How to Coach Yourself and Others Grief Coaching and Counseling | Page 11

THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance
The stages have evolved since their introduction and they have been very misunderstood over the past
three decades. They were never meant to help tuck messy emotions into neat packages. They are
responses to loss that many people have, but there is not a typical response to loss as there is no typical
loss. Our grief is as individual as our lives.
The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that
makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what
we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through
all of them or in a prescribed order. Our hope is that with these stages comes the knowledge of grief ’s
terrain, making us better equipped to cope with life and loss.