never be angry at my wife again if you’ll just let her live.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what it was; we want our loved ones restored. We want to go back in time: find the tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “If onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have or should have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.

Stepping Stones to Get Unstuck

1. Think of one situation where you suffered a significant loss?
2. What bargaining scenarios did you try to stop the pain?
3. Grief never goes away, but how long did the grieving process take before it no longer completely overwhelmed your life?