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WrongSubFools t1_iv0aczg wrote

The five stages were initially never about grieving the loss of a loved one. Instead, they were supposed to be about accepting your own impending death.

Denial, for example, is a normal response when you learn you a disease will kill you but is not a normal response to a loved one dying. (If someone insists their spouse isn't actually dead, that is not normal grief but a severe delusion.) Bargaining, similarly, makes sense when facing your own death—you believe that if you make some changes, you will live, despite what doctors say—but has no actual equivalent when grieving ("maybe we can bring them back" is not a reasonable response).

The Simpsons interestingly enough got this exactly right, applying it to Homer learning of his impending death rather than to grief after loss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYN4CllWuiM

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aris_ada t1_iv0l9mk wrote

> is not a normal response to a loved one dying. (If someone insists their spouse isn't actually dead, that is not normal grief but a severe delusion.)

I agree with all you said especially that the "stages of grief" have been widely used out of any scientific context. But I definitively remember being in denial of my father's death during half of the car trip. I did not try bargaining obviously, after I saw his body all I had was sadness and anger.

However I think these stages work with other emotional events like a separation. Bargaining is definitively within the range of emotional responses to your partner's announcing they're leaving, along with anger, sadness or denial.

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WrongSubFools t1_iv0n7qc wrote

Oh, I think it makes sense to react with denial to the news of a loved one's death. Just not to the death itself. I suppose when TV etc portrays the five stages, they too are talking about reacting to news, initially unconfirmed, of the death.

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PurpleHooloovoo t1_iv1b48t wrote

I think there is a bit of denial, in that the brain sometimes doesn't really process it. You don't really truly believe it, even after you've seen irrefutable proof, because to acknowledge it is to bring about that grief.

It isn't a logical, true, actual denial, but a (subconscious) denial by the brain of dealing with it. I've seen that personally happen. Rationally you know, but that pain is so great, the brain doesn't want to go there right away.

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mcnathan80 t1_iv26eea wrote

"Honey sit down. So-and-so is dead"

"WhAt!?!?" [denial]

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Rosemarin t1_iv1yrq4 wrote

I believe the five stages apply better to the "death" of a relationship, for example a divorce. Especially when one partner wants to end it and the other don't. The one who wants the relationship to continue often experience these five stages, although not necessarily in that particular order.

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