I have been thinking a lot about grief and loss lately. I googled the grief cycle and found changingminds.org. These folks are clearly out to help and they have a wealth of information. If you want to know about the grief cycle and other psychoanalytical theory, feel free to immerse yourself. If you want the cliff notes, read on.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, described the grief cycle as having seven stages:
Shock stage: Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
Anger stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
Bargaining stage: Seeking in vain for a way out.
Depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable.
Testing stage: Seeking realistic solutions.
Acceptance stage: Finally finding the way forward.
I am pretty certain that during the home invasion, I quickly worked through the shock stage and the denial stage. I distinctly remember thinking, "This can't be real. Who is playing this horrible joke?" That actually gave me pause when I confronted the first attacker (the guy who called me stupid, crazy, and threatened to tie me up because I defended MY family in MY home--some nerve). Over the next couple of days I sat firmly in the anger stage. Today I am somewhere in the last four at any given point in the day. Eventually I want to work into an eighth stage that Kubler-Ross does not discuss -- the forgiveness stage. I am sure I will tell you more about it when I get there.
The grief cycle does not give me a perfect picture of where I am now and where I need to go. I looked further and found a link for coping mechanisms. Sounds helpful, doesn't it? When you read it, you find a laundry list of things people do that are not actually moving them through the loss to resolution. Once again, not my answer.
Next I checked the link for the Positive Change Cycle. This sounds good to me. I read it and decided, once again, not for me. I think it's the part about "new heights of giddiness." This definitely is not yet a positive change.
Maybe the reason professional counselors charge what the do is because it takes a lot of work to interpret this stuff . . .
What is working for me? or rather "Who"? My faith in Christ Jesus as well as the prayers of my brothers and sisters in Christ are carrying me through. You can get some more perspective from my previous entry. I am sure the professionals have clinical terms and definitions, but unless they are rooted in the very creator of the universe, they miss the mark. My favorite Bible verse today: Psalm 121.
