The Stages of Grief are a Natural Part of Accepting Your Special Needs Child

Tips for Dealing with Grief

Know that you will experience the stages of grief while coming to terms with your child’s diagnosis. Grief? Me? What are you talking about?

Yes, you will experience grief over the loss of your child’s normalcy. I cannot really think of an easier way to explain it, except that you will grieve with the loss of the things your child cannot do, or the challenges you and your child will face through out their life. It is emotionally devastating for a parent to realize their child is not perfect, thus the sense of loss, and consequently - grief.

You experience emotions of the grief process at some level of intensity, and you go through what has been identified as the 5 stages of grief. (OK, Dr. Phil only has four.) The 5 stages of grief are:

1. Denial and Isolation.At first, we tend to deny the loss has taken place, and may withdraw from our usual social contacts. This stage may last a few moments, or longer.

2. Anger.The grieving person may then be furious at the person who inflicted the hurt (even their own child), or at the world, for letting it happen. He may be angry with himself for letting the event take place, even if, realistically, nothing could have stopped it.

3. Bargaining.Now the grieving person may make bargains with God, asking, "If I do this, will you take this away?"

4. Depression.The person feels numb, although anger and sadness may remain underneath.

5. Acceptance.This is when the anger, sadness and mourning have tapered off. The person simply accepts the reality of the loss.

Of course, you know life just isn’t this neat and orderly. Some people seem to work through these normal and natural stages of grief fairly rapidly; others will move ahead and then backtrack into one of the earlier stages of grief. And there are those who just seem to cycle through in an endless loop, never quite reaching the stage of acceptance, and may need help and guidance to get there.

This is how we humans deal with loss. Recognizing the stages of grief are happening to you, your spouse and even siblings can allow you move on and be better able to help them.

Grief and stress do come together, and one may be easily mistaken for the other. More about stress here.

Trying to deal with so many strong feelings can be very stressful, but it is important to work through each of these stages. Denying what you are feeling or trying to “be strong” and “look on the bright side” as you may be encouraged or pressured to do, can be more damaging in the long run than dealing with your feelings now.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a neat little script you can follow through the stages of grief and be done with it. Human emotions and feelings just don’t seem to follow the rules. You need to allow yourself to feel what is going on inside of you. It is the natural way of getting through these times and the stages are listed here to help you realize what is going on with yourself, and your family.

Be sure to take good care of yourself. Plenty of rest, good healthy food, and drink lots of water. Exercise can be a good way of keeping stress under control, and help working through all those feelings. If you’ve ever taken a good long walk when you are upset about something, or have something you need to think over, then you know what I mean.

It can be helpful to get the ideas and perspectives of others through local support groups, or peer support agencies. This is a confusing and chaotic time just trying to get your child the help they need, and now you find yourself dealing with a roller coaster of emotions! These support groups or specialists have been through what you are going through and can help.

Things to remember:

• Knowing about the stages of the grief process is a way of helping you realize what is going on – not a pre-written script of what is going to happen.

• Emotions are messy, and will not follow a neat predictable pattern.

• Allow yourself to feel your emotions as part of the healing process.

• You are not alone. Find support groups, or a support specialist in your area.

• Take care of yourself.

• Look for signs of the grieving process in the rest of your family and now that you know how to help yourself, you can help them as well.

Return from Stages of Grief to Start Here