Grieving stages (your personal experience)

[Chloe]

How did grieving process go for you, over something "big"?
I know what one theory says about 5 stages.. but didnt notice they correlate so much with my reaction.
Or I am not very observant of my reaction because I am in the middle of it.

 

[Lily flower]

Skipped denial & went straight to crying
Cried a lot
Became angry maybe for 2 days
Skipped bargaining

 

[Cybin]

Denial was very brief for me. I don't remember much anger or bargaining. I think I wallowed in depression for a very long time before finally reaching acceptance. I remember experiencing acceptance like a light switch turning on and a sudden burst of energy towards moving on with my life. It was like suddenly "Fuck it. I can't do anything about what happened, and nothing I'm doing now is helping me move on. If there's anything I can do to make my situation better it is to take life lessons from the events and to use them to better my future."

 

[Kasper]

Deny
Deny
Depression
Deny
Anger
Depression
Deny
Deny
Anger
Depression
Deny
Depression
Lame bargaining attempt
Depression
Deep breath




Acceptance

 

[Amethyst]

Still in denial stage (been there for years), hit a few depression stages, stayed in denial stage for another two years, trying to go into accepting/trying to change everything for the better stage (those shouldn't be grouped together, they're not alike in any means.


And something 'big' = everything in my life that I've tried to ignore because I thought it was bad to think about and just shouldn't think about it, or things I should 'grieve' about...like learning the fact that I'm not immortal (jk).

 

[Chloe]

I think I am prone to stick too long and spin my wheels on bargaining attempts.

Human mind.

 

[lillyofthevalley]

Strait to acceptance over the finality of it all, intermittent bouts of sadness over my loss. Sometimes a little guilt that I didn't call more often, then rationalization that it doesn't do any good to feel guilty about something I can't change. I don't know why I didn't experience the other stages.

 

[Amargith]

denial, followed by panick
squish anger if possible, otherwise disable it fast!
problemsolve the hell out of it, and bargain like mad to find the best compromise
Acceptance once I find how things are meant to be to restore harmony with myself and the world.

 

[Totenkindly]

Well, I typically don't do much anger, although I've had moments.
I also don't like bargaining either because it feels weak to me and also drags another person into my mess.

My flavor of denial is less about conscious/purposeful denial (I'm usually quite willing to face things head on); I just sometimes get so deep into something or are operating from other rules that I fail to see the obvious until I step back and really take a good look at things.

My personally favorite approach to grief is depression. It's a great strategy because it faces everything heads on (so it seems honest) while finding an excuse for itself not to move ahead (so you don't yet really have to accept the loss), and it has enough self-pain involved that it feels like penance that justifies the depression. (I'm being sarcastic btw.)

I find nowadays, after trying different things, I'm much quicker to let go and accept the change(s).
Because that's all grief is -- it's a loss based on not wanting to let something go.
If you're willing to let go of what you once had rather than pointlessly trying to retain something that is already gone, then you can accept it.

Still, we're human, and we have to give ourselves time to grieve. I'm simply saying that someone who has more life experience working through grief can learn to not hold onto something longer than necessary.

 

[Poki]

Sit in it...understand it...it lessens and lessens. Eventually it goes away.

TiNi takes me there before it happens so grieving starts before hand...acceptance is more after the fact.

 

[Rail Tracer]

Out of the four stages to get to acceptance, I would say anger and bargaining were my "quickest" to get through. There has only been one very significant event off the top of my head that I would consider it bargaining - and it has no relation to a person/being/god and more along the lines to an event that took place.

The lengthiest of these four stages would have to be denial and depression, or what I like to call, the beginning and near the ending. It took a lot of energy to get into it and it took just as much energy to finally snap out of it.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

My bargaining stage consists of me contemplating offing myself to spare myself from more of the same shit. "If I end it now, I'll never ever have to deal with this again."

Of course I'm still here so I've never acted on it.

 

[Owlesque]

I didn't go through any of the stages and just went straight to acceptance.

 

[gromit]

In my experience, at first a lot of what I feel is just bewilderment. It is one thing to imagine something happening, it's another thing to be confronted with it in reality. A short while later it starts to hit me and I begin to feel sad and a bit angry. Then I alternate between wallowing in it and living life normally/trying to live life normally (or maybe seeking out a little bit more intense physical experiences). Eventually I come to accept that I have experienced a loss, and after a while pain starts to fade.