Understanding Grief

Part of learning how to cope with grief includes better understanding grief. Many people are familiar with psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her 1969 book On Death and Dying in which she describes five common stages of grief, popularly referred to as DABDA. They include: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. These stages where based on what she observed while working with patients given terminal diagnoses.

Unfortunately, this framework is misused, misunderstood, and overly prescriptive. Kubler-Ross didn’t originally develop these stages to explain what people go through when they lose a loved one. Instead, she developed them to describe the process that patients go through as they come to terms with their own terminal illnesses.

Here you can find readings that provide more useful and accurate understandings around grief:

• The 5 Stages of Grief and Other Lies That Don't Help Anyone

• Five Things You Should Know About the ‘Five Stages of Grief’

• Before the Five Stages were the FOUR Stages of Grief

• Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning

• The Dual Process Model of Grief

• Continuing Bonds