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Comment by czzr | Hacker News Reader

No, I’m sure that can’t be right - the stages of grief are so well known they must be true.

I mean, c’mon - have books and films just been lying to me all this time?!

But maybe it’s not completely wrong - there must be a core of truth to it if it resonates so well. Maybe we can preserve that even if we don’t stick to the specific stages.

But how could I have been fooled by this for so long? What’s wrong with me that I believed it so unquestioningly?

But it’s not just me - this predates awareness of the reproducibility crisis in social sciences. It’s not so surprising that it doesn’t replicate. I’m sure there’s a deeper understanding out there, and this model wasn’t so bad as a stepping stone to that.

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As the end of the article also mentions, in a more recent book:

> ... Kübler-Ross remarked that the five stages are “not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order.”

So these are more the possible reactions that someone may have to a grievous event - not everyone will experience all reactions, and also will definitely not go through them in the given order.

A bit forced, and they all sound like denial, but I can see all the stages if I squint.

Could it be that the fact that the stages are "known" makes for a bleak perspective for whoever is going through them, without a sense of escape from it, and that makes it so that people prefer to attack this perspective in a sense of hoping for these steps to be actually wrong/not true? This to me seems more of a "nah please tell me another story that doesn't make me feel so bad", which I can also understand to a degree, but that doesn't change the realness of those "steps".

Sure. Horoscopes "work" that way, too.

The five stages of grief belongs in the same circle as hell as the other HR nonsense. It all resonates well but little is based on scientific evidence.

I see what you did there

>I mean, c’mon - have books and films just been lying to me all this time?!

Or this random internet opinion article does...

Are the stages of grief even well known outside the US?

Yes. Half the world away from the US here.

Never encountered it in neither France nor Japan, outside of US entertainment.

Do you read a lot?

Clapping

All five, in order; nice.

"Alas 5 stages, we hardly knew ye."

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