Grappling with the Stages of Grief: Grief Therapy in Puyallup

Are you looking for grief therapy in Puyallup, Washington? If so, we can help. Life is often messy, and it often refuses to fit into neat categories. Sometimes we can have ambiguous relationships, like a family member who, instead of being a source of support, is a toxic influence.

You can find yourself feeling complicated emotions, like feeling guilty for being happy during difficult times, or going through a breakup that is amicable and yet still deeply heartbreaking.

In the same way, grief can also be complicated, and you can find yourself experiencing many different feelings and thoughts at the loss of a loved one. You could, for instance, find yourself feeling both grief and relief after a loved one passes.

Grief can feel like a dense forest that’s easy to lose yourself in, and tools like the five stages of grief can be a help for processing what you’re going through.

Grief as a Process

Grief occurs when we experience loss of some kind. The loss could be the death of a loved one, but it can also be other kinds of loss such as divorce and separation, losing your job or home, or coming to the end of a significant season in your life.

As you go through life, you form meaningful connections, settle into routines, and find specific ways to understand your world and the role you play in it. When these things shift, a real sense of loss often follows.

The way we deal with loss is through the process we call grief. Grieving is how you come to terms with the loss you’ve experienced, and no two people will grieve in the same way. How you grieve is linked intimately to who you are as a person, your personality, your surrounding culture and its norms, and the support and other resources you have on hand, to name a few.

Grief and grieving are a process, but it’s important to disabuse ourselves of the notion that it’s a straightforward or predictable process. There is a part of us that feels at peace when we know what’s coming down the pike and when.

It’s one reason we’re willing to wait ten minutes for an Uber or Lyft when we can track its progress, but we’d struggle to wait the same amount of time for a cab when we don’t know where it is in relation to our location.

Grief can feel unsettling, not only because of the loss itself but also because you don’t know when the feelings you’re feeling and the thoughts that are occupying your mind will change. All this is to say that yes, grief is a process, but it is an unpredictable one that doesn’t have an end date.

Grief Therapy in Puyallup: Addressing the Five Stages of Grief

The Swiss American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is the pioneer who first discussed the five stages of grief that have become popularized. She worked with individuals who were terminally ill and near death, and she observed the various ways they came to terms with the fact of their impending death.

From these observations, she described the stages they underwent. The five stages of grief are as follows:

Denial

When you first experience the loss, it can be overwhelming. One way to respond to this loss and the myriad changes it ushers into your life is to act as though it hasn’t happened. Denial does the work of giving us time to process the news and make sense of it slowly. It helps you to not feel overwhelmed, numbing you where the loss feels too intense. You might say, “This isn’t happening; they’re mistaken. You’ll see.”

Anger

Anger erupts in many situations, sometimes functioning as a way to cope with or mask other emotions. A parent may berate their child who comes perilously close to hurting themselves, but it’s coming from a place of fear of loss.

When a loss occurs, anger can be directed anywhere and everywhere – at God, at yourself, at the person who died, at their attending physician, or even inanimate objects.

Bargaining

After experiencing loss, you might find yourself asking “What if?” as a way to delay feeling emotions such as confusion or sadness. Loss makes us feel exposed and not in control. Bargaining, whether it’s with the Lord, or with yourself, is a way to try and regain some measure of control.

Depression

When the emotions of grief catch up with you, they can leave you feeling shattered. You may choose to be by yourself to cope with the emotions and begin processing them. This may be a time of deep confusion, feeling a heaviness of heart, and feeling unsure about where you are or where you’re going.  

Acceptance

Accepting loss isn’t to be equated with embracing it, or with the notion that life feels sunny and great. Rather, it’s about coming to terms with what the loss means, and what your life is like now. Acceptance is also about finding ways to cope despite the loss and being able to live your life.

It’s important to recognize with the stages that it isn’t a straight run through the stages. You may skip some stages initially or altogether or linger in some stages more than others. Grief is complex, and it doesn’t follow a script.

The stages of grief help you recognize yourself and your emotions, and it can help you anticipate the needs you may have as you work through a particular stage.

Grief is personal, and no two experiences will be the same. While it’s personal, that doesn’t mean you have to go through it alone. Lean on your loved ones and seek help from a grief counselor in Puyallup, Washington to process what you’re going through, and to learn how to cope with loss. To find a Christian grief counselor in Puyallup, call our office today at Puyallup Christian Counseling in Washington.