The Five Stages of Grief Are Not a Straight Line.

Here's What They Really Feel Like, Including Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive.

SUMMARY

The five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, were first described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969. They are not a checklist or a straight line: most people move back and forth between them, skip some and revisit others. Grief is also not only about death. You can grieve a relationship, a future you imagined, or a person who is still alive but is no longer the person you thought they were, which is common after a toxic relationship. For that kind of grief, the no-contact method is often what allows healing to begin.

QUICK ANSWER

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They don't happen in order, and there is no timetable. Many people also describe a sixth stage, finding meaning or growth. You can grieve someone who is still alive, such as a toxic ex, and that grief often needs no contact to settle.

Grief is not just about losing someone you love. It's also about losing the version of you who existed when they were still in your life. It's the silence that follows the chaos. The moment you reach for your phone to call them, and remember you can't. Or, just as painfully, the moment you reach for your phone to call someone who is still alive, and remember you mustn't.

We often think grief looks like tears. In truth, it looks like shock, numbness, guilt, anger and confusion, and a strange sense that the world keeps turning while yours has stopped.

And then there are the tears. Crying is one of the most natural parts of grief, and one of the most misunderstood. Tears are not a sign that you are falling apart. Research links crying to the parasympathetic nervous system, the "rest and digest" side of your nervous system that helps bring your body down from distress. The relief often isn't instant: many people feel worse in the moment and calmer a little while later. Crying also signals to the people around you that you need comfort, and studies suggest people feel the most relief when someone is there to support them. So when the tears come, let them. Your body is doing exactly what it was built to do. And if they don't come, especially in the early days, that is normal too.

I have walked this path myself, after losing someone I loved very dearly to cancer, and I share my own experience of each stage below. This post walks through the stages of grief, not as boxes to tick, but as places you will move through again and again, including the kind of grief almost nobody names: grieving someone who is still alive.

What are the five stages of grief?

DEFINITION: The five stages of grief

A model first described by Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 bookOn Death and Dying: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

In plain terms: five common emotional responses to loss, which most people experience in some form, in their own order.

Kübler-Ross originally described these stages in people who were facing their own death. Later, with grief expert David Kessler, she applied them to people who were grieving someone else. In 2019, Kessler added a sixth stage, finding meaning, after the sudden death of his own son.

Four things about the stages of grief are widely misunderstood:

• They are not a straight line. Most people move back and forth between them, sometimes in the same day.

• Not everyone goes through every stage. A study published in JAMA in 2007 found that acceptance was often present from early on, and that yearning, not denial or anger, was the strongest negative feeling in grief.

• There is no timetable. Grief does not end on a particular date, and "moving on" is not the goal.

• Grief is not only about death. We grieve relationships, roles, pets, futures, and people who are still alive.

Grief is also layered. When someone dies, leaves or changes, we also lose the safety of knowing who we were in that relationship, the life we imagined together, and the sense of belonging they gave us. You don't just lose them. You lose the you who laughed with them, depended on them, or felt loved because of them. That's why grief shakes the foundation of who you are.

In short: the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and they describe common experiences of loss, not a fixed path.

What does each stage of grief feel like?

Stage one: shock and denial

I still remember the phone call that changed everything. The voice on the other end was calm, almost too calm, as if saying the words softly could make them less real. For a moment, time folded in on itself. The hum of the fridge. The ticking of the clock. The ordinary sounds of life carried on, while mine shattered. And yet I didn't cry. I stood up, boiled the kettle, made a cup of tea and answered an email. I remember thinking, what is happening?! I think I feel ok.....

I wasn't ok. I was in shock, and denial had taken the wheel.

Denial is the mind's way of cushioning unbearable pain. It isn't avoidance. It's protection. Your nervous system can't absorb the full impact all at once, so it lets reality in a piece at a time.

In denial, you might:

• feel detached, as though you're watching your life from a distance,

• go through the motions on autopilot,

• forget for a moment, then be hit by the truth again like a wave,

• wonder what's wrong with you for feeling nothing.

There's nothing wrong with you. You're not heartless. You're protecting your heart until it's safe enough to feel again.

Stage two: anger

Anger arrives when the numbness starts to crack. The first time it hit me, it came out of nowhere, sharp, hot and loud. I felt savage, consumed by something wild and uncontrollable. The questions came thick and fast, with nowhere to land. So I did the only thing I could: I laced up my trainers and ran. Half the run, I cried. The other half, I argued with the universe, each question screaming in my head as if shouting loud enough might finally bring an answer:

• "How could they leave me?"

• "Why didn't anyone do something?"

• "They must have a cure for cancer by now, this is bullshit!!."

And then came the one that cut the deepest: "Why didn't I see the illness sooner? Why didn't I intervene?"

Anger doesn't always make sense. It flares at the wrong people, at the wrong moments, and often at yourself, I become my own punchbag during this time. But underneath the rage is helplessness, and beneath that, love. Anger is love's defender. It's your heart saying, this mattered. They mattered.

When anger takes hold, let it move safely:

• Move your body. Run, punch a bag, dance until you're breathless.

• Write an unsent letter. Say everything, then tear it up, or burn it.

• Say it out loud to someone who will listen without judging or fixing.

Anger means you're starting to feel again. It's not a step backwards. It's a milestone.

Stage three: bargaining

What if I'd called earlier? If only I'd noticed the signs. Those thoughts loop endlessly. You replay the story, rewriting scenes, imagining different endings, trying to make sense of something that will never make sense. Bargaining is grief's attempt to negotiate with reality. It isn't logic. It's longing: love trying to find a loophole. The way through isn't to silence the "what ifs", but to meet them with compassion, and to forgive: them, yourself, and life for not following your plan.

Stage four: depression

Then comes the stillness. The texts slow down. Everyone else goes back to their lives, and you're still here. You wake up heavy. You make a cup of tea and leave it untouched. And that's when it lands: they're not coming back....

Depression in grief isn't a disorder to fix. It's the body and heart saying,I can't keep pretending I'm okay. You might lose interest in things you used to love, feel waves of sadness triggered by a song or a smell, or withdraw because you can't bear the small talk. Depression in grief isn't the absence of love. It's the proof of it: love with nowhere to go. Rest when you need to. Cry when you must. Say their name when it feels right.

Stage five: acceptance

Acceptance doesn't arrive with a fanfare. You catch yourself laughing at something on TV, and for a split second you forget. Then guilt creeps in: how can I laugh when they're gone? Moments like that are the beginning of acceptance.

Acceptance isn't moving on. It's moving forward with.

For me, the moment I knew I had reached acceptance was when I could hear her name. For so long, hearing it had been unbearable: I would break down and not be able to function. Then one day, someone said her name, and I didn't react so strongly. Instead, almost immediately, I felt gratitude. Gratitude for her, for everything we shared, and for everything she taught me.

In that moment, I felt both tears and, dare I say, joy. A happiness that she existed, that we existed. Right on its heels came guilt, that small, cruel voice whispering,"You can't be grateful for this. She's gone." But I learned that voice was simply grief trying to pull me back into despair. Gratitude doesn't diminish love or sadness. It honours it. It says,"Even though I've lost you, I will forever be thankful that I had you."

A sixth stage: meaning and growth

From that gratitude, growth begins. For me, it started with whispering thank you instead of why:

Thank you for your love.
Thank you for the lessons.
Thank you for the time, however short, that we were lucky enough to share.

Psychologists call this post-traumatic growth: the positive change some people experience after a life-shaking loss. You understand that tomorrow is never guaranteed, so you start to live differently. You connect more deeply. Grief has a way of carving empathy into your bones.

DEFINITION: Post-traumatic growth

Positive psychological change experienced as a result of struggling with a highly challenging life event, described by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun.

In plain terms: the ways a loss can deepen your compassion, priorities and appreciation of life, without making the loss any less painful.

In short: each stage of grief is a form of love adjusting to loss, and many people find meaning and growth on the other side of it.

"Shouldn't I be over it by now?"

I understand why it feels that way, this question came up often for me. The world seems to give you a few weeks of sympathy, then expects you to be back to normal. When you're still crying months later, or feel fine for a week and then fall apart in a supermarket, it can feel as though you're doing grief wrong. Here's where that feeling comes from. The stages of grief were never meant to be a timetable, and research shows healthy grief doesn't move in one direction.

DEFINITION: The dual process model of grief

A model developed by Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut in 1999, which describes healthy grieving as moving back and forth between facing the loss and attending to everyday life and the changes the loss brings.

In plain terms: switching between grieving and living is not a setback. It's how grief works.

Here is the reframe I give the people I work with. Grief isn't something you simply get over, never to feel again. I see it as a circle, divided into the stages. Each time you move through a stage, facing it and working through it, the circle of grief gets a little smaller. By the time you reach acceptance, and move into meaning and growth, it has shrunk small enough to fit into the hole the loss left behind. It doesn't disappear. It becomes something you can carry more easily.

EXAMPLE(details combined from several clients and changed to protect confidentiality)

They came to me eight months after a bereavement, convinced they were "going backwards" because a song in a café had reduced them to tears. They'd been fine for weeks. We mapped their last month on paper: the good days, the hard days, the days they had worked, laughed and slept well. The hard days were real, but so were the others. Seeing them side by side, they said, "I'm not going backwards. I'm going back and forth." That shift alone took a weight off them.

In short: there is no deadline for grief, and moving back and forth between pain and everyday life is a healthy part of it.

Can you grieve someone who is still alive?

This is the part of the conversation almost nobody is having. Yes, you can grieve someone who is still alive, and it is one of the most confusing kinds of grief there is.

DEFINITION: Ambiguous loss

A term introduced by family therapist Pauline Boss for a loss that is unclear or unresolved, where a person is physically present but psychologically absent, or physically absent but psychologically present.

In plain terms: grieving someone who is still here, but is no longer the person you knew, or never really was.

In my clinical experience, this kind of grief is very common after a toxic or coercively controlling relationship. You're not grieving a death. You're grieving:

• the person you believed they were at the start,

• the future you planned together,

• the hope that one day things would go back to how they were,

• the version of yourself that existed before the relationship changed you.

And because they're still alive, the loss never quite feels final. There's no funeral, no cards, and often very little sympathy. It can hit hardest at times like Christmas, which I write about in Your First Christmas After a Toxic Relationship.

DEFINITION: Disenfranchised grief

A term introduced by grief researcher Kenneth Doka in 1989 for grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially supported or publicly mourned.

In plain terms: grief that other people don't recognise, so you end up carrying it alone.

People say, "Why are you upset? You left them." But leaving doesn't stop the grief. Often, it's where the grief begins.

Why no contact is part of the grieving process

Here's what makes this kind of grief so hard to move through: every time there's contact, it starts again. A message, a photo on social media, news from a mutual friend: each one reopens the wound and pulls you back to the start. Brain-imaging research by Helen Fisher and colleagues has shown that seeing a photo of someone who rejected you activates the brain's reward and craving systems, the same systems involved in addiction.

You can't move through the stages of grief while the person you're grieving keeps reappearing in your life. That's why, in my view, no contact is not just a boundary. It's part of the grieving process. It gives the loss an ending, so your nervous system can finally begin to let go. No contact means far more than blocking a number. I explain the full method, step by step, in The No-Contact Method: Why Blocking Your Ex Isn't Enough.

If you share children, or the person is family

You may not be able to cut contact completely. Keep contact brief, written and practical, and only about what has to be discussed. Grieve the relationship you hoped for, while managing the one you actually have.

In short: you can grieve someone who is still alive, and after a toxic relationship the no-contact method is often what allows that grief to finally move.

What should you do now?

If you're grieving right now, this is where I suggest you put your energy:

• Name the loss. Write down what you've lost, including the hopes, roles and future, not only the person.

• Let the stages come in any order. Notice which one you're in today, without judging it.

• Move your body. Grief lives in the nervous system. Walking, running or stretching helps it move.

• Talk to someone safe. Grief that is witnessed is easier to carry than grief that is hidden.

• If you're grieving someone still alive, close the door. Put the no-contact method in place, so every message doesn't restart the grief.

• Be patient with yourself. Grief is love that hasn't found where to go yet.

In short: name the loss, let the stages come as they come, and give your grief the conditions it needs to move.

When should you get help?

Grief is not an illness, and most people find their way through it with time and support. But for some people, grief stays intense and disabling for a long time. The World Health Organization's ICD-11 recognises prolonged grief disorder, where intense longing for, or preoccupation with, the person who died lasts at least six months and seriously affects daily life.

Get support if:

• your grief is not easing at all after six months or more,

• you can't function at work or at home,

• you feel life has no meaning without the person,

• you're using alcohol or other things to numb the pain,

• or you're grieving someone still alive and keep being pulled back into contact.

In short: if grief is still overwhelming after six months, or is stopping you living your life, it's time to get support.

Frequently asked questions

What are the five stages of grief?

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They were first described by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. They are common emotional responses to loss, not a fixed sequence: most people move back and forth between them, skip some and revisit others.

Do the stages of grief happen in order?

No. The stages of grief don't happen in a set order, and not everyone experiences all of them. Research published in JAMA in 2007 found that acceptance was often present early on, and that yearning was the strongest negative feeling. The dual process model describes healthy grief as moving back and forth between facing the loss and getting on with daily life.

Is there a sixth stage of grief?

Many people describe a sixth stage. Grief expert David Kessler, who co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, proposed finding meaning as a sixth stage in his 2019 book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Psychologists also describe post-traumatic growth: positive change that can come from struggling with a major loss.

Can you grieve someone who is still alive?

Yes. Grieving someone who is still alive is known as ambiguous loss, a term introduced by family therapist Pauline Boss. It's common after a toxic or controlling relationship, when you grieve the person you thought they were, the future you planned and the hope that things would change. Because they're still alive, the loss can feel unfinished, which is why no contact often helps.

Why is no contact important when grieving a toxic relationship?

No contact gives the loss an ending. Every message, social media post or piece of news about the person can restart the grief and the craving for them. Brain-imaging research shows that seeing someone who rejected you activates the brain's reward and craving systems. Removing every route of contact lets the stages of grief move forward instead of starting again.

How long does grief last?

There is no set timeline. Many people find grief becomes easier to carry over the first year or two, while still feeling waves on anniversaries or special days. If intense grief lasts six months or more and seriously affects daily life, it may be prolonged grief disorder, and specialist support can help.

If you're grieving, you don't have to carry it alone

If you're grieving right now, whether it's someone who has died or someone who is still alive but lost to you, I completely understand how heavy that can feel, and I would be more than happy to help. I always start with a consultation call, so we can talk through your situation in depth. From there, we can explore what working together would look like: making sense of what you've lost, giving your grief room to move, and helping you find yourself again.

Book a consultation call with me here. I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Rebecca P. Fox
Psychotherapist | Educator | Author
Read more about Rebecca here

IMPORTANT

This article is for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for therapy, medical advice or specialist bereavement support about your circumstances. Cruse Bereavement Support helpline: 0808 808 1677. If you are in crisis or feel unable to keep yourself safe, call Samaritans free on 116 123, any time, day or night. If you are in immediate danger, call 999.

References

• Kübler-Ross, E. (1969).On Death and Dying. Macmillan.

• Kübler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005).On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss. Scribner.

• Kessler, D. (2019).Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. Scribner.

• Maciejewski, P. K., Zhang, B., Block, S. D., & Prigerson, H. G. (2007). An empirical examination of the stage theory of grief.JAMA, 297(7), 716–723.https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.297.7.716

• Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description.Death Studies, 23(3), 197–224.https://doi.org/10.1080/074811899201046

• Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence.Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01

• Gračanin, A., Bylsma, L. M., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2014). Is crying a self-soothing behavior?Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 502.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00502

• Bylsma, L. M., Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M., & Rottenberg, J. (2008). When is crying cathartic? An international study.Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(10), 1165–1187.https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2008.27.10.1165

• Fisher, H. E., Brown, L. L., Aron, A., Strong, G., & Mashek, D. (2010). Reward, addiction, and emotion regulation systems associated with rejection in love.Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(1), 51–60.https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.00784.2009

• Boss, P. (1999).Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Harvard University Press.

• Doka, K. J. (Ed.) (1989).Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow. Lexington Books.

• World Health Organization. ICD-11: 6B42 Prolonged grief disorder.https://icd.who.int/

• Cruse Bereavement Support. Helpline.https://www.cruse.org.uk/get-support/helpline/