Broken heart
For most bereaved individuals, the journey through grief will ultimately culminate in an acceptable level of adjustment to a life without their loved one. The Kübler-Ross model postulates that there are five stages of grief after the loss of a loved-one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And while it is recognized that mourners go through 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 differ considerably in intensity and length among cultural groups, individually from person to person as well as depending on the amount of investment put into the relationship.
Postponement of affect
In the affect of grief, postponement seems to be an essential component. What happens in mourning is nothing other than a gradual "working-through" of an affect which, if released in its full strength, would overwhelm the ego'. John Bowlby considered the first of the "four phases of mourning" to be a 'Phase of numbness that...may be interrupted by outbursts of extremely intense distress and/or anger'. Thus one can speak of 'a rather typical postponement of grief': '"I feel hurt about something and then automatically this kind of shields things up and then I feel like I can't really touch or feel anything very much"..."postponement"...[of] the weepiness'.