The 5 Phases Of Klüber-Ross’s Grief

Among the studies that investigate how we deal with death, possibly one of the best known is the Klüber-Ross 5 phases of grief. This theory talks about the 5 phases a person goes through when facing death, whether it’s oneself or a loved one. Klüber-Ross’s studies became very popular but they were also very misinterpreted, probably due to their poor publicity.

In 1969 psychologist Elizabeth Klüber-Ross carried out a series of studies with terminal patients. His intention was to find the factors behind coping with death. After an arduous investigation, she realized that these patients were going through a series of very similar steps. This is where he began to develop his theory of the 5 phases of grief and its implications.

In this article, we will try to elucidate the Klüber-Ross theory of phases of grief. First, to do so, we are going to expose the different phases and explain each one of them. As a conclusion, we will make a small reflection on the evidence and implications of the mourning phase theory.

Phases of mourning for Klüber-Ross

• Denial. This phase implies the attitude of denying or ignoring the existence of the proximity of death. This denial can be total (“I can’t be dying”) or partial (“I have metastasis, but it’s no big deal”). Denial reflects a defensive attitude of self. Our mind searches for a way to maintain our well-being despite being in a situation of maximum impotence.
• Will.  Anger is an emotion that arises to face an obstacle. It is normal that, when faced with negative news, the body seeks solutions through anger. She can have victims or different and varied objects, from herself, a doctor or even “divine figures”.
• Negotiation. After noticing the inability to resolve the problem through anger, the negotiation phase appears. The desperate person asks fate or various divine figures to make death disappear. It is common for a person to be docile in the hope of prolonging his life with good behavior. For example, a person can religiously obey all medical prescriptions.

• Depression. When the disease gets worse or the reality of the facts imposes itself, depression appears. The person falls into a strong despair due to the overwhelming feeling of impotence. Deep sadness fulfills the function of minimizing the expenditure of the body’s resources in the face of the need to use them to try to recover.
• Acceptance. Once the feeling of impotence that can arise in the face of loss has passed and assimilated, we move to a less intense and more neutral mood. Of course there are still moments and moments. But most of the time, in the acceptance phase, the person will be able to take in what happened, lift their heads and look to the future, and positively reinterpret the meaning of the loss without blaming anything or anyone.

Evidence and implications of theory

The Klüber-Ross theory has already suffered numerous criticisms. A very frequent one, and quite understandable when reading the original formulation of the theory, has to do with its rigidity. In the original formulation, a person went through the different phases in a determined order and could only stay in one phase or move on to the next. Current research, however, and perhaps also your personal experience, has shown that this is not entirely correct. There are points along the way where setbacks often occur, or even people who skip some steps or go through all of them in some other different order.

Now, it’s still certain that all phases play an important role in facing death, and that your mood is generally right when you think about most grief processes. On the other hand, perhaps it would be more correct to interpret the different states as attitudes towards the loss, and not as stages after it. In other words, they are ways we have to deal with the impotence we feel in such a situation.

Despite the Klüber-Ross theory being partially incomplete, its formulation undoubtedly represented a great advance in the understanding of the processes of mourning. His researches served to understand the depth of emotions present in moments of loss. The theory has even generated improvements in the treatment and monitoring of people who are in the situation contemplated, starting with the normalization of the feelings that arise. In addition, the model also allowed psychologists to deal much more skillfully in dealing with anticipated losses, such as terminal diagnoses.