Key Takeaways
- Anger is a common reaction to grief and can be felt towards oneself, others, or circumstances.
- Grief stages aren’t linear; you might experience them in any order or repeat stages.
- During the anger stage, you might feel emotions like irritability, frustration, or loss of control.
While people generally associate grief with sadness, anger is also a common reaction to grief. Someone who has lost a loved one may wonder why the loss happened and be angry at themselves, the world, the person who passed, or the circumstances.
Apart from the loss of a loved one, grief and anger may also be experienced at the loss of other things that were meaningful to the person, such as a lost relationship, job, or anything that ties to their identity, says Angeleena Francis, LMHC, Executive Director at AMFM Healthcare.
Here we explore anger as one of the five stages of grief. We also discuss the forms that anger may take and provide a few coping strategies that can be helpful for people who feel “stuck” in the anger stage of grief.
Overview of the Five Stages of Grief
In her 1969 book “On Death and Dying,” psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed that there are five stages of grief. The model was created to explain the dying process of terminally ill people, and later applied to other types of losses. Francis explains that the five stages of grief listed in the theory are:
- Denial: In this stage, people struggle accepting the fact that the loss occurred. This is a natural defense mechanism the mind uses when the loss is so great that the brain is essentially too overwhelmed to begin the grieving process.
- Anger: In this stage, people question why something occurred and express outward anger. This stage can be particularly difficult when the loss is unpredictable or blindsided the person. Anger, in most instances, is understood as a secondary emotion, meaning there are other emotions that haven’t been explored or allowed to exist. For example, someone might feel abandoned, disappointed, fearful, depressed, helpless, etc. and anger is the way those emotions are channeled. People experience anger for different reasons, not simply to seek control or avoid helplessness.
- Bargaining: Bargaining is used to seek hope when feeling hopeless. The bargaining stage of grief is motivated by an internal belief that our bad behaviors have somehow contributed to a negative consequence either directly or indirectly. We tend to seek understanding and control in an otherwise hopeless or helpless situation.
- Depression: Depression happens in grief when people connect to the loss and helplessness of the loss. It’s common for people to feel disconnected, struggle enjoying life and activities they used to enjoy, and have a hard time imagining life moving forward.
- Acceptance: The acceptance stage of grief usually happens later in a person’s grief process, when we have allowed ourselves to feel the weight of the loss, and found a way forward through more positive coping skills and acceptance of what we can control. Acceptance is not forgetting and does not mean a person has fully healed from a loss, and it’s common for acceptance to happen in waves. Once we have obtained acceptance, we may still backslide into other stages from time to time.
It’s important to note that recent research shows that grief isn’t necessarily as linear or as neatly organized as this theory suggests. Everyone’s experience of grief is different because everyone reacts to loss differently.
Francis explains that the current understanding of this theory is that the stages are not unidirectional. You may experience grief in any order of stages, jump stages, or even repeat stages.
Unresolved grief can resurface if triggered by even seemingly insignificant events, says Francis, which can catapult a person back into any of the previous stages of grief.
Characteristics of the Anger Stage of Grief
The anger stage of grief is characterized by certain emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Here are several to consider.
Emotions
Some of the emotions that a person may experience during the anger stage of grief include:
Thoughts
These are some examples of thoughts a person may have during the anger stage of grief, according to Francis:
- “This isn’t fair.”
- “Why is this happening to me?”
- “I am to blame for this” or “Someone is to blame for this”
- “How could God let this happen”
- “No one understands”
- “They deserve to pay”
- “I want revenge”
Behaviors
Francis also indicates that someone experiencing anger in the wake of a loss may be prone to:
Coping With the Anger Stage of Grief
Francis shares several strategies that can help a person cope with the anger stage of grief. They include:
- Allowing ourselves to feel the loss: Find an emotionally safe place, either with a supportive friend or alone, and allow ourselves to feel, cry, and think about the loss.
- Recognize underlying feelings: Feelings of sadness and being overwhelmed can easily manifest as irritability and anger. It’s important to identify and address the root cause of our feelings.
- Don’t ignore our feelings: Suppressing our feelings causes them to come out in less desirable ways, such as externalized anger toward others or internalized toward ourselves. We need to allow ourselves space to feel angry before the anger escalates to outward aggression.
- Find healthy ways to express emotions: If we are having trouble verbalizing our feelings, we can try expressing ourselves through art, journaling, poetry, or other non-verbal outlets. Meditation and yoga may also be helpful.
- Explore different perspectives: Thinking about the situation from various people’s points of view can help us gain a better understanding of our own feelings and the feelings of others.
- Participate in grief support groups
- Existential therapy or grief counseling
- Reach out to others
- Work on changing our cycle: There is a cycle of thoughts and outcomes: thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to behaviors, and behaviors circle back to our thoughts. Intercept one of these cycles to change our view of the situation or change our behavior, so we get a different outcome.
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