#36: The Grief Conversation We Need to Have: Beyond the 5 Stages
JUNE 4, 2025
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Discover the truth about grief beyond the outdated five-stage model. This episode dismantles common misconceptions about grief, reveals why Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous stages were never meant for bereavement, and explores the diverse grief responses.
Learn about anticipatory grief, complicated grief and the crucial differences between intuitive and instrumental grieving patterns.
Whether you're supporting someone through loss or navigating grief yourself, this episode provides the understanding you need without prescriptive timelines or one-size-fits-all approaches. Listen now to transform how you view and experience grief.
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Transcript
Anna: Hey there, welcome back to another episode of Courage to Heal. I'm your host Anna Khandrueva, and today we're diving into something that touches all of us at some point in our lives – grief.
You know, grief is one of those universal human experiences that connect us all, yet it can feel so isolating when we're going through it. You may be listening because you're currently navigating grief, supporting someone who is, or simply wanting to understand this complex emotion better – just know that I'm grateful you're here with me today.
So, what exactly is grief? At its core, grief can be defined as the normal and natural emotional reaction to loss or change of any kind. To be more precise, grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.
There's a quote that captures the essence of grief so perfectly, and I want to share it with you: "Grief is the feeling of reaching out for someone who's always been there, only to discover when I need her one more time, she's no longer there."
Isn't that powerful? That sensation of reaching for something – or someone – that's suddenly gone hits at the very heart of what grief feels like.
And here's something important to understand: grief isn't limited to death alone. Of course, you can grieve when you lose someone you love. But you can also grieve what you thought you'd have – like grieving the wish of being a parent of a child without disabilities. That's the kind of grief we don't talk about often, this silent grief that many people carry without acknowledgment.
Now, let's talk about something most of us have heard of – the infamous 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
These stages have become so ingrained in our cultural understanding of grief that they're referenced everywhere from casual conversations to TV shows. But there's something crucial that many people don't know.
The 5 stages of grief were actually created to describe the process of terminally ill patients coming to terms with their own death – not as a roadmap for bereavement after losing someone else.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced these stages in her groundbreaking 1969 book "On Death and Dying," based on her work with patients facing terminal illness. But even she recognized the limitations of this model. Before her death in 2004, Kübler-Ross noted in her book "On Grief and Grieving" that the stages were never meant to be a linear and predictable progression of grief.
In fact, she expressed regret that the stages had been so widely misinterpreted. Research supports this concern – there appears to be no solid evidence that people universally go through these stages, or that they experience them in any particular order.
Recent studies paint a different picture. According to a 2007 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the most prevalent emotion reported by bereaved individuals at all stages was acceptance, not denial as the stage theory would predict. The second strongest emotion was "yearning," which wasn't even one of the original five stages.
It's time we realize that grief takes countless forms, is experienced in limitless ways, and cannot possibly be explained by a simple five-stage model.
So while you may go through some or all of these stages, it's really not a great framework for understanding grief. The danger in clinging to this model is that it creates expectations about how grief "should" look, which can leave people wondering if they're "doing grief wrong" when their experience doesn't match the stages.
And this brings me to one of the most important points I want to make today: There is no right way to grieve. There is no wrong way to grieve.
Your grief journey is uniquely yours. It will not look like anyone else's, and that's completely normal.
We're surrounded by people carrying grief, often silently. And while almost all people have experienced the loss of a friend or close relative, just 46% say they would know where to turn for support in their community.
Even though there's no universal roadmap for grief, the human mind longs for some kind of system, some kind of categorization for this process. So let's loosely define some different types of grief to help us understand the variety of grief experiences.
First, let's differentiate between mourning and grief, as they are not the same thing.
Grief is the emotion you feel, the state of mind you are in, when you experience the loss of a relationship through death, divorce, or other means.
Mourning, on the other hand, is the traditional or inventive activation of grief – the movements you go through as you experience grief.
For instance, a funeral is a mourning event. Wearing black to that funeral is a type of mourning. Creating a legacy project, growing their favorite flower, journaling to them, or cooking their favorite meal – these are all types of mourning.
It's important to understand that what's considered "normal" grief depends heavily on the time and culture you're in. For example, in Victorian times, it was normal to grieve for four years before moving into an additional period of half-mourning. Today, many Americans feel pressured to "move on" after just a few months.
There is such a thing as anticipatory grief. This is grief that's felt prior to the loss of someone you love, often due to a terminal illness or diagnosis. But it can be sparked by a variety of circumstances, like the grief of the unknown that many of us experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It's important to know that anticipatory grief is normal, especially when it's tied to a close family member or friend who will soon pass away. This is our body and brain's way of recognizing and preparing for the inevitable. Fear and anxiety are often larger parts of anticipatory grief than conventional grief.
In fact, the fear of being alone, of what life will be like without them, or who you will be without them can lead to extreme anxiety that then forms anticipatory grief.
Delayed grief is exactly what it sounds like – a delayed onset of grief following the severing of a connection with someone else. But please remember that there is no such thing as a right or normal way to grieve, so what's considered "delayed" is very subjective.
Complicated grief, also known as traumatic or prolonged grief, is a diagnosis you can receive from a medical doctor.
Complicated grief is accentuated by the inability to accept the death of a loved one, and feelings of intense sadness that persist for years.
According to recent statistics from 2024, complicated grief affects between 10% to 20% of people who experience loss. For the majority, the intensity of grief changes over time, but there's no predictable timeline for this process.
New evidence shows that complicated grief can make you feel worthless and suicidal, which is similar to depression. Because of this, doctors now seek to treat complicated grief like a disorder, suggesting therapies and treatments to lessen the draining hurt of grief.
Typically, folks who are experiencing complicated grief shut themselves off from friends or family, losing additional relationships and making it difficult to recover based on isolation, loneliness, and paralysis.
Disenfranchised grief occurs when you lack social recognition or societal support of your loss.
Many pet owners often feel disenfranchised grief at the loss of their pet, as they grieve deeply but also feel they can't take time off work, or don't know who or how to talk about the way they feel.
According to Kenneth Doka, who wrote the book on disenfranchised grief in the 1980s, disenfranchised grief is what occurs anytime someone feels that society has denied their "need, right, role, or capacity to grieve."
Masked grief is grief that the person experiencing it does not acknowledge – or that they mask. This can be common among men, or in societies and cultures in which there are rules that dictate how you must act or appear following the loss of someone close to you.
Perhaps, you were close to someone and no one knew about it. This can also cause someone to try to mask their grief in order to save face.
No matter why masked grief is occurring, it can be dangerous. It can cause mental illnesses and disorders as the person who is grieving does not give themselves the time or space to actually grieve.
Then, we also need to talk about grieving patterns. Terry Martin and Kenneth Doka came up with two different ends of the grief spectrum in their book "Men Don't Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief."
One of these patterns is called intuitive grief. Intuitive grief is often stereotyped as female because it is an emotional and affective expression of grief. An intuitive griever shows outward signs of their grief, like crying and wanting to talk about the person they lost.
The other end of the spectrum is called instrumental grief. The instrumental pattern is often stereotyped as male because this is where grief is expressed in a physical or cognitive manner.
An instrumental griever might be asking lots of practical questions, like when is the funeral, who will be there, what can they bring, etc. They might be the spokesperson for their family members because they are the organizers and the action-oriented folks. They will be the ones to call the funeral home to start making the arrangements.
Don't label or allow these family members to be labeled as "in denial" or "cold." These grievers use actions to help them process their grief.
Martin and Doka stress that it is important to remember that this is a continuum and rarely is someone exclusively intuitive or instrumental. They believe that most people actually display a more blended grieving style which combines elements of both the intuitive and instrumental grieving styles.
Now, let's talk about some myths about grief that can actually harm our healing process:
The first myth says "Don't feel bad about it." Well-meaning people will often tell us not to feel bad about things that we can grieve. If a child loses a beloved pet, their well-intentioned parent may comfort the child with "It's going to be OK" instead of "it's OK to be sad."
The second myth tells us to replace the loss quickly. In the same example where a child loses a pet, their parent may suggest getting a new pet, implying that the positive feeling of a new pet may cover up the negative feelings of grief. We also tend to do this when it comes to losing a romantic relationship – instead of grieving, we find another person to love too quickly.
The next myth is that you have to "be strong" or the societal expectation to suppress feelings during emotional hardships. Widely accepted advice such as 'be strong for your family' encourages emotional suppression, which is ultimately unhealthy and can negatively impact those looking to us for guidance, especially children.
Then there is the myth of "Time Heals." This idea, pervasive in society, is harmful because it perpetuates the notion that time alone can heal deep emotional wounds, akin to expecting time to fix a flat tire, without any action taken. This belief can lead to emotional stagnation, with examples including a person suffering for years while waiting for time to heal their pain from a tragic event. Sometimes time will heal, but other times you need to find tools or actions to complete what is unfinished emotionally, rather than relying solely on time itself.
There is also the myth of "Stay busy." The societal encouragement to stay busy can lead to individuals actually avoiding dealing with personal pain. This can lead to being overworked, missing out on life, and maintaining untreated emotional suffering – which can negatively impact health, relationships, and other areas of life.
Another very common myth is the misconception that we should grieve alone, which can lead to isolation and harmful outcomes like suicide. Recent statistics highlight this concern – a 2024 bereavement survey found that 57% of people said support from friends and family tapered off after around 3 months following a death, leaving them to navigate their grief largely alone.
This leaves us with a question – how do you process grief? How do you move past this pain of losing someone and yearning for them?
Cole James, the President of The Grief Recovery Institute, argues that while there is no right or wrong way to grieve, there are tools one can use and actions one can take to help process grief.
Cole introduced the concept of 'short-term energy relieving behaviors', which he defines as distractions we use in society to numb or blunt emotional pain. Some common distractions can be drugs, alcohol, anger, video games, excessive shopping ('retail therapy') or even physical activities like ultra-marathons and CrossFit.
It's important to understand what YOUR short-term energy relieving behaviors are while grieving. Do you rely on food or entertainment? Do you become overly immersed in a hobby or work after losing someone?
Cole argues that you need to emotionally complete the grieving process, one relationship or event at a time, and he offers a method for doing so that's supported by research. It involves making loss and relationships graphs, then identifying where apologies and forgiveness need to happen, as well as coming up with significant emotional statements. I'll place a link to find a grief specialist certified in the grief recovery method in the show notes. I'll also include a link where you can purchase a book that explains the process.
As we come to the end of our time together today, I want to leave you with this: grief is as unique as you are. There is no blueprint, no timeline, no perfect way to navigate the complex tapestry of emotions that come with loss.
Your grief is valid – whether it follows any pattern or none at all. Whether it comes in waves or feels like a constant companion. Whether it's for a person, a pet, a dream, or a way of life.
Remember the conflicting feelings we talked about at the beginning? That's the heart of grief – the push and pull between what was and what is now. Between memory and present reality. Between love and loss.
And somehow, in that space between, we find our way forward. Not moving on, but moving with our grief as it becomes part of our story.
If you're grieving today, I hope you can be gentle with yourself. I hope you can find people who will sit with you in that grief without trying to fix it or rush you through it. And I hope you know that whatever you're feeling is exactly what you should be feeling.
Thank you for listening. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.
