Five Stages Of Grief Research Paper

The definition of “Love” in the Merriam Webster dictionary is, “a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person”. Although that is the official definition, the true definition of Love is indescribable through text and is unique for everyone who experiences it. Love comes in all different types; true love has no color, gender, age, distant, or end. When love goes missing from our lives, the human response is grief. Grief is the price we pay for love, and it plays an important role in human life. We must have bad times and low-points throughout our lifetime, in order to recognize and cherish the good times. Throughout this paper, I am going to explain what “grief” is, and what it entails; from both my perspective, as well as it’s psychological
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published a seminal book titled “On Death & Dying”, in 1969, in which she explained her now classically regarded 'five stages of grief’. These stages of grief are universal and are experienced by people all over the world. Personally, these five stages held true to my grieving experience. Firstly, the stage of denial can be described as surprise and shock to the loss being real. The reality of the situation has yet to set in during this stage; We begin to go numb. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. I believe that “denial” is God’s way of letting in only as much grief as we can handle, at this point in time. The second stage of grief is anger; anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. When we begin to recognize that denial cannot continue, we become frustrated, especially with the people around us. We start to ask questions such as, “Why me?” and “How could this happen?” This anger we feel is usually suppressed, or taken out on people around us; anger is just another indication of the intensity of love. The third stage of grief is bargaining; we begin to ask our selves “If” questions such as, “If only I treated him/her differently..” or “If I change my ways, God, will you do THIS for me?” We begin to bargain with God, as an attempt to change our current state, or to try to postpone the
“Emotion” in psychology is described as a state of feeling that results in physical and psychological changes that influence our behavior. A person who is dealing with grief will most likely display emotional symptoms associated with grieving such as: Increased irritability, numbness, bitterness, detachment, preoccupation with loss, and inability to show or experience joy. I definitely felt some of these emotions during my experience with grief. I felt like I could not be happy not matter how much I tried. I also was very irritable because my anger was so heavy on my heart. Being affected “physically” can be described as “relating to the body as opposed to the mind”. Majority of people who haven’t yet experienced real grief usually assume that grief is strictly an emotionally issue; yet, there are very real effects that grief can have on the human body. Some of the physical symptoms of grieving are: digestive problems, fatigue, headaches, chest pain, and sore muscles. During my personal grieving process, I experienced some physical affects. I was extremely exhausted all of the time; after doing minimal work of any sort, I had the need to crawl in bed and sleep all day. The definition for “Cognitive” in psychology can be explained as, “a branch of psychology concerned with mental processes (as perception, thinking, learning, and memory). Cognitive reactions are another way to try and make some sense of the loss.