Susan Anderson (psychotherapist)
While Kübler-Ross, Anderson, and others have attempted to define discrete stages of grief, such as an initial period of numbness leading to depression and finally to reorganization and recovery, most modern grief specialists recognize the variations and fluidity of grief experiences, that differ considerably in intensity and length among cultural groups and from person to person. No grief stage theory has been able to account for how people cope with loss, why they experience varying degrees and types of distress at different times, and how or when they adjust to a life without their loved one over time.
Stephen Levine (author)
One of the most significant aspects of Stephen's work, and one for which he was perhaps best known, was his pioneering approach to working with the experience of grief. Over 34 years, Stephen and his wife Ondrea counselled concentration camp survivors and their children, Vietnam War veterans as well as victims of sexual abuse. Although Stephen acknowledged that our experience of grief is perhaps at its most intense when a loved one dies, he also drew our attention to grief's more subtle incarnations. "Our ordinary, everyday grief" accumulates as a response to the "burdens of disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives." In order to avoid feeling this grief we "armour our hearts," which leads to a gradual deadening of our experience of the world When a loved one dies, or indeed when our own death approaches, the intensity of the loss often renders our defenses ineffective and we are swept up by a deluge of griefs, both old and new.