Bonus： How the Stages of Grief Explain What You're Feeling During This Pandemic
Episode Stats
Summary
David Kessler is an expert in grief who worked with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, creator of the famous 5 Stages of Grief, and added his own sixth, The Roadmap to Loss. In this special episode, he walks us through how the five stages of grief explain how we're often feeling these days during the pandemic, and how we can work through the sixth, Acceptance.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of people have been feeling out of sorts, angry, sad,
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frustrated, and just plain bummed out. Part of the reason for these feelings is obvious,
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and part has been hard to articulate and understand. That's probably why a recent
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interview the Harvard Business Review did with David Kessler went viral when it named the issue
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point blank. Kessler said, what we're all experiencing is grief. He's an expert on the
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subject who worked with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, creator of the famous five stages of grief,
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and also added his own sixth stage, The Roadmap to Loss. That interview resonated so much with me
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and others that I thought it'd be useful to bring Kessler on the show to talk through his perspective
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in a short, special episode of the AOM podcast. Kessler walks us through how the five stages of
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grief explain how we're often feeling these days during the pandemic, and how we can also work
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through the sixth stage of grief in order to find meaning in a dark time. After the show's over,
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check out our show notes at awim.is slash grief.
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So you are a grief counselor. You're an expert in grief. In fact, you've worked with a lot of
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organizations, first responder agencies during disasters to help there with counseling. How did
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you get involved with grief counseling? Well, you know, it's one of those careers that
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you don't choose it, it kind of chooses you. I grew up with a mother who was in and out of hospitals,
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and when I was 13 years old, she was dying in an ICU. At the same time, the hotel where we were at,
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one of the first mass shootings in the U.S. happened. So I was literally at 13,
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having a mother die and a mass shooting. So it really gave me a glimpse, more than a glimpse,
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it gave me a, you know, a overwhelming view of how we die poorly in this world, you know,
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being isolated in an ICU, as she was back then, as well as tragedies that happened, such as that
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shooting. So that's really what got me onto this career.
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And in your career, you had the opportunity to work with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, which she was
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the individual who really kick-started the hospice movement in America, and she also came up with that
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idea of the five stages of grief. How did you start working with her?
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So Elizabeth had done On Death and Dying in 1969, which was a groundbreaking book.
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I, like many people, I was in community college and thought I would take a death and dying class and
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studied her work. Then, obviously, later on, it became my career. And I was fortunate to end up
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writing two books with her, Life Lessons and then On Grief and Grieving. And we, in On Grief and Grieving,
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adapted her stages of dying to stages of grief. I always point out to people, literally on page one,
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we said to everyone, they're not a map for grief. They don't have to be sequential or linear.
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Your grief is as unique as your fingerprint, just so people understood that. And the stages,
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for anyone who might not know them, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
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So we often think of grief exclusively in terms of someone dying. But you make the case that while
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the grief we experience of the loss of a loved one is the worst, we also experience a grief with
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any kind of loss, whether it's a divorce, a job loss, and this pandemic we're going through as well.
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So how do the five phases of grief apply to our current crisis?
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Denial. I can't believe this is happening. This cannot be happening. I just can't believe it.
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That's what denial feels like. I can't believe in our modern world there's a pandemic of a virus
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and I have to stay home. Anger. Anger is, I'm furious this is happening. I'm really angry this
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is happening. And why wasn't more done? Or why aren't we doing more? Why aren't people participating
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more? I'm angry about that. Bargaining is the deal making. Okay, let me get this straight.
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If I have two weeks at home, then we can go back to a normal life, right? Right? That's the deal.
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And then depression, sadness. My gosh, I think that world we knew is gone. I think our normal world
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has just evaporated in front of our own eyes. And then acceptance. All right, the reality is this is
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happening. How can I get this together? What can I do? Where can I find some control? And acceptance
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is really where our power lies. That's where we can take action.
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What I think is so helpful about thinking about what we're experiencing in terms of grief
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is that it puts a name to things that people are feeling but maybe haven't been able to articulate
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for what it is. So many people during this pandemic are like going, I don't know why I burst into tears.
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I don't know why I have such a heaviness. I don't know why I'm so angry with an edge.
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And I'm like, it's grief. You're feeling grief. The world we know and loved has now disappeared.
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The other thing that I think we experience in our modern world, and we're one of the first
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generations, it's a bit of a byproduct of the self-help movement, is we're the first generation
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that has feelings on feelings. We get angry, but we shouldn't be angry. We're sad, but there's people
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who have it worse. We shouldn't be sad. And I always tell people, stay in your first generation
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feelings. You know, allow yourself to organically feel whatever you feel without judgment.
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You know, because the truth is, if you just feel your feelings, they'll pass through you in a few
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minutes. But we're suppressing all our feelings, and we end up with a world of half-felt feelings.
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You also make the point that you can experience a particular kind of grief, which comes not
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after a loss, but in anticipation of a loss. Tell us about how this anticipatory grief manifests in
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general, and how it applies to this pandemic, too.
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Sure. We all have healthy anticipatory grief. We know that someday when we get older, our parents
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will be getting older, too, and someday we'll have to deal with the loss of our parents. That's
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sort of our healthy anticipatory grief, that we're getting ready for that someday psychologically.
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And then, you know, the other time it happens is a loved one gets a diagnosis. And of course,
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you go, oh my goodness, I could lose my loved one. They could die from this.
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And what happens in our new modern world with the pandemic is we have anticipatory grief that our
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mind starts showing us images of, oh my goodness, my parents could die. My grandparents could die.
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I could die. And we have this unhealthy anticipatory grief where our mind is showing us all the worst
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And yeah, in this, I mean, particularly when you experience anticipatory grief, at least in my own
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experience, I've noticed that you do a lot of bargaining. It's like, well, if I do this, if I do
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this thing, then maybe this won't happen. So, you start making deals with God or just the universe.
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Right. And some of those deals can sometimes come true. If I physically distance myself,
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if I wash my hands all the time, if I, you know, take appropriate measures recommended,
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there is a higher chance that I will be okay. So, you know, it's important we find some reality in the
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dealmaking. And there are some, you know, and this is a world that, you know, unlike appliances does
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And the other thing with anticipatory grief that you write about is that oftentimes that
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anticipatory grief comes from the idea or maybe a dream we had. We know that's not going to happen
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because that loved one lost. I think you give an example in your book of you had a person you were
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working with where they moved their mother in next door. And she had this dream of, you know,
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her daughter going over to her mother's house and just this close connection. And then a few months
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later, she gets a terminal diagnosis and she started grieving at that moment.
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Yes. We all have what we call the assumptive world. The assumptive world is our parents are going
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to live to 95 years old and they're going to die in their sleep holding each other's hands.
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And we're going to have a wonderful life with kids who don't have problems. And, you know,
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our marriages will be great. And we're all going to live to 80, 90 ourselves. And then we'll die
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peacefully. And what happens is death ends up interfering with those assumptions. We don't live in a perfect
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world anymore. We don't live, you know, death does ruin our illusions, our dreams.
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And with the pandemic, I'm sure there's a lot of that going on. People had these plans, like, you
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know, college students, they graduated college. I'm going to get a job. I'm going to get married or
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someone, they just, they started a business and now this has happened. And now they're, there's just,
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they don't know if it's going to happen, if they're going to be able to make it. And so they're
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experiencing that anticipatory grief of that, that assumptions or those dreams they had
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disappearing. Correct. Well, you know, so, so for tamping down this anticipatory grief,
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you recommend concentrating on things you can control and trying to stay in the present.
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Anything else people can do to get a handle on their anticipatory grief?
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Well, I think it's so important as we begin to witness our mind picture, the worst scenarios. Oh my
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gosh, my parents could die. My grandparents could die. I could die. To also notice the best scenarios
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that can happen. You know, my parents actually might not get this. My grandparents might get this
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and it might be mild. I mean, I just saw on the news, a hundred and four year old is recovering
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from the virus. So it's important as fear takes root to say, you know, the worst scenarios can happen,
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but so can the best ones. So in your book, Finding Meaning, you make this case that there's
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another phase that we go through and it's meaning making. When did you start formulating this idea
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that meaning making was part of the grieving process? And what do you mean by meaning making?
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Well, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and I had often talked about, you know, what's after acceptance? And one of
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the things that, you know, bothered me and her in her lifetime was that these were becoming,
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you know, five easy steps for grieving. And anyone who's had a loved one die knows there's no five
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easy steps for grieving. And grief is a very organic, messy process. But acceptance was taking
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on a finality that Elizabeth and I never intended. And then I had written a few chapters on meaning and
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how meaning might work in grief. And three years ago, my younger son, David, died suddenly,
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accidentally. And it was just brutal as you could imagine and or not imagine for that matter. And
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I just knew after his death, as I began to toy with the idea in the months following that I have to find
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some acceptance, I realized acceptance wasn't enough. I wanted more. I wanted meaning. And I started
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interviewing people who had had a spouse die and a parent die and a sibling die and began to learn
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how they were all finding meaning. And so one of the things that I realized is that meaning doesn't
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take away the pain, but it becomes a cushion for us. So I ended up writing a book called Finding
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Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief. I'm so honored the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation and family
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gave me permission to add a stage to her iconic stages. And the meaning that we find is not in
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the death. Someone dying a horrible death of cancer or death by suicide or death by addiction or
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death by the coronavirus. I mean, those, there's not meaning in the death, but there's meaning that
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Yeah, that idea that people are trying to find meaning in the death. I mean, I think a lot of times
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when people see someone grieving, you know, in an effort to comfort, they'll just say, well,
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you know, everything happens for a reason. But I think a lot of people...
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Yeah, and my response to that is, yeah, what's your reason? I could use a good reason, what you got?
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Yeah. So that's not what meaning making means. It means trying to fit this loss into a larger
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Well, meaning is the light within the darkness. I mean, I did a lot of studying of Viktor Frankl,
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and I was just so fascinated by, you know, how he saw in concentration camps, light in the
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darkness. How could they still appreciate a sunset or a loaf of bread when people around
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them were dying? And so when I looked at that, I thought about what does meaning look like in grief?
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And what I found is meaning can be what we do after to honor their life, what we do to make sure
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they're not forgotten. It's the meaningful moments we create with one another. It is so many
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different senses of meaning that helps us in that. And I think, you know, one of the things that I was
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really writing about was post-traumatic growth. We all talk about post-traumatic stress, but I wanted to
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know about post-traumatic growth. And that's what really interests me.
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And how do you think people can apply the meaning-making stage of grief to this pandemic?
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It's by recognizing meaningful moments. You know, for us to end up after this with post-traumatic
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growth instead of post-traumatic stress is those meaningful moments. You and I are having a meaningful
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moment right now. I hope people who are listening will find this meaningful. I live on a street where
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I've seen something I've never seen before in 20 years of living here. The front yards are full of
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parents playing with their children because their children can't have playdates with other children.
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Those are meaningful moments. FaceTiming with people, those are meaningful moments. So many of these
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Yeah. I love that idea of trying to find opportunities. To me, it's kind of defiant
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in a way. You know, like I'm still getting together with friends on Zoom so we can just talk and
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chat. Absolutely. Someone I know had like Sunday night dinner with their family and like they had
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a picture of all of them on Zoom. I thought that was great.
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Yeah. There does seem to be plenty of silver linings if you look for them. I mean, I'm seeing people
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walk around in my neighborhood, people I've never seen outside their homes before. As you said,
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parents are outside interacting with their kids. And it does seem to be this inflection point in
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our culture where people have slowed down, they're stepped outside, their normal go, go, go routines,
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and they're finally thinking about what's important and whether the way they normally do things is the
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way they want to continue to do things. Well, David, this has been a great conversation. Where can
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Grief.com. They can find the book Finding Meaning on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and their local indie
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bookstore website. It's available. And they just reduced the price of the hardcover, which is out
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now. So I'm glad they did that so everyone can access it. And I also put up a special page at
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sixstage.com so people can get a free online course about how to find meaning. So lots of resources and
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people can find me on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all those things. My handle is usually
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IamDavidKessler. So I look forward to connecting with people on all those virtual ways and hopefully
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someday in person again when I can do lectures and retreats again.
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Fantastic. Well, David Kessler, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
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My guest today was David Kessler. He's the author of the book Finding Meaning, The Sixth Stage of Grief.
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It's available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work.
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Check out his website, grief.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash grief.
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Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at
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