J. Worth Kilcrease

Leur Commemoration des Morts

Inspirational Quotes

So far as past errors are concerned, forget then and start afresh, as if it were your first day in this body; but so far as your present contacts are concerned, be kind to them, as if it were you last day in this body.

Paul Brunton
Stages and Phases PDF Print E-mail
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Various models attempt to describe what happens during mourning.  Many describe mourning as a series of stages or phases.  Of these, the most well known is an adaptation of Elizabeth Kuebler-Ross’ five stages of coping with dying.  She originally proposed that dying people go through stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (sometimes abbreviated as DABDA).  Some writers erroneously took those same stages and proclaimed that they applied to mourning, even though that was not Dr. Kuebler-Ross’ intention.  Since then various other stage and phase models have arisen from such theorists as Collin Murray Parkes with his four phases of mourning to Granger Westberg and his ten stages.

These stage/phase-based approaches to explaining what happens during mourning are prevalent in the popular press, but, as described in my blog Mourning: The Myth of Stages and Phases, they have a few problems.

  • There is no basis for believing that any particular stage/phase-based description applies to all people.
  •  Stages and phases imply that mourning is a passive activity.
  •  Stage/phase-based descriptions of grieving set expectations of what grieving is supposed to be like.  They create formulas with pre-determined standards for grieving that don’t recognize the uniqueness of each death.

While I am not a proponent of a stage or phase-based description of grieving, I do recognize that mourning does have some time-based characteristics.

  • The well-known shock and numbing period starting immediately after finding out a loved has died.
  • The numbness filter slowly withdraws.  The magnitude of the situation begins to sink in, and we enter a time of intense mourning and adjusting to a world without our loved one.  This is when the work really happens.
  •  We reach a manageable level of grief and can effectively function in the world.

Instead of stages and phases, I prefer to consider mourning to be a group of “tasks” or “challenges” to be undertaken.  The idea of tasks or challenges has the advantage of characterizing mourning as an active process requiring decision-making participation by the bereaved person.

The best known mourning tasks are the four “tasks” described by William Worden in his book Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy.  I like the five “challenges” that Robert Neimeyer describes in his book Lesson of Loss, a Guide to Coping. I have written more detail about each challenge in the associated blogs.
 

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