Grief Doesn't Follow Stages: A Different Approach

Grief does not move through predictable stages. It does not follow a timeline. It does not progress neatly from one state to the next and arrive at acceptance. For most people, grief is more like weather than a journey: unpredictable, non-linear, arriving without warning and departing without explanation. Understanding this is not pessimistic. It is the beginning of a more honest relationship with what grief actually is.

The problem with the five stages model

The five stages of grief model, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, was developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. It described the psychological states she observed in terminally ill patients facing their own deaths. It was not originally a model of grief in the broader sense, and Kübler-Ross herself later expressed concern about how rigidly it had been applied.

Despite this, the five stages model has become deeply embedded in popular culture, in grief counselling training and in the expectations of grieving people themselves. Many people who do not progress through the stages, who are not where they are supposed to be by a certain point, or who experience grief in a form not described by the model, conclude that something is wrong with them. This conclusion causes real harm and is not supported by evidence.

Research on grief over the past several decades has consistently failed to find evidence that grief follows a universal sequence of stages. A study published in 2007 by Maciejewski and colleagues found that acceptance, not denial, was actually the predominant response even in early grief, and that none of the supposed stages followed the predicted pattern. Grief researchers including Colin Murray Parkes, George Bonanno and William Worden have developed alternative models that better account for the actual diversity and complexity of grief experience.

The harm of the stages model is not just intellectual. When a person is angry six months into their grief and believes they should have moved on, they carry the weight of the loss and the weight of self-judgment about how they are carrying it. When a person experiences acceptance in the first week and then floods with grief six months later, they may believe they have gone backwards. These are misunderstandings that can profoundly complicate an already painful experience.

Grief is not linear

If the stages model does not describe grief accurately, what does? The most consistent finding in grief research is that grief is non-linear, oscillating and highly individual. What Stroebe and Schut called the Dual Process Model describes how grieving people move between loss-orientation (actively engaging with the grief, the loss, the pain) and restoration-orientation (getting on with life, adapting, sometimes taking a break from the grief). This oscillation is healthy and normal, not a sign of avoiding the grief or of being over it.

Grief also does not simply diminish over time in a straight line. It can be triggered by dates, places, objects, smells, songs and events for years or decades after a loss. These triggers do not mean the grief has failed to progress. They are part of how grief works in a human being embedded in a world full of reminders of who and what has been lost.

What changes over time for most people is not that grief disappears but that it becomes more integrated. It becomes something that can be carried alongside ordinary life rather than something that prevents ordinary life entirely. The grief itself may remain, but the person's relationship to it changes: less flooded, more able to be with it, more able to let it move through rather than being overwhelmed by it.

The time this takes is different for everyone and is shaped by the nature of the loss, the person's relational history, the presence or absence of support, the circumstances of the loss, and many other factors. There is no timeline that grieving people are failing to meet, and the idea that grief should be resolved within a year or two does not reflect the reality of most people's experience.

How Gestalt therapy approaches grief

Gestalt therapy approaches grief not as a problem to be resolved or a process to be managed but as an experience to be met. The aim is not to move the person through grief more quickly or to arrive at acceptance sooner. It is to provide a space in which the grief can be present as it actually is, in whatever form it takes today, without pressure to perform any particular kind of grieving or to be at any particular point.

Grief in a Gestalt approach is worked with in the present tense. What is it like right now to carry this loss? What happens in your body when you allow yourself to feel it? What aspects of the grief have been given space, and what aspects have been pushed aside? What does the relationship to the person or thing lost look like from where you are standing now?

Gestalt also attends to what Gestalt therapists call unfinished business: the things left unsaid, the endings that did not have a chance to be proper endings, the relationship that was complicated in ways that make the grief more complex. Not all grief is straightforward. The grief of an ambivalent relationship, a sudden death, a loss that others do not recognise as loss, or a person whose death has left behind unresolved hurt or anger, all of these carry particular dimensions that deserve specific attention.

Grief therapy can also help with losses that are not deaths: the end of a relationship, the loss of a version of the future you expected, the grief of a diagnosis, of infertility, of estrangement, of opportunities not taken. These losses are real and the grief they produce is real, even when they lack the social recognition that death-related loss typically receives.

See the dedicated grief, loss and life changes service page for more on how this work is approached in practice. Sessions are in person in Surry Hills on Saturdays, and online on Wednesday afternoons (Glebe) and Saturday mornings (Surry Hills). Full details on the appointments page.

When to seek support for grief

You do not need to be in crisis to seek grief support. If your grief is significant and you do not have the right kind of support around you, or if you have people around you but do not want to carry the grief with them, or if you simply want a space that is entirely for you and your loss, these are all good enough reasons.

There are also forms of grief that can particularly benefit from professional support. Complicated grief, sometimes called prolonged grief disorder, is a state in which grief has not been able to move and has become entrenched in a way that prevents functioning. Traumatic grief, where the death itself was sudden, violent or otherwise traumatic, often requires both grief support and trauma-informed work. Grief that has been suppressed or denied for a long time and is only now surfacing may need particular care in how it is approached.

It is also worth seeking support if grief appears to be sliding into depression: if hopelessness is spreading into all areas of life, if there is no relief from the heaviness, or if the grief has an all-encompassing quality that makes it hard to function. These presentations can look like grief but require different support, and a therapist can help distinguish between them and identify what is most useful.

There is also the grief that people carry quietly, without telling others, without naming it as grief, because it does not come with the social permission of a recognised loss. If you are carrying something that is depleting you and that loss-adjacent in any form, it is worth bringing it into a space where it can be properly attended to. You can also read more on the services page.

• What are the stages of grief?
  The five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, were developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to describe the experiences of terminally ill patients. Research has not consistently supported this as a universal or sequential model of grief. Most grief researchers now prefer models that emphasise the non-linear, individual and oscillating nature of grief experience.
• Is it normal to not cry when grieving?
  Yes. Grief takes many forms and tears are only one of them. Numbness, flatness, going through the motions, or feeling fine for stretches and then suddenly not at all are all common grief experiences. There is no right way to grieve, and the absence of visible distress does not mean the grief is not real or significant.
• How long does grief last?
  There is no fixed timeline. Some losses are carried for a lifetime in some form. What tends to change is not that grief disappears but that it becomes more integrated, less acute and more able to be carried alongside ordinary living. The goal of grief support is not to end the grief but to help it become workable.
• What is the difference between grief and depression?
  Grief tends to ebb and flow, with waves of intense emotion alternating with periods of relative functioning. Depression is more persistent, pervasive and tends to affect all areas of life regardless of external circumstances. If grief is not lifting, is spreading into areas unconnected to the loss, or involves persistent hopelessness, professional support is worth seeking.
• Can therapy help with grief?
  Yes. Therapy for grief does not try to speed up or resolve grief but to provide a space in which it can be experienced, expressed and gradually integrated. A Gestalt approach works with grief as it is present right now: in the body, in the session, in whatever form it takes today. It can also help with grief that has been suppressed or has become stuck and unable to move.