Stages of Grieving

Grieving Process The grieving/bereavement process The concept of bereavement, in as much as it is universal and being a daily occurrence, it still remains an enigma that lives with us, it is hard to understand and in the same measure tricky to handle and get along with the consequences that come with it. It is a phenomenon that though every living human being is aware of its inevitable arrival some day, none of them is well prepared enough to handle bereavement and the accompanying consequences with ease.

This is why a lot of focus has been directed towards trying to understand bereavement and attempts made towards devising ways and means of coping with grief that comes from bereavement as well as walking through the tough times that come with the loss of loved ones.

WordNet (2013) descries bereavement simply as "State of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one." The other reliable online source of definitions is the Free Dictionary (2013) which also describes bereavement as "the condition having been deprived of something or someone valued, esp through death." These are two brief definitions with the common denominator of lack of joy due to death.

These two definitions recognize the fact that when one dies, there are people left behind who will not be happy about the death, regardless of the type of death and despite the fact that there could be a section of people who may rejoice his death. Stages of bereavement When one is bereaved, it is very important to have time to mourn and express grief.

This is a period that can be very confusing since it involves lots of powerful emotions that if not controlled can ruin the entire life of the bereaved. The bereaved will go through several stages and these emotions will grow, change or even disappear as the bereaved individual moves from one stage to the other, there is no predictable pattern in handling of grief but just a general map or direction of how most bereaved people will handle themselves.

It must be noted that not everyone experiences the various stages of bereavement at the same time and in the same order as will be indicated below, however, most bereaved people are observed to go through the following main stages; denial, anger, Bargaining, depression and acceptance. It was Elizabeth Kubler who in 1969 in her book "On Death and Dying" gave a comprehensive approach and observation to normal grieving and thereafter paved way for other psychologists to reproduce several other materials on the same subject (Axelrod J., 2013).

As mentioned above, it is not everyone who will go though the five stages in the successive steps as they are outlined. There are several factors that play part in altering the patterns and the responses towards grief.

For instance, there are people who are too emotional and place a lot of sentimental attachment to their friends or family such that when they pass away, the person will be left in total denial for along time, progress to anger and bargaining, only to stay at this stage for a long time then accept the loss. There are those who do not have a lot of emotional attachments to others hence will only face denial and then accept the loss and move on from there.

The type of death can also determine the stages that the bereaved may pass through. When an individual if shocked by sudden death like suicide or experiment, the above stages may face further complex stages. Apart from the anguish that the bereaved feel in this case, they are bound to have the feeling that world is a less safe place and hence feel shaky and notably this is a normal response to any unexpected yet traumatic happening in human lives.

The feeling that the world is unsafe place is usually accompanied by fear and uncertainty, anger and frustrations do set in as well. It is a feeling that negatively colors the life view of the bereaved person. On the other hand, the natural causes of death or the deaths that were expected for instance the death of a caner patient whom the physician had given the expected time of death will face lesser complicated grieving process. Indeed such people may not even go through the.