Knowing the four stages of grief can help you to understand your feelings of loss.
Your reaction to the death of a loved one is deeply personal and everyone experiences their grief response differently.
This article discusses the four stages of grieving and the feelings you may experience in each stage.
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What Are the Four Stages of Grief?
Weight loss experienced during intense grieving might reverse, energy levels increase, and interest in enjoyable activities returns.
Grief never ends, but thoughts of sadness and despair diminish while positive memories of the deceased take over.
Without accomplishing this, you will not be able to continue through the mourning process.
This task takes time.
You may have self-doubt as to how to live in this new role.
Spiritually, you may have your beliefs challenged by the loss of your loved one.
It may appear cruel or senseless.
You may have to explore new meanings to these circumstances.
This might require letting go of attachments so that new, meaningful relationships can begin to form.
Summary
The four stages of grief are shock/numbness, yearning/searching, disorganization/despair, and reorganization/recovery.
When you lose a loved one, you may move through some or all of these phases.
You also may experience different types of grief in your life.
These can include disenfranchised grief, complicated grief, anticipatory grief, breakup grief, and traumatic grief.
To help come to terms with your grief, certain tasks may help.
University of Colorado Boulder.Four phases of grief: grieving the loss of a loved one.
Harvard Health Publishing.5 stages of grief: Coping with the loss of a loved one.
APA Dictionary of Psychology.Disenfranchised grief.
APA Dictionary of Psychology.Complicated grief.
APA Dictionary of Psychology.Anticipatory grief.
APA Dictionary of Psychology.Traumatic grief.
U.S Department of Veterans Affairs.Grief reactions, duration and tasks of mourning.
Worden JW.Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy: A Handbook for the Mental Health Practitioner.
Springer Publishing Company; 2018.
