Pavel Zygmantich: "Stages of experience in grief: not so simple"
The Internet user is used to to believe in psychology. At least at the most general level. Many of us, without blinking with the eye, use the terms - Gazlating, Stockholm syndrome, toxic wine ... But popularized knowledge is often simplified before the loss of some very important aspects. The psychologist Pavel Zyggmantovich tells how it happened with the five stages of making trouble.
This note is dedicated to the experience of grief and, perhaps, I'm a grief. What you heard about the stages of experience in grief, to put it mildly, not to the end corresponds to reality.
So let's start from the beginning. Many where on the Internet it is written that, faced with grief (loss or, for example, information on incurable disease), a person consistently lives five stages:
1. Denial (this is a mistake, this did not happen, in fact everything is wrong) 2. Anger (this is all because of you, it's you guilty while you are happy here, I have grief) .3. Bargaining (if I do something, then the situation will improve, you just need to want and correctly "agree"). Four. Depression (everything is terrible, everything is bad, the situation of hopeless) .5. Acceptance (I can not fix anything and understand that this is so, I do not feel impotence and horror from this)
The author of these five stages - Elizabeth Kübler-Ross - nominated them in 1969 on the basis of his rich experience with dying people.
And many it seemed that it was. Indeed, because it often happens that a person who faced, say, with the news "you have an incurable disease," the first thing does not believe in it. He says, they say, the doctor is a mistake, check again. He goes to other doctors, one examination occurs in the other, in the hope of hearing that previous Lekari was mistaken. Then, a person begins to be angry with doctors, then looking for ways to heal ("I understood, I lived wrong and because I got sick"), then, when nothing helps, a man falls around and looks into the ceiling, and then depression passes, a person is aspiring with his condition And begins to live in the current situation.
It seems, Kübler-Ross described everything correctly. That's just for this, the description was personal experience, and nothing more. A personal experience is a very bad assistant in research.
First, there is a Rosental effect, which in this particular case merges with the effect of the self-adjustable prophecy. Simply put, the researcher receives what he wants to get.
Secondly, there are many other cognitive distortions that do not allow to make an objective conclusion regarding something only on the basis of their personal conclusion based on experience. In order to carry out a lot of complicated and as if redundant operations in their research.
Kübler-Ross has not done such operations, the Rosental effect did not remove and as a result received a scheme that refers to reality only partially.
Indeed, it happens that the person runs exactly these five stages, and it is in such a sequence. And it happens that exactly in the opposite. And it happens that only some of these stages go through and in general in chaotic sequence.
So, for example, it turned out that not all people deny the loss. Let's say, out of 233 residents of Connecticut, who survived the loss of a spouse or spouse, most of the very beginning were not denied, but immediately humility. And no other stages were generally (at least for two years after loss).
By the way, the Connecticutian study should bring us another interesting thought - is it possible to talk about the staging of experiences in general, if people have experienced humility from the very beginning, without other stages of Kübler-Ross? Maybe there are no stages, but simply the forms of experiences, which are not connected with each other at all? Question…
In another study it was shown that, firstly, there are people who never resign with loss. And, secondly, that the "level of humility" depends, including from the questions of the researcher (hello the effect of Rosentyl).
The study was conducted among people who have lost their loved ones in the car accident (4-7 years after the accident). So, depending on the issues of researchers from 30 to 85 percent of respondents, they said that they still did not accept the loss.
In general, the experience of loss and / or grief is very contextually and depends on a huge number of factors - suddenness, level of relations, a common cultural context and many more, many, and many, and many. It is simply impossible to put all in one scheme. More precisely, it is possible if you come up with a scalp and avoid confirming the research schemes.
By the way, the Kübler-Ross itself wrote that the stages can be in a chaotic order and on them, in addition, you can stick to an indefinite time .... But this again returns us to the question - is there any stages at all? Maybe there are simply forms of living grief and in reality they are not linked to the scheme and / or sequence?
Alas, these natural questions prefer to ignore. And in vain ...
We will discuss such a question - why the scheme of Kübler-Ross, unproved and not reasonable, accepted with so fervor? I can only assume.
Most likely, the case is in the heuristics of accessibility. What is the heuristics of accessibility (eng. Availability HEURISTIC)? This is the evaluation process in which the criterion of correctness is not compliance with all the facts, but the ease of memories. What I remembered right away is true. The scheme of Kübler-Ross makes it easy to remember cases from your life, from movies, from the stories of friends and loved ones. Therefore, it seems that it is correct.
Is there any benefit from the Cubler-Ross scheme? Yes there is. If a person is authoritative to say that it will be like this, his condition may (maybe!) Improve. Definition, it happens, produces almost a magical effect. There are people who calm down when they know that they are waiting for them, regardless of the positivity or negativeness of the upcoming. Also, someone from those who collided with the grief may (maybe!) Get relief if you know what happens to him.
Is there harm from the Kübler-Ross scheme? Yes there is. If a person lives grief not according to this scheme, and he is told from all sides that it is necessary to live like this, a person can develop various complications. This is called yatrogen (harmful effect on the patient from the doctor). Such a person may later come to me with a sense of guilt: "I have been told that I have to deny the loss of my wife, and then be angry at all, but I'm not so ... I'm abnormal?" On the one hand, of course, I am earnings, and on the other - if a person had not rubbed, how to live mountains, he did not have this feeling of guilt.
So you can use the scheme in everyday life, but it is not necessary to popularize and extract for the universal one. From this can harm more than good.
Summarize. The scheme of Kübler-Ross is no longer confirmed, taken from the personal experience of the author, who, by definition, is not biased. This scheme is not universal, it is not valid for all people and far from all situations. This scheme has limited use, and sometimes the scheme can be applied. This scheme has obvious harm, and it is better not to popularize the scheme.
