@drleewarren: Most people think the five stages of grief are a map for losing someone you love. But they came from interviews with patients who had just found out they were dying. �Stay with me to the end, and I'll show you what grief actually looks like in people who've lost someone, and the one thought you need to stop believing about your own grief. �I'm a brain surgeon. I've had the hardest conversations a family can have, in hospital hallways and waiting rooms, and I've studied what grief does to the brain. Let's scrub in and get after it. �In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, based on interviews with more than 200 terminally ill patients. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. She was describing people facing their own death. The rest of us borrowed those stages for bereavement, and they turned into a checklist. When Yale researchers finally tested the stages in 233 people who had lost a loved one, the checklist didn't hold. Acceptance was the most common response from early on. And the strongest pain wasn't anger or depression. It was yearning, the ache of missing them and wanting them back. �So here's what grief really looks like: you can accept that they're gone and still ache for them every day. Both at once. That's normal. The third commandment of self-brain surgery is: I must believe that most of my automatic thoughts are untrue. And "I'm grieving wrong" is one of those lying thoughts. Hit that follow button so you don't miss the next one, and send this to someone who thinks they're grieving wrong. When it shows up, examine the tissue, then tell yourself the truth: this ache is yearning, and yearning is what love does when someone is gone. "The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18 (NIV). He doesn't wait for you to finish a stage before He comes close. Click the link in my bio to learn more about self-brain surgery for grief.

Dr. Lee Warren | Neurosurgeon

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Tuesday 03 November 2026 01:58:01 GMT