SaneLife

I move on to grief.

The four stages of grief are denial, anger, depression, and bargaining. Acceptance is not a stage of grief but rather the stage after one goes through the grieving stages. The four stages of grief are often applied to intense moments in your life that are difficult to deal with, such as the death of a loved one, because they are easier to see in these applications. However, the reality is you go through these stages much more often than a few times in your life. You go through the stages of grief every time you grieve over the smallest of things, just not on the same scale.

Imagine you are looking forward to a dinner party with a friend which gets canceled shortly before it is supposed to take place. What do you feel? Anger? Sadness? Do you question whether or not your friend could do this? Do you try to bargain? It might not be all of these things like in more intense cases of grief, but it is definitely one of them. Does this not explain almost all of human emotion? Fear and worry are really just you not wanting something to happen that you will cause you grief. Denial, anger, sadness, and bargaining are tools you use to help your psyche deal with the things you grieve.

I propose that acceptance of what is real is the only way to vanquish these emotions. If you truly accept that your friend canceled dinner a little to late for comfort, then how can you grieve?