Are there truly five stages of grief? How can understanding different models of grief help us heal?
In her book The Grieving Brain, psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor explores the science behind loss and healing. From the well-known five stages of grief to the more recent dual process model, various frameworks help explain how people navigate through grief in their own unique ways.
Read more to explore how these models of grief can validate your experience and show why there’s no “right” way to grieve.
Models of Grief
O’Connor explains that most people’s understanding of the grieving process comes from the five-stages model developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Kübler-Ross developed this model of grief from interviews with terminally ill patients, cataloguing the feelings they described and incorporating those into her five-stages model. While there are merits to this model of grief, there’s no empirical proof for it, and it has since been misapplied as a rigid formula for how people should grieve. Thus, people whose grief doesn’t follow these five stages often feel that they’re grieving incorrectly.
(Shortform note: The misconceptions O’Connor describes may have more to do with others’ oversimplification and misapplication of Kübler-Ross’s theory than with inaccuracies in the theory. The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation website notes that Kübler-Ross herself didn’t claim that her five stages were a universal prescription for grief. She also acknowledged that the stages weren’t intended to be linear and that people may go through them in different orders, skip some stages, or experience more than one stage at a time. Additionally, the theory has been oversimplified: While the five stages O’Connor lists were the ones highlighted the most in her work, she also identified other stages, including shock, hope, anxiety, guilt, and numbness.)
Instead, O’Connor advocates the dual process model of coping with bereavement, developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut. This model identifies two types of stressors: loss-oriented (emotional responses to the death) and restoration-oriented (practical challenges of life without the deceased). The model’s key insight is that people oscillate between facing these two types of stressors, and this flexibility is crucial for healthy grieving. The dual process model of grief challenges earlier beliefs that grieving requires constant confrontation with loss, suggesting that taking breaks from grief can be beneficial for long-term adjustment.
For example, after losing a spouse, you may spend one day or part of a day immersed in memories of your loved one and all the feelings that come with that (loss-oriented stressors). Then, later, you go see a movie (that you might previously have gone to with your spouse) with a friend (restoration-oriented stressor). You’re spending part of your time confronting your feelings, and part of your time adjusting to life without the deceased without focusing on your feelings.
| Other Models of Grief In addition to the two models O’Connor describes, researchers have developed numerous other models of grief. John Bowlby and Colin Murray Parkes proposed four stages based on their research into attachment theory: shock, yearning, disorganization, and reorganization. Shock involves feeling numb, a coping mechanism that allows for immediate emotional survival. Yearning involves longing for the loved one’s return and can include feelings such as anxiety, anger, and preoccupation. Disorganization involves disengaging from other people and activities and can be accompanied by feelings such as apathy and despair. Finally, reorganization involves adapting to life without the deceased and can include a reduction in sadness and an increase in positive memories. Therese Rando identified three phases of grief, along with six processes for getting through those phases. The phases are avoidance, confrontation, and accommodation. During avoidance, according to this theory, people must recognize the loss they’ve experienced in order to process it healthily. During confrontation, they must react to the loss, recall memories of the deceased, and relinquish their attachments to the deceased. During accommodation, they must readjust to the world without their loved one and reinvest their emotional energy into new relationships and activities. While Bowlby and Parkes’s model focuses more on feelings experienced during grief and Rando’s model focuses more on processes involved in navigating through grief, both share an emphasis on actively engaging with what you’re feeling. Like Stroebe and Schut, Rando’s theory acknowledges that grievers can oscillate between phases and processes along the way. All of these models provide different insights; the key is to remember that everyone experiences grief differently, and just because your grieving doesn’t seem to match up with any of the models doesn’t mean you’re grieving incorrectly. |
Four Trajectories of Grief
In addition to discussing the models of grief, O’Conner also discusses how depressive symptoms can manifest during the grieving process.
Depression and grief can look similar, but the key difference is that depression permeates every part of life, while grief is specifically focused on the loss of the loved one. O’Connor identifies four distinct trajectories grieving can take in relation to depressive symptoms. These are: 1) resilience, where people never develop depression after their loss, 2) chronic grief, where depression begins after the loss and persists, 3) chronic depression, where pre-existing depression continues or worsens, and 4) depressed-improved, where pre-existing depression actually improves after the loss.
The five stages model assumes that everyone experiences depressive symptoms during grief. However, research shows that resilience—the first trajectory—is the most typical response to loss.
(Shortform note: Research into attachment theory suggests that your attachment style may impact what trajectory your grief takes. Bowlby identified four attachment styles: ambivalent attachment, avoidant attachment, disorganized attachment, and secure attachment. Securely attached people tend to have more resilient trajectories, whereas anxiously attached people are more likely to experience greater distress and may spend more time grieving. Avoidantly attached people may appear resilient but are often suppressing or avoiding their feelings rather than actually processing them. Harmful coping mechanisms such as substance abuse are common responses for those with a disorganized style.)
