Stages of Grief

Grey's Anatomy says that there are five stages of grief:

1. denial
2. anger
3. bargaining
4. depression
5. acceptance

These stages actually make up the Kübler-Ross model of grief when a person is terminally ill. When you are grieving the loss of a loved one, the first three stages are slightly different:

1. disbelief
2. yearning
3. anger
4. depression
5. acceptance

photo by pareeerica and used under the Creative Commons license

While the majority of people do go through these stages, not everyone follows this model and not everyone goes from one stage to the next. Often the lines between each stage are blurred and it is possible to actually be experiencing more than one stage at once. Considering the diversity of human beings and how we deal with the situations we find ourselves in, some people skip stages or, as mentioned earlier, simply don't follow this model at all and instead behave entirely differently. Because of this, Psychology Today published an article by Russell Friedman of The Grief Recovery Institute about how there really is no set model for the stages of grief.

Following this model or not, I've found that dealing with grief can apply not only to the passing of a loved one but also to the end of a relationship. Relationships too must be mourned before it is possible to move on.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kübler-Ross_model

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/02/24/five-stages-of-grief/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/broken-hearts/200909/no-stages-grief