The 5 Stages of Grief – Denial

This week I will tackle the five stages of grief, and how learning about our emotions can help us deal with difficult challenges in our lives. While this can apply to losing a loved one, it can also be applicable to losses that individuals experienced this last week in Texas. I trust this may help someone that is reading this today and in the week to come. I will preface that I am not a psychologist, and I’ve been studying human thoughts and behaviors since 2010 as a coach. The 5 Stages of Grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Today we dive into denial.

Denial is a copying mechanism that helps us endure the pain that is attributed to a loss or challenge in our lives. Denial can assist us in the process of facing a reality, and it can help with dealing with the emotional side effects that can be attributed to a loss or challenge. It can be difficult when things seem to be hitting on all cylinders, and bam, something happens that removes us from our typical norms; the loss of a loved one, divorce, frozen and busted pipes creating extensive property damage.

When we lose something that is important to us, our reality will shift. This shift in mindset may require time for us to make an adjustment to the new reality. We spend time reflecting on the experiences of what we’ve lost, and we wonder how to move forward without.

The thoughts that flood our head can be a lot to process, and it can be painful. Denial acts as a braking mechanism to slow us down so we can walk through the steps one at a time. This slowing down process also keeps us from being emotionally overwhelmed.

Denial is the mind’s way of pretending that the loss/new reality doesn’t exist. It also allows us to handle and absorb what we are experiencing. Tomorrow we will look at the next step of the Five Stages of Grief; Anger.