Stages of Grief

Stages Of Grief

In this world, grief and loss are inevitable. This is an unfortunate truth and is part of being only human and a mere mortal.

It doesn’t matter how positive an outlook you have on life – bad things will happen to good people, and when these things happen, we need to let ourselves go through the grief process.

It often helps to know that there is a known process involved in coping with loss and grief.You know that you’re not alone and that you are normal.

This helps you permit yourself to grieve. And it is important to go through the process.

If you block yourself off and don’t let yourself walk the journey, this can cause problems further down the track – we deal with a number of people using hypnotherapy who have bottled up grief from an old loss and have never fully released it.

The process of grief was first investigated formally in the 1960s by Dr Elizabeth K端bler-Ross.

Of course, the grief process had been informally explored by writers throughout history, who had turned their feelings into art.

Some of the more striking examples of these works are “In Memoriam” by Tennyson (written after a close friend was drowned in a shipwreck) and “A Grief Observed” by CS Lewis (of Narnia fame), which was written after the death of his wife from cancer.

Dr Kübler-Ross looked at the process of grief in the context of death and dying. In fact, the book in which she outlined the process was called “On Death and Dying.”

She was mostly interested in people who were suffering from terminal illnesses as well as their family members.

However, the process is similar no matter why you have to go through the process.

People have similar reactions when faced with the other tragedies of life:

divorce, redundancy, losing a home through fire or some other natural disaster, being diagnosed with a longterm medical condition that won’t go away, and even some seemingly happy and successful events, like having a child growing up and moving out of the family home.

All of the five stages are necessary parts of the process.

In the case of severe loss, such as death or divorce, the process can become a cycle, repeating over and over, although it becomes less severe over time.

If you do not give yourself permission to go through all the stages, or if circumstances prevent you from going through them properly, some of the grief may be blocked and bottled up.

For example, people going through a natural disaster may feel that they have to stay strong and calm so they can help other people cope, or so they can help with the rescue effort.

This reaction is admirable and, in many ways, helpful for others, but the grief will still need to be released – we’ve seen a lot of people come for help from hypnosis who have been through this.

Hypnotherapy can help you get over grief.

More information at: positivetranceformations.com.au