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When someone loses a person they love, people often expect grief to follow a familiar pattern: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, eventually, acceptance.
You may have heard someone say, “You are still in the anger stage,” or “You have not reached acceptance yet.” But grief does not actually work like a five-step staircase.
The five stages are a well-known framework associated with Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. However, modern grief research shows that there is no universal sequence that every grieving person follows. Some people experience several of these emotions, some experience them in a different order and others may not identify with some of the stages at all.
Understanding this difference matters because telling a grieving person that they are “supposed” to be at a particular stage can create unnecessary guilt and pressure.
The five-stage model was introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. But there is an important detail that is often left out.
According to the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, her original work was based primarily on interviews with people facing terminal illness and their experiences of approaching death. It was not originally a scientific study demonstrating that everyone experiences bereavement through five predictable stages.
The five responses commonly associated with her model are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Over the years, however, the model became widely known as the “five stages of grief” and was increasingly applied to people grieving after the death of someone else.
Even the Kübler-Ross Foundation now stresses that the stages should not be understood as a rigid or linear timetable. A person can move between emotions, experience several simultaneously or not experience particular stages at all.
Denial can involve shock, disbelief or difficulty accepting that a death has occurred. Someone may initially feel emotionally numb rather than openly sad.
Anger can emerge as the reality of the loss becomes clearer. A grieving person might feel angry with themselves, medical professionals, family members, God or even the person who died.
Bargaining often involves thoughts about what might have happened differently. Someone may repeatedly think, “If only I had done this,” or imagine alternative outcomes.
Depression describes profound sadness, emptiness or withdrawal that can accompany bereavement. It is important, however, not to assume that every period of grief-related sadness means a person has clinical depression.
Acceptance does not mean that someone is happy about the death or has forgotten the person. It is better understood as gradually recognising the reality of the loss and learning how to live with it.
These descriptions can help people put words to difficult emotions. They become problematic when they are treated as compulsory stages.
No.
This is where the popular version of the theory differs significantly from what grief research has found.
People respond to bereavement in remarkably different ways. Some experience intense sadness immediately. Others remain relatively calm or emotionally numb. Some continue functioning at work while privately struggling. Others experience severe distress that gradually improves.
Some people also experience moments of happiness while grieving. Laughing with family, returning to work or enjoying an ordinary activity does not mean someone has stopped caring about the person who died.
Research supports this variation.
According to Bonanno and colleagues, a 2002 prospective study followed 205 people before and after the death of their spouses and identified several different patterns of bereavement, including common grief, chronic grief, depression, improvement and resilience. The researchers found that resilience was a particularly common response rather than an unusual failure to grieve.
A later population-based study involving 2,512 bereaved adults also identified different trajectories following the death of a spouse or child, including resilience, chronic grief, improvement and pre-existing depression.
These findings make one thing clear: grief is not a single road with five compulsory stops.
Grief can also change in ways that surprise people.
Someone may appear to be coping well during the first few months and then experience a painful period around a birthday, anniversary or family celebration. Another person may initially experience severe distress but gradually regain stability.
In a 2020 longitudinal study of 282 people who had lost a spouse, Bonanno and Malgaroli identified multiple trajectories of grief symptoms, including resilience, improving symptoms, prolonged symptoms and patterns in which distress increased or decreased over time.
Another study published in 2023 followed 175 recently bereaved spouses from three to 12 months after their loss. According to the researchers, four different patterns of depressive symptoms emerged: resilience, moderate depression that improved, severe depression that improved and chronic depression.
This is why comparing one person’s grief with another person’s experience can be misleading.
Grief itself is a normal human response to losing someone. There is no single deadline by which a person must “finish” grieving.
However, some people develop prolonged grief disorder, a recognised mental health condition involving persistent and disabling grief symptoms. It is different from simply grieving for a long time.
Research has found that a minority of bereaved people experience persistent and severe difficulties. A 2022 study tracking 259 bereaved people for up to two years identified resilient, chronic and acute-recovery patterns of prolonged grief symptoms.
Professional support can therefore be appropriate when grief remains severely disruptive, particularly when a person is struggling to function, becoming increasingly isolated or experiencing persistent and overwhelming distress.
Seeking help does not mean someone is grieving incorrectly. It means they may need additional support carrying something that has become too heavy to manage alone.
The five stages became popular partly because they gave people simple language for discussing experiences that are otherwise difficult to explain.
But the simplicity also created a lasting misconception.
Kübler-Ross’s original work was concerned with giving seriously ill people an opportunity to talk about their experiences of dying. The framework was later simplified and widely presented as a universal map of grief. According to the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation, that interpretation misses important parts of her original work and her later clarification that the stages were not intended to represent a fixed progression.
The evidence available today gives us a more complicated but ultimately more compassionate picture.
There is no correct timetable for grief. There is no requirement to experience all five stages. And reaching acceptance does not mean the pain disappears.
Grief can be chaotic, quiet, delayed, intense or surprisingly resilient. What matters is not whether someone is following Kübler-Ross’s five-stage model, but whether they are being given the time, understanding, relationships and professional support they may need to adjust to life after loss.
