Grief is one of the most complex emotions and can lead to all sorts of responses. To learn how to shift your negative thoughts to more positive ones while grieving, first you should understand a bit about the grieving process. Experts have broken down the emotional journey of grief into approximately seven stages  Depression is most likely to persist with unresolved grief, so in order to achieve the final stage and be able to live your life without feeling the intense emotions, you should try to identify which stage you are at and seek ways to move onto the next stage.

The 7 stages of grief:

*Note: People experience grief differently. The “seven stages of grief” are a general outline for the feelings that are displayed after a traumatic event, but as people move through life and are at different levels of maturity, spirituality, and experience, these stages will manifest differently and for different amounts of time. The stages give us a way of understanding and processing our feelings, but really grief can be felt in numerous ways and has a different impact on everyone.

  1. Shock – This is an initial stage of denial where you cannot fathom the reality of the situation. The event is too far outside of reality for you to believe that it could be true.
  2. Withdrawal – By inhibiting yourself from activities, this gives you a sense of control. This helps you to feel safe when the situation itself cannot be regulated.
  3. Frustration, anger, and bargaining – This can be immediate or strike later on. You feel mad at the world, at yourself, and are passionately upset about the event. You think of “what if…” or “if only I could have done this…” scenarios.
  4. Panic, pain, and guilt – As you start to come to terms with reality, the initial shock starts to feel more real, and you are in a continuous state of worry and concern.
  5. Depression – Feeling sad, hopeless, useless, lonely, and empty. Depression comes with symptoms like a lack of sleep, a lack of motivation, and a cognitive withdrawal from everyday activities. You are so down that you cannot see any hope for the future. Prolonged feelings of depression and anger can have lasting impacts on mood and are difficult to simply “snap out” of. Having a sense of closure (i.e. attending a funeral, saying prayers for loved ones, expressing emotions about the situation) is important to diminish the long term negative effects of grief and avoids depressive states that are beyond the normal level of sadness while grieving.
  6. Detachment – Feeling unable to move on with life because of such attachment to the deceased, so you find a way to eventually detach yourself from concentrating on the pain of the loss.
  7. Adaptation – Detachment is followed by accepting reality and finding ways to move on with regular life. Of course, it will be difficult to continue life with complete ease and there will always be a part of you who is still in pain, but if you can resolve the feelings of anger and can contribute to daily life’s activities, this means you’re starting to accept that grief is a part of life and now a new part of your identity.

 

References

Flatt, B. (1987). Some Stages of Grief. Journal of Religion and Health, 26(2), 143–148. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/27505917

Gustafson, D. (1989). Grief. Noûs, 23(4), 457–479. https://doi.org/10. 2307/2215878

Zisook, S., & DeVaul, R. A. (2011, June 7). Grief, unresolved grief, and Depression. Psychosomatics. Retrieved May 31, 2022, from https://www.science direct.com/science/ article/pii/S0033318283732275

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