[coldtea]

>The five stages of grief are ingrained in our cultural consciousness as the natural progression of emotions one experiences after the death of a loved one. However, it turns out that this model is not science-based, does not well describe most people's experiences, and was never even meant to apply to the bereaved.

I find it applies perfectly to what I see happening in all kind of personal grief (for others and for oneself) and unmovable threat settings, so couldn't care less if it was "science based", as long as it's a descriptive observation...

And, yes, obviously, not everybody will feel exactly the same. For an extreme example, some people are sociopaths and might not even feel anything at all, never mind this. Others are very shallow and selfish, and take selfies next to their parents coffins. But this is about a rough matching of what people feel and how they handle grief - not a topographical map of feelings.

[oxfordmale]

The problem is that this is not even a rough matching what people feel.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/supersurvivors/20170...

"In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Even Kubler-Ross said that grief doesn’t proceed in a linear and predictable fashion, writing toward the end of her career that she regretted her stages had been misunderstood."

[coldtea]

>In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions.

Roller-coasters still have a specific route and different stages. I'd say in the same way there can be a prevailing sentiment at each stage of grief, even if this or that sentiment comes and goes at times at all stages.

[SPBesui]

Metaphors are of course imperfect by their very nature, but more importantly, the phrase “a roller coaster of emotions” isn’t even really a metaphor. It’s a figure of speech that means one is going through a wide range of feelings and/or emotions in a (relatively) short amount of time, possibly in rapid succession or even simultaneously. I think it was used appropriately.

[oxfordmale]

It is more a disjointed roller coaster. Some stages of grief can be skipped all together or aren't experienced in a linear order.

[coldtea]

I think this sibling comment covers my point well:

"Did you ever expect that there were discrete and linear stages? I always assumed that these were emotional “attractors”, different emotional states that we migrated through without any particular vector. More like a cruise through a dismal archipelago."

[Tagbert]

Did you ever expect that there were discrete and linear stages? I always assumed that these were emotional “attractors”, different emotional states that we migrated through without any particular vector. More like a cruise through a dismal archipelago.