We’ve all heard of the five stages of grief, and if you haven’t, they are as follows:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
The reality of grief, though, is that those five stages don’t occur one at a time, nor in a particular, organized order. Experiencing grief through loss of a loved one can feel messy, and even if we get to a point of acceptance, the emotions never really go away. We learn to grow around that hole inside of us and adapt to better ways to carry it by building an emotional toolkit within ourselves to cope.
At the time of writing this it has been one year and eight months since my father passed suddenly. I am not a stranger to death, but his death was the first that was the double whammy of being within my immediate family and was completely unexpected. Even writing the words now I still feel a jolt of denial running through me. Leading up to the funeral there was immediate support that helped me through those first couple of weeks, but since then I’ve struggled to find resources to help me through what I call “the messy middle”. I’m very fortunate to have finally found a great therapist to help me work through things, but it’s taken months for me to meet my insurance deductible, and unfortunately I have had health insurance plans that don’t cover therapy. So many resources are not available to everyone and while I could go on a full on rant about the American Healthcare system and mental healthcare, I’d rather share what tools I have compiled within my tool kit in hopes that it might help anyone else out there that are conducting the same google searches that I did. Without further ado, here is my emotional toolkit broken down by the five stages of grief.
Tools for Denial
Denial can be one of the most uncomfortable stages. I have seen it begin to present itself even before a death has occurred. When there is a loved one who is aging or battling a terminal diagnosis, there is a denial to even discuss the reality of the matter. I’ve seen how this leads to refusal to make plans for funerals or final wishes for care. I’ve seen it with family members who were suffering from dementia, and the confusion and anger that can arise from denial that simply doesn’t help anyone.
The best thing that I have found to help with this is communication. Whether that is talking to a therapist, reminiscing with loved ones, or even journaling. Talking about it, as uncomfortable as it might feel, really allows the truth to sink in. Personally, I have found Journaling to be the most cathartic form of communication because when I write in my journal I am communicating with myself and doing an internal check-in. It gets everything out of my head and in front of me, allowing the organization of my thoughts and feelings. Once I have purged those feelings, there is an introspective clarity that allows me to reflect deeply on this new reality.
Tools for Anger
For years I have struggled with this emotion. In my household it was always my dad that was allowed to be angry, never anyone else, so I never developed the tools to manage anger. it will fester inside of me, growing into resentment.
I have been in therapy long before my dad’s passing working on this and the best resource that I have found for anger (and for many other overwhelming emotions) is the Feelings Wheel. I. Love. This. Thing. I print out a copy and keep it on hand and I recommend it to everyone that I can. I’ve found that looking at the feeling wheel to pinpoint what emotions I’m feeling, putting a name to those emotions can help greatly with dissolving them as I usually realize that I am not really angry, but I am fearful or hurt. If, while looking at it, you realize that the emotions you’re feeling are coming from multiple different color sections, it’s confirmation that conflicting feelings can feel completely overwhelming.
I’ve had moments where just looking at it and being able to say what I am feeling relieves those feelings, and new ones come through as there is usually something deeper to unpack there.
Sometimes, though, when I am feeling especially angry though,just looking at the feeling wheel isn’t enough. I resort to physical movement to help me disperse those feelings. I put on a playlist, and move my body. A 2000’s throwback playlist for when I rage clean my home or to finish a project that I’ve been procrastinating doing, a rap heavy, hip hop playlist when I’m in my yard gardening, or some house music remixes with a good bass line when I’m at the gym. Ultimately, any way that you can redirect that energy in your mind into physical movement.
Tools for Bargaining
I haven’t dealt with this too much from my dad’s passing, for me it probably presents more as guilt, but I have still seen it first hand. I had an Ex whose dad was slowly losing a long battle with cancer. I saw the family desperately wanting him to fight and keep receiving treatment. He kept receiving treatment and trying to inject humor into all the side effects that he was suffering from. This can go hand in hand with Denial and can have detrimental long term effects.
The best tool for someone to cope with Bargaining can be vastly different from person to person. As a tool, from my experience to work through this is general wellness practices. I’ve listened to pretty much all of Brené Brown’s audio books, her podcasts, and podcasts of the people she’s had on as guests. I highly recommend her book Atlas of the Heart. I’ve listened to that audio book so many times because she will say one thing, and I’m sitting there processing something for so long that I miss something else she has said. I have to pause and sit there for a minute. Her podcasts have a lot of similar information and are free on Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, and I think most streaming platforms, and her TED talks are available on YouTube. There are endless amounts of ways to consume her content and there are many others like her out there as well, like Marc Maron, or Mel Robbins.
Tools for Depression
The slippery slope of Depression can be a tough climb, and for those who suffer from it chronically, grief is like adding more oil to that slope, making it harder to get out of a depressive episode. This is where knowledge of the Spoon Theory can help. The idea of the Spoon Theory is that spoons are the currency needed to perform tasks to get through your day, and people without a disability or chronic illness (depression included) wake up and have enough spoons to get through their day. Getting ready for work = 1 spoon. Preparing and eating a meal = 1 spoon. People struggling with disability or illness require more spoons to complete the same tasks. Getting out of bed = 1 spoon, getting dressed = 1 spoon, brushing your hair and teeth = 1 spoon. Grocery Shopping = 1 spoon, prepping your vegetables = 1 spoon, cooking those vegetables = 1 spoon, and the act of actually eating (sometimes even when you don’t have any appetite) = 1 spoon. In other terms,something that takes 1 spoon for someone might take at least 3 spoons for others.
This is where cutting some corners and taking short cuts has been the most helpful tool for my depression – making tasks as simple as possible. I get packaged meal replacement shakes or protein shakes with the lowest sugar content I can find. I buy frozen dinners, or boxes of mac and cheese. I buy pre-chopped fresh or frozen bags of veggies that can be steamed in their bag. Trader Joe’s has bags of brown rice in their freezer section that take three minutes in the microwave, in the bag they come in, that are perfectly portioned. These shortcuts allow me to still eat healthier balanced meals, and stay away from the highly processed fast food options as much as I can. Although I still hit up the McDonalds drive through once in a while for efficiency when I am out of the house trying to get errands done, and I know I haven’t eaten all day. Giving your body fuel is probably the most important thing you can do, and the healthier the choice, the more energy you have to then take care of yourself in otherways. For you, it could be washing your hair when you’ve been getting by with dry shampoo, or catching up on washing laundry, even if you aren’t able to fold it and put it away. The point is that it is okay to do the bare minimum.
Tools for Acceptance
Acceptance can feel like the finish line in a journey through the five stages of grief, so what tools would you really need here? Isn’t the point to get to a point of acceptance?
Once you find yourself in a place of acceptance, though, it’s more about continuing on with your life and honoring those who you have lost. For me and my siblings we do every Thanksgiving. My parents were divorced growing up and my dad had a hard time with the holidays. He insisted that even if we were having thanksgiving with my mom, that we could still spend the morning with him, going to the Thanksgiving Parade in downtown Chicago, then getting potato pancakes, bratwurst, and gluhwein at the Christkindl Market. In reality he was always late to pick us up, and we would make it to the parade just in time to see the last float with Santa, and my dad would scream for the man in the red suit, still trying to embarrass us like we were teenagers, but there was always time for the food and drink after. Now, we honor his memory by skipping the parade and going straight to the Christkindl Market right when they open. We share plates of pancakes smothered in applesauce and sour cream and toast our mugs of warm spiced wine together. Our commitment to honoring him is what is important, and we all have developed our own ways to honor him separately as well.
The road beyond
I’ll throw in one last tool that I have found to be the most impactful for myself and it may not even be applicable to everyone, but sobriety has helped give me so much more strength on my journey through grief. It’s probably pretty straight forward since alcohol is a depressant but it has helped in so many other ways that I didn’t expect. First, when the pandemic started my alcohol consumption pretty much doubled. Then my grandpa passed away from old age and I was helping my grandpa with the hospice care. My grandparents are pretty old fashioned and always had to have a cocktail at 5pm every day. I started having health issues like high blood pressure. Then my dad had his first and last heart attack – I started drinking even more. Then I lost my job. I was about to turn 30 and felt like my life was starting to fall apart. I went on a family trip where I was drinking every day and I got home from that trip feeling like absolute crap. I decided that drinking wasn’t working for me anymore. I made that decision almost a year ago. My high blood pressure returned to balance , and I realized how much I was abusing alcohol to cope. My grief journey still has a long road ahead of me and I still am working on it but, through sobriety I’ve realized it was actually harder to make progress with a drink in my hand.
Whatever type of grief you’re dealing with there are always resources available, and it can be hard to figure out what works best. There’s nothing wrong with trial and error as we are all different and our bodies deal with these strong emotions differently. Of course if you are ever feeling an unmanageable amount of hopelessness and despair, or struggling with other feelings of depression, there is a great list of hotlines to help you through any sort of mental health crisis you might be dealing with. (https://www.psycom.net/get-help-mental-health#united-states) to call, free of charge, where you can talk to trained professionals who will be able to provide you with other resources as well. There is no shame in giving those numbers a call and even just talking to a stranger for five minutes can help. I’ve called before when I was in a spiral and felt like there was no one I could talk to. No matter what you’re going through on your grief journey, and no matter how alone you feel, know that as a stranger on the internet who doesn’t even know you, I am rooting for you on your journey through grief.
