A Closer Look at the Stages of Grief

In an earlier post, I mentioned the restructuring at my company that saw my team lose two colleagues. In the aftermath of the change, I heard a five-word mantra repeated by those who remained: denial – anger – bargaining – depression - acceptance.

In retrospect, I should not have been surprised. After all, it is almost a cliché to refer to the five stages of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s model for how people deal with loss. According to the model, almost everyone experiences these five reactions when facing a loss, even if the specific timing and sequence of the stages varies by individuals.

The model is commonly involved in times of change – especially in times of imposed change – and yet Ruth David Konigsberg, the author of The Truth About Grief, suggests a number of reasons why Kübler-Ross’ framework is an imperfect response:

·         It was originally created to describe people’s reaction to their own impending death, not to describe grief or reactions to change or loss

·         The theory is based on anecdotal evidence rather than empirical data

·         Kübler-Ross originally viewed the five categories as responses to impending death and not as stages in a process

·         Other authors applied the Kübler-Ross model to grief, change, and loss without engaging in studies to determine whether it actually applied

·         The Kübler-Ross model and similar models fail to take into account how resilient people are

·         Recent studies suggest that people who embrace and learn from new experiences feel less stress than people who avoid or feel threatened by them

·         There is no empirical evidence that people respond to change or loss – including job loss or organizational restructuring – the same way they respond to death or grieving

Naturally, Konigsberg is not without her own detractors but her book does raise some interesting questions. Kübler-Ross’ five stages are probably too entrenched in the collective wisdom of our times to be discarded entirely, and perhaps that’s not entirely bad. After all, it forces people to acknowledge the emotional impact of loss and downsizing and other kinds of change.

On the other hand, it should not be trotted out in times of change as a way of giving people “permission” to have feelings about change. I don’t know about you, but I do not require permission to have emotions and I certainly do not like being told how I should be feeling. I guess in the end, Kübler-Ross and her model, like so much other conventional wisdom, deserves a closer look.

For more information, check out:

The Truth About Grief – The Myth of Its Five Stages and the New Science of Loss
Ruth David Konigsberg
ISBN-10: 1439148333; ISBN-13: 978-1439148334