Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas partners with Lucet to provide behavioral health screenings, resources and support to our members and employees.
After a loss, it’s not uncommon for people to experience grief. Grief commonly occurs in five stages. Experiencing one or more of these stages can provide you the comfort and peace of mind that you are moving forward in a positive direction and coping with the loss you have experienced.
Stage 1: Denial
During denial, it’s hard for you to believe that the loss has happened. You may often feel numb and in a haze. This innate coping mechanism occurs as a survival mechanism. The shock and pain of loss is often too hurtful to take in all at one time.
Stage 2: Anger
In the second stage, you become frustrated by the fact that you’re vulnerable, that you have no control over what’s happened, and you begin to look for the events and people that you can blame.
Stage 3: Bargaining
During this stage you often fall into “if” statements, such as “What if I had done this?” You want to bargain with your life to try and get back what you used to have, change what happened, or even try to replace the pain with something else.
Stage 4: Depression
In the fourth stage, depression sets in. You can begin to feel overwhelmed by the situation and hopeless about the future. You may withdraw from your life and feel as if there is no reason to go on.
Stage 5: Acceptance
The fifth and final stage is related to acceptance. You’re finally able to accept the reality of what’s happened and begin to look for avenues to move on. It’s important that during this stage you accept how this loss has changed your life and stop wishing for everything to go back to how it used to be.
To better connect Kansans with in-network mental health care, BCBSKS has partnered with MiResource to help guide you through the process of identifying the right mental health care for your unique needs whether it’s your first time seeking care, or you are reestablishing treatment or you are helping a loved one.
My wife and I have suffered through the loss of two of our three children. One at 17 years of age and the other at age 60. I agree with Lori that grief is an individual process and there is no right or wrong way. I think the phases of grief discussed in the article above cover valid aspects of the experience and have some benefit. However, my experience has been that there is no clear begin or ending to a phase or in the sequence that it occurs. Bottom line is that grief subsides over time but never totally goes away.
From someone who has had a significant loss this article makes it sound like do these 5 stages and bam it’s all good and your grief is over. This is so not true. Grief is an individual process and there is not a right or wrong way. One may feel these emotions but grief isn’t as simple as you have portrayed it. These stages and steps were designed to help a patient facing their own death not for those of us who have lost a loved one. We grieve because we love.