The Five Stages of Loss
In a famous piece of research, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five different stages of grief that people go through when mourning the death of a loved one. Sure, losing a job, being made redundant, or being fired, may not be quite as upsetting as this, however it can be a profoundly unhappy and stressful experience, and it can help to think in terms of Kübler-Ross's stages. These are:
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance.
Reprinted with the permission of Scribner Publishing Group, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from "On Death and Dying" by Dr Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Copyright © 1969 by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross; copyright renewed © 1997 by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. All rights reserved.
Not everyone experiences each stage the same way, or in the same time frame. You might skip a stage, or spend a long time in one stage and move quickly through the next one.
Also, your age and life situation might partly determine how long you spend in each stage, or whether you experience a certain stage at all. A younger worker with no mortgage payments and no children may experience denial and self-criticism, but then skip directly to acceptance. Workers who have more responsibilities might take longer to move to the acceptance stage, simply because more stress is involved.
Let's look at the stages in more detail, and think about what you can do to cope with each one....
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