I started watching the first series of ‘afterlife’ I reflected how The ‘Seven Stages of Grief’ model is based on the ‘Five Stages of Grief’, initially theorised in 1969 by Swiss psychologist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. She attempted to classify the different emotions and thoughts that people experience after losing someone they love. Her original stages are those listed as two through six, with one and seven added in recent years to strengthen the model.
Based on the five-stage approach, the seven stages of grief help explain the often complicated experience of loss. While you may not experience them all (or may experience them in a different order) these include:
- shock and disbelief
- denial
- guilt
- anger and bargaining
- depression, loneliness and reflection
- reconstruction (or ‘working through’)
- acceptance
Anger and bargaining
This stage usually occurs after the ceremonies and funerals. The comforting family and friends have left you, and you’re trying to go about your life as usual. That’s often when the anger comes in, and often bargaining as well.
You might start to feel angry at the doctors, or another party, and perhaps even at the deceased themselves. This anger can often cause a person to feel even more guilt, but know that it is entirely normal, and provides a necessary emotional release.
Reconstruction, or ‘working through’
By this time, you may still find yourself moving up and down the ladder, but are building a new life without your deceased loved one and living a ‘new normal.’ The hurt may feel raw and painful, you now know that you cannot change the situation. Though you may not be fully ready to accept the death, you know that life has to go on.
I reflected how the character started in the anger and bargaining stage series 2 he seems to be in the reconstruction stage. Through his grief he has started a new life a relationship with his work colleagues, to Pat the postman, the sex worker, the lady he talks too on the bench. He is reconstruction renewing new bonds as grief has sever his with his wife (makes sense he’s angry).
This made me think further as Kübler-Ross explained that no one process comes before the other. I’m expecting the character to go back and forth a bit like a roller coaster.
I wonder if he was able to creatively explain his loss I wonder what he would come up with.
This has got me thinking about how I can start thinking about how to use the 7 stages of grief without using words.
