Grief, Loss, and the Process of Healing

"To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die;---A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance;--- A time to keep silence, and a time to speak" Ecclesiastes 3: 1,4,7.

Grief is something that everyone will experience at one time or another during their lifetime. It is the emotional suffering we feel after a loss of some kind. It may be the loss of a loved one through death, the loss of a relationship, like in the case of divorce, the loss of an opportunity, the loss of health, and the loss of youth.

Individuals are unique in how they experience loss and grief. Some people have healthy coping mechanism while others hinder the grieving process. It is important to acknowledge the grief because by so doing you promote the healing process. Grieving takes time and with support and appropriate mourning the individual does experience healing.

Symptoms of Normal Grief

Grief from a loss affects a person physically, emotionally, behaviorally and cognitively. Symptoms for normal grief are numerous and can be serious depending on how they are handled. However different people experience grief and loss differently and the symptoms will differ depending on the person’s coping mechanism.

The Stages of normal grief process

Grief is a healing process from a loss and it is therefore important to ensure that the healing process is allowed to happen. Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book, OnDeath and Dying named five stages of grief that people go through following a series of losses as follows;

1) Denial and Isolation- The first thing that most people do after experiencing a loss is to deny the loss. This may cause someone to withdraw from their usual social contacts because they do not want to be confronted about the loss or to talk about it.

2) Anger- The person grieving may become furious at the person inflicting the pain of loss or at the world for letting it to happen. The person may blame themselves and feel guilt for letting it happen even if the situation was beyond their control.

3) Bargaining- The person may start making bargains with God on what they will do to stop the loss from happening. This is common in cases where someone has a loved one who is terminally ill or in the case of a divorce.

4) Depression- the person feels numb and almost has a death wish. By this time the person has accepted the inevitable but is finding it hard to move on. There maybe underlying sadness and anger.

5) Acceptance- In this stage the person has accepted the loss and the anger and sadness have mellowed off.

Dr Kubla-Ross stages of grief have been applied to other forms of personal loss like the loss of a job, or the onset of a disability. In her book, On grief and Grieving: Finding the meaning of Grief through the five stages of loss, Dr Kubler-Ross states that,

“the stages have evolved since their introduction, and they have been very misunderstood over the past three decades. They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss, as there is no typical loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives”.

Dr Kubler- Ross further says that the 5 stages “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 goes in a prescribed order”. Some experts suggest that people go through all stages no matter what the loss is. Others suggest that not everyone goes through all the five stages while others add other stages to the five.

The greater the loss the more intense we feel each stage and the longer it may take to go through the stages. It is also important to note that people go backwards and forward through the stages. Healing is a gradual upward climb with peaks and valleys.

Grief and Stress:

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