Psychology often uses the "five stages of grief" to make sense of the chain of reactions and emotional shifts we go through when facing a major change in life (Kübler-Ross & Kessler, 2005). Across the whole arc of loss, we may pass through five different shifts in our state of mind: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The "five stages of grief" can't pull us out of our sorrow at once, but they can help us understand our own inner world, and through that come to know what we need.
This article follows on from How to Care for Yourself After a Break-up (Part 1), continuing to explore the psychological state that follows a break-up through the lens of the "five stages of grief". If you haven't read Part 1, you can follow the link above.
Depression
The emotional rollercoaster reaches its lowest point: we feel low, deeply sorrowful, even hopeless about everything. All of these feelings are entirely normal — after all, we have just lost someone. Many people dislike this stage, because the gloom often descends out of nowhere, and it lingers. Sometimes we aren't even quite sure what exactly is hurting; we only know that a great weight of emotion is pressing on our hearts like a boulder, and our appetite, sleep quality and productivity all drop sharply. Everyone wants to feel better, yet sometimes we contradictorily let ourselves sink into sorrow, using pain to escape pain — listening to break-up songs, for instance, or flipping through old photos. This doesn't mean you are immature or that you cope poorly with stress. Some psychologists argue that people are able to control their own behaviour, and that they choose to let themselves be depressed because it can bring certain benefits (Glasser, 1999). From an evolutionary angle, depression even serves an important function for a social species like ours, because it is a way of letting those around you know that you need help. Still, gloom does not mean drowning. If the state of depression is like a boat that has sprung a leak and is taking on water, is your sorrow a way to vent your feelings and bail the water back out to sea — or a way to avoid yourself, leaving the leak to keep letting water in?
At a time like this, people are very fragile, and feeling often overrides reason. Classical economics used to say that people are rational; if people could stay rational and keep thinking clearly in any situation, then a great many of the world's problems would never arise. But the reason people are people is precisely that we have emotions, and we let those emotions guide us. The first step in solving a problem is knowing where the problem lies; if you won't even admit that you really are hurting, how can you hope to get better? And the reality is that the boat has a leak, you are wounded, and left unattended it will one day sink. Rather than forcing yourself to think rationally against human nature, it is better to accept that you really are unhappy, and only then think about how to help yourself feel better!
Acceptance
Everyone knows they have to accept reality, but what actually counts as acceptance? Not crying any more? Starting a new relationship? As the authors of the "five stages of grief" interpret it, acceptance does not mean being "in a good state" or feeling good, but rather recognising that what has happened is now history, and that we cannot return to the past. Here we borrow the view of "acceptance" found in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to interpret its meaning a little further. Hayes et al. (1999) point out that acceptance involves both active change and cognitive understanding. Change can include letting go of the habits that leave you dysfunctional, even building a new routine and set of habits for single life; cognitive understanding means recognising that a memory is a memory, not something that is happening now — the past is the past, not the present moment.
To put it another way, accepting a break-up can be understood as: recovering from the rhythm of life that the break-up threw into disarray, and coming to see the break-up as a memory, or a former chapter, rather than something that is still happening. For example, just after the break-up you might describe your emotional state as "fresh out of a relationship", and when that description shifts to "currently single", that may be true acceptance.
Find Your Own Way Back!
It is worth noting that everyone feels differently in the face of loss, and the end point is not necessarily acceptance. Indeed, the so-called "five stages of grief" were what Elisabeth Kübler-Ross used to summarise the common reactions of her terminally ill patients after being told they were going to die. It was only later that the same theory was found to describe the feelings around other kinds of loss as well. Past studies have questioned the accuracy of the "five stages of grief", because they found that not everyone goes through these five stages, and that people sometimes move between them rather than progressing in order (Friedman & James, 2008). When facing heartbreak, everyone's reaction differs from person to person; the theory is only a point of reference, helping us understand some of the situations that may arise in us. In her book On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, Kübler-Ross also notes that the "five stages of grief" were misinterpreted for many years after her passing. She made clear that there is no normal grief response in the world; all grief and pain is a very personal matter. And this theory can be seen as a tool that helps us learn how to find our way back after a loss.
Even if not everyone experiences these feelings, I understand that the pain of a break-up lies in its loneliness. I hope this theory might help you understand that, however much it hurts, there are many people in the world who understand you.
References
Corr, C. A. (2019). Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the “Five Stages” Model in a sampling of recent textbooks published in 10 countries outside the United States. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 0030222819840476.
Friedman, R., & James, J. W. (2008). The myth of the stages of dying, death and grief. Skeptic (Altadena, CA), 14(2), 37-42.
Glasser, W. (1999). Choice theory: A new psychology of personal freedom. HarperPerennial.
Hayes, S. C., Bissett, R. T., Korn, Z., Zettle, R. D., Rosenfarb, I. S., Cooper, L. D., & Grundt, A. M. (1999). The impact of acceptance versus control rationales on pain tolerance. The psychological record, 49(1), 33-47.
Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. Simon and Schuster.
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