Most of us have heard of the five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – the model is so well known it’s entered everyday language. It’s comforting in a way, the idea that grief follows a path, that there’s a shape to it, that acceptance is waiting at the end.
But if you’ve ever been through a significant loss, you may have found that your grief looked nothing like this. That you didn’t move through stages so much as ricochet between states – feeling almost fine one morning and blindsided by pain the next. That some of the stages didn’t come at all, or came in the wrong order, or came back again months later when you thought you were through them.
This doesn’t mean you’re grieving wrong. It means grief is far more complex, and far more individual, than the popular model suggests.
Where the five stages model came from. And its limitations
The five stages were developed by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969, based on her work with terminally ill patients. That is, people coming to terms with their own impending death, not with bereavement. The model was never intended as a universal map of grief, but it became one, partly because it offered something rare: a framework for an experience that can feel utterly formless.
The problem with frameworks is that people can end up measuring themselves against them. If you’re not angry, are you in denial? If you’ve reached acceptance, why did something in a supermarket just bring you to tears? If you skipped straight to sadness, did you grieve correctly?
Grief researchers have moved considerably beyond this model in recent decades. The picture that emerges is less linear, more honest, and ultimately more useful for people actually living through loss.
What grief actually looks like
Grief is the natural response to loss and loss takes many forms. The death of someone close is the most obvious, but people also grieve the end of relationships, the loss of health, of a job, of a hoped-for future, of a version of themselves. The grief response doesn’t distinguish much between these: it simply responds to the fact that something significant is gone.
What the experience of grief often includes:
- Waves of intense emotion that can arrive without warning – triggered by a smell, a song, an ordinary Tuesday
- Physical sensations: heaviness, exhaustion, tightness in the chest, difficulty eating or sleeping
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions – sometimes called “grief brain”
- A strange doubling of experience – moments of feeling almost normal sitting alongside deep pain
- Guilt, especially the “if only” kind
- Anger – at the person who died, at circumstances, at yourself, at people who seem not to understand
- Relief, sometimes, particularly after long illness – and then guilt about the relief
- A shifting sense of identity, particularly when the person lost was central to how you understood yourself
None of these responses are wrong. They are all part of what it means to have loved someone or something.
The myth of ‘getting over it’
One of the most unhelpful things well-meaning people say to those who are grieving is some version of “you’ll get over it.” The implication is that grief has an end point – a moment when the loss is processed and life resumes as before.
Most people who have experienced significant loss will tell you it doesn’t work like this. What changes over time is not that the loss disappears, but that you gradually learn to carry it differently. The grief doesn’t get smaller, it becomes part of your experience and you get larger around it. There are still moments, years later, when it surfaces with unexpected force. This is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s a sign that the relationship mattered.
There’s also no correct timescale. Some people need weeks; others need years. Cultural expectations about how long grief should last can add an extra layer of pressure to an already painful experience. If you feel you’re grieving “too long,” it’s worth knowing that there is no such thing.
When grief becomes something more
Grief, painful as it is, is a natural process, and for many people it moves, eventually, even without formal support. But sometimes grief becomes stuck, or tips into something that needs more help.
It might be worth seeking support if:
- The intensity of grief doesn’t soften at all over many months
- You’re finding it hard to function in everyday life – work, relationships, basic self-care
- You’re using alcohol, food, or other things to manage the pain
- You feel that life has permanently lost its meaning or colour
- You’re having thoughts of not wanting to be here
- The circumstances of the loss were traumatic, sudden or shocking
Seeking support is not an admission that you can’t cope. It’s a recognition that some losses are simply too big to carry alone.
How counselling can help with grief and bereavement
Grief counselling doesn’t try to fix grief or speed it up. What it offers is something that can be surprisingly hard to find elsewhere: a space where you can speak honestly about your loss, without worrying about the impact on the people around you, and without feeling that you need to be “getting better” by a particular point.
A counsellor can help you make sense of the experience, explore the feelings that are hardest to admit, and find your way toward carrying the loss in a way that allows you to live fully again. For losses that were traumatic or complicated like sudden death, difficult relationships or unresolved things left unsaid. More specialist therapeutic support can be particularly valuable.
At The Horsforth Centre, we have counsellors with extensive experience in bereavement work, including backgrounds in dedicated bereavement services. We understand that every loss is different, and every person’s grief is their own. We’ll work at your pace, and we won’t hurry you.
To find out more about our bereavement counselling or to arrange an initial conversation, visit our Practitioners’ pages for Lori Wiles, Sam Woodhead or Mike Eyre.