5 Stages of Grief free essay sample

The emotional stages we experience from a loss vary. Here are some of the emotions that I have experienced personally as well as by close family and friends who have lost someone. They are in no particular order: confusion, anxiety, fatigue, sadness, shock, denial, anger, depression, guilt, bargaining, fear and acceptance. Some of them are similar but not limited to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ famous theory of the five stages of grief (Kubler-Ross,1969) – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance which were all based on interviews she had with terminally ill patients. Depending on the type of loss that is experienced it can give some insight to what type of emotions may be experienced by the one grieving. I believe there is no right or wrong way to grieve nor is there a time frame on the grieving process. Everyone, young and old, will eventually experience grief. How they process that grief will depend on their experiences. Emotional Experiences in Grief I remember the moment my mother took her last breath. Right before that happened my sisters and I were all laughing and joking with our aunt and cousin who were on Skype. We all knew my mom was in her transition stage. She was leaving us but nobody knew when. My cousin, who was watching her from her screen, noticed my mom open her eyes. I then heard my aunt who heard my cousin ask â€Å"are her eyes open†? When I turned to look at her I noticed her eyes turned to my sister who was sitting on her right, then turn in front of her to my other sister who was laying in front of her then turn to me as I was sitting on her left side. She then looked up, closed her eyes for the last time and left. I looked up at my sister who is a nurse and saw the look on her face as she nodded her head to confirm that our mom had just died. At that very moment I felt fear, confusion and pain go through me. I began to cry at the same time wondering if my mom was really gone. The doubt left me when the hospice nurse arrived to confirm that my mom was no longer with us. I then went into a stage of cloudiness. I felt I was walking on air. My sisters and all other family members were crying as they arrived and saw her. I began to shut myself down from feeling anything. Numbness began to set in. I was her caregiver for 6 years. The last year of her life I became her 24hr caregiver. I couldn’t believe that my mom was gone. Although I expected the inevitable, I wasn’t ready for it to actually happen. My children each went through different emotions. My 23 year old son wrote a note on his facebook page detailing the experience he had once he realized that my mom was gone. He stated one of the first things he did was call his sisters to inform them that grandma had just died and then he grabbed his grandmother’s bible that he was using for bible study and took a walk. Two of my daughters cried and clung to their boyfriends when they arrived and then began to tell funny stories of their grandmother as they talked about her. My oldest daughter lost it. She began to yell and scream when hearing the news. She was in New York City and had to say goodbye to her grandmother on Skype before they came to pick her up. I watched her reaction and hurt for her. If she could climb through the screen to be on the other side she would have. My sisters all experienced different emotions. One experienced guilt for not being there while another was confused. The sister who was a nurse was in two separate modes – the nurse in her acted as well as the child in her. She was trying to be strong and found she was weak as she processed that our mother had just died. Prior to my mother’s death 4 very close friends of mine had experienced sudden losses. I learned from them that there is really nothing you can say to someone when they lose someone they love. You have to allow them to get through whatever emotion they are feeling at the time. I found that listening to them was a huge help for them. They just wanted someone to listen. They didn’t want advice nor did they want you to â€Å"relate† to them. For them nobody could understand the pain. On June 25th of 2008 one friend lost her 23 year old sister to a domestic violence murder leaving behind a 2 year old little girl. On October 2nd, 2008 my sister in law lost her baby sister suddenly to an asthma attack leaving behind two young children. September 3rd 2010 another friend lost her 16 year old daughter to a negligent accident on the part of her daughters’ boyfriend who was playing with a rifle he just got for his 18th birthday that he pointed to her face not realizing it was still loaded fatally wounding her. Another friend lost her 43 year old sister who 9 days prior had a baby. Her heart just stopped beating while in the hospital getting ready to undergo some tests to find out why she was not feeling well. They could not revive her. I watched and listened as each one of my friends went through different stages of grief. All experienced anger, confusion, shock, guilt. The greatest of these was anger. Two of my friends were extremely angry. My friend who lost her 16 year old daughter was angry at the boyfriend and the family for being careless. Until justice was served in a courtroom, her anger did not subside. She still grieves for the beautiful child that she can no longer hold but has learned to get by. She relies on her faith in God to get her through one day at a time and encourages others, including myself, during the stages of grief. My other friend who lost her sister at the hospital 9 days after having a baby was angry at God. She couldn’t understand why God allowed her sister to die. She then experiences the loss of her nephew as well. The father decided – for whatever personal reasons that led them to court – to keep the son away from the family of his biological mother. This made it a double sudden loss for my friend in a matter of months. Three years later she is still angry and in pain. She turns to friends and her religious beliefs for peace. My friend whose sister was murdered by her own husband experienced anger at first but then let go of that anger and started to forgive her brother in law who committed suicide days after the murder. She did not feel anger towards his family as her other sister and mother did. She was grateful he did not take the life of her niece who was there when he murdered her mother. She relies on God for strength and the support of her friends to help her through. She still grieves the loss when the anniversary of her death or her birthday comes up but is able to cope as she raises her niece. My sister in law mourns her sister as well every birthday and anniversary of her death. She is very involved in the lives of her niece and nephew and relies on her faith in God and family and friends to get through. All of them continue to grieve on the anniversaries of the death of their loved ones as well as their birthdays. Grief and the Physical Consequences My youngest sister could not sleep at night for months. She felt guilty that she had moved to another state during our mother’s illness and felt worse the day my mother died because she fell asleep right before my mother took her last breath. The stress from her guilt caused her blood pressure to rise so high that her medication had to be increased to help it. The first couple of days after her death I was unable to sleep or eat. At the funeral before walking in I felt so dizzy I thought I was going to pass out. The anxiety of getting ready to see my mother in a coffin took its toll on me. I developed anxiety so bad it was making my heart race to the point where I had to be hospitalized overnight for observation due to heart issues. Another sister has been in and out of the hospital since the death of our mom. She continues to have anxiety attacks so bad it causes her heart to race. They can never find anything wrong although the EKG always shows her heart rate racing to the point of possible cardiac arrest. In an article I read by Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Ph. D. , Physical Stress of Grieving, she states â€Å"Grieving is hard work and takes a huge toll on our bodies†. She goes on to say that â€Å"the physical stress of grieving will cause us to lose coordination causing us to fall more easily. We wouldn’t be able to run our lives as smoothly making even simple things seem hard to do. Our brain and our eyes don’t coordinate the way they did before the loss. Our immune system is compromised. We tire easily†. These are just some physical attributes of the grieving process that I have either personally experienced or witnessed firsthand among friends and family. She also gives a partial list of diseases that can have an appearance throughout the grieving process which are: cardiovascular disorders, cancer, pernicious anemia, ulcerative colitis, leukemia, lymphoma, lupus, pneumonia, diabetes, influenza, glaucoma, high blood pressure, chronic itching, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic depression, alcoholism, drug dependency and malnutrition. These are just some of the physical consequences grief can bring. The Social Implications of Showing Grief During the time of my loss many people were there to support me. Pray for me and encourage me. Some even tried to understand me during my grief. After the experiences I have gone through with my friends prior to my own experience of loss, I learned that the best thing to say to someone who is grieving is nothing at all. What do you say to someone who lost their child to a careless accident? How do you explain to someone whose sister was just celebrating the birth of a child and days later mourns the death of the sister who brought that child into the world? Or to someone whose sister was murdered by her husband in a domestic violence dispute? People who grieve are looking for answers and will withdraw when faced with someone who tries to find the â€Å"right words† to say but end up saying something the griever does not want to hear. In the early stages of grief people need to carefully choose what to say. Their words can help or harm a person experiencing grief. One of my sisters wanted to die because she did not know how to process the loss so all she kept saying is â€Å"I want to die. † â€Å"I want to be with my mom†. She did not think about the fact that she had children and grandchildren of her own that would suffer just as much if something were to happen to her. Hearing her say these things upset me and it upset some of my siblings. We tried to convince her that our mom would not be happy if she kept thinking that way. We didn’t say it because we wanted to hurt her we said it because we were not prepared to go through another loss, especially one that would be unexpected. Another sibling had compassion for her and wanted to make us understand what she was going through. She felt we were being too harsh on her and did not want us to judge her for feeling the way she did. We all grieved in different ways but we all were grieving the same loss. I remember being told by my extended family members â€Å"get rid of that she’s not here anymore to tell you not to†, â€Å"You are not honoring your mother by posting how you feel†, â€Å"You’re the oldest and she left you in charge now so you need to be strong for the family†, or my personal favorite â€Å"at least she’s in a better place†. Although people that say these things mean well it only expresses to the grieving person that they have no clue what they are talking about unless they have walked down the road of loss. I found more comfort in those who knew the journey and what to expect. I needed to know if this horrible feeling of loss was temporary or would it get better with time. Some people never get past this. I kept away from family and friends that did not allow me to grieve and surrounded myself with people who walk me through my journey. Spirituality and Grief Spirituality has been a big part of my healing process. If not for my faith in God I don’t believe I would be able to smile or function. Use headings and subheadings to organize the sections of your paper. The first heading level is formatted with initial caps and is centered on the page. Do not start a new page for each heading. Subheading Subheadings are formatted with italics and are aligned flush left. Citations Source material must be documented in the body of the paper by citing the authors and dates of the sources. The full source citation will appear in the list of references that follows the body of the paper. When the names of the authors of a source are part of the formal structure of the sentence, the year of the publication appears in parenthesis following the identification of the authors, for example, Smith (2001). When the authors of a source are not part of the formal structure of the sentence, both the authors and years of publication appear in parentheses, separated by semicolons, for example (Smith and Jones, 2001; Anderson, Charles, Johnson, 2003). When a source that has three, four, or five authors is cited, all authors are included the first time the source is cited. When that source is cited again, the first author’s surname and â€Å"et al. † are used. See the example in the following paragraph. Use of this standard APA style â€Å"will result in a favorable impression on your instructor† (Smith, 2001). This was affirmed again in 2003 by Professor Anderson (Anderson, Charles Johnson, 2003). When a source that has two authors is cited, both authors are cited every time. If there are six or more authors to be cited, use the first author’s surname and â€Å"et al. † the first and each subsequent time it is cited. When a direct quotation is used, always include the author, year, and page number as part of the citation. A quotation of fewer than 40 words should be enclosed in double quotation marks and should be incorporated into the formal structure of the sentence. A longer quote of 40 or more words should appear (without quotes) in block format with each line indented five spaces from the left margin. 1 References Anderson, Charles Johnson (2003). The impressive psychology paper. Chicago: Lucerne Publishing. Smith, M. (2001). Writing a successful paper. The Trey Research Monthly, 53, 149-150. Entries are organized alphabetically by surnames of first authors and are formatted with a hanging indent. Most reference entries have three components: 1. Authors: Authors are listed in the same order as specified in the source, using surnames and initials. Commas separate all authors. When there are seven or more authors, list the first six and then use â€Å"et al. † for remaining authors. If no author is identified, the title of the document begins the reference. 2. Year of Publication: In parenthesis following authors, with a period following the closing parenthesis. If no publication date is identified, use â€Å"n. d. † in parenthesis following the authors. 3. Source Reference: Includes title, journal, volume, pages (for journal article) or title, city of publication, publisher (for book). Appendix