We grief and it has been seen that some animals also do so. Grieving is a necessary process to heal ourselves from emotional pain. More often than not, however, we try to skip the process, especially the stage of deep sadness, and think that all we require is time.
The stages of grief or the Kübler-Ross model, was first introduced by Swiss psychiatrist, Doctor Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her 1969 book On Death and Dying, inspired by her work with terminally ill patients. In her work, she identified the stages as denial, anger, bargaining, depression or deep sadness and acceptance. What is often misunderstood is that the process in not linear and it can jump from stage to stage and go around in circles for an undetermined period of time.
Grief is not only about the loss of a loved one in death. It can occur for the loss of a friendship or a relationship, a fundamental change in lifestyle, a total upheaval in life such as having to leave your country and everyone behind because of war or persecution. In fact, in my past work and experience, I have seen many different types of grief and have witnessed stages of grief suspended in time.
I believe, even if my siblings disagree, that my mother is going through a grief of some kind as she watches my father wither away from the strong man she married to a feeble, child-like, old man. Observing her actions and reactions, she has been going around the stages of denial, anger and bargaining ever since his dementia became more pronounced. She appears now to be stuck in these stages. I suspect that for her, she prefers anger and denial to being sad.
My mother is not the only person who is stuck in these stages of grief. Society somehow has put ‘sadness’ on the ‘bad list’ of emotions to have, without reflecting that sadness, Iike all other feelings, is just an emotion that we sometimes need to experience. There is no right and wrong to emotions, they just are.
Sadness is required in the process of letting go. It is natural, often necessary and important. Sadness defines our humanity. I, myself, have been guilty of going from anger straight to supposed acceptance in my younger days, following an end to a love relationship.
The problem why we often do that is because our supporters applaud it. They tell us to ‘just forget and move on’, ‘go partying and meet new people’, ‘that it was his/her loss and that we are better off this way’… all these words, designed to give comfort, are said with the kindest intentions because people fear sadness. In their concern for us, they try to push us into letting go and acceptance by not allowing us to complete a vital stage of grieving, which is sadness.
It is then not surprising that people skip the stage of sadness in grieving. As it does not appear to be accepted, we swallow sadness whole and keep it buried deep so that we can show our loved ones that we have accepted and moved on. The problem is that it is still there and it is no wonder that it develops into fear of sadness and prevents us from investing in another relationship.
No one likes to grieve. We have been conditioned into thinking that society wants happy, jolly people and that sad ones will be ostracised. This may be true because naturally, it is more uplifting to be with a happy person than a sad one.
I believe it is time to change perceptions and behaviour towards sadness. As we embrace happiness, it is important to also embrace sadness. The more we push an emotion away, the more it becomes a problem. Allow grief, good grief. It is a natural part of life. And when we can be as comfortable with deep sadness as with happiness, we would have taken a positive step towards being truly authentic.
MyMohio 