The Stages of Traumatic Grief and Why They’re Not Linear

We like to make sense of things. We like labels, stages, and timelines. Especially when it comes to something as chaotic as grief.

So it makes sense that we’ve tried to box grief into neat compartments: Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

But the truth?

Grief does not care about your order. It does not ask for your permission. It does not follow logic or respond to timelines. It is a body-led, soul-wrecking, life-altering initiation. And if you have ever lost someone deeply, especially to something as violent and final as suicide, you will know how painfully true that is.

As someone who has walked the long, dark corridors of traumatic grief after losing my brother Jack, I have learned this one truth:

Grief is not linear.

It loops. It spirals. It disappears for a while and then hits you in the middle of a happy moment. It can come back ten years later with the same intensity. It can make you laugh and sob in the same breath. It shapeshifts. It rewrites who you are.

The Myth of the Five Stages

The five stages of grief—first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross—were never meant to be a checklist. They were originally developed to describe what a terminally ill person might experience before death, not what the living go through after a loss. But like all things in pop psychology, they were adopted and simplified into a model we began applying to everyone.

The stages of grief made it feel predictable. Manageable. Organised.

But trauma is not organised. And traumatic grief breaks every model.

If you have lost someone to suicide, you know this. The grief comes wrapped in layers—shock, horror, shame, disbelief, abandonment, guilt, rage, helplessness, and the kind of sadness that sits inside your bones.

You might move from anger to numbness in the span of an hour. You might circle between guilt and disbelief for months. You might go a whole year feeling “fine” and then find yourself unable to get out of bed on their birthday.

That is not you doing it wrong. That is just grief.

How Traumatic Grief Lives in the Body

Traumatic grief is not only emotional. It is physiological. Somatic. Your body feels the loss before your mind can make sense of it.

You might feel:

• Pressure in your chest

• Tightness in your throat

• Exhaustion that sleep cannot fix

• A disconnection from your surroundings

• Panic when someone you love does not answer their phone

• A persistent fear that everyone you love might leave or die too

This is your nervous system doing what it does best—protecting you. Trying to keep you safe in a world that suddenly became unsafe.

When Jack died, my world lost its safety net. The innocence was gone. My nervous system became highly alert, scanning for danger constantly. Every silence felt ominous. Every unanswered call felt like a threat. I was terrified to let people in because losing someone again felt unbearable.

This is a normal response to an abnormal event.

In trauma healing, we often say “the body keeps the score”—and in grief, the body remembers the absence just as much as the presence.

The Real Stages of Grief? They Look Like This.

Grief does not happen in order. It does not make sense. But there are common experiences you might cycle through again and again.

Here are just a few of the real-life stages of grief, in no particular order:

Shock and Numbness

The body shuts down when it cannot process grief. You may feel nothing. Or you may feel everything all at once. Time might slow down. You may not cry. You may cry in ways that make you feel like you are falling apart.

Hypervigilance and Fear

After a traumatic death, your system becomes hyperalert. You might obsess over your loved ones’ safety. You might become unable to relax or be alone. Your sleep can suffer. Your body stays in a constant state of readiness.

Rage and Blame

Anger is a survival strategy. It protects the vulnerable parts. You may find yourself angry at them for leaving. Angry at yourself. Angry at the world. Angry at the system. Let it be felt. Anger is not wrong. It often carries the truth beneath the pain.

Longing and Yearning

This can be the most tender stage. Your body aches for them. You can smell them, hear their voice, see them in dreams. You want to believe they are still here. And sometimes, they are. Just in a different way.

Guilt and Shame

This one is hard. And if you are grieving someone who died by suicide, it can be unbearable. You ask yourself: Why did I not see the signs? Could I have saved them? What did I miss? The mind spins stories. But none of it changes the truth. They made a choice from a place of pain. It was not your fault.

The Black Hole

There may be a time when grief feels like complete collapse. Identity loss. Spiritual crisis. A feeling that you do not belong in this world anymore. This is not a weakness. This is the depth of your love and your loss colliding.

Moments of Peace and Meaning

And still—amidst the devastation—there are moments. You laugh. You remember them with love. You feel them near. You get out of bed. You show up. These are not signs that you have “moved on.” These are signs that you are carrying your grief, not being consumed by it.

Why It Feels Like You Are Starting Over

One of the hardest parts of grief is that you are not just mourning the person—you are mourning who you were with them.

When Jack died, I did not just lose my brother. I lost the version of me who existed in a world where he was alive. I lost the sister. The protector. The little girl who felt like family was forever.

I had to become someone new. Not by choice, but by force.

Grief is identity loss. It is a rebirth. And like all births, it is messy, painful, and often comes with no instruction manual.

Giving Grief a Voice and a Space

At JAX Healing Retreat, we hold space for grief. Not just the kind you can name. But the kind that lives in the bones. The kind that reshapes your nervous system. The kind that requires not talking—but shaking, moving, breathing, feeling.

Grief needs movement. It needs stillness. It needs permission.

In our retreats, we do not push people to move on. We walk with them as they move through. Using somatic healing, energy healing, spiritual support, and trauma-informed practices, we help the body remember that it is safe to feel again. Safe to live again. Safe to carry both love and pain.

I will never be “over” Jack. That is not how grief works. But I have learned how to live beside it. To carry him with me. To build something beautiful from the pain. And that is what we offer at JAX—a space where your grief does not have to be hidden. A space where it is safe to grieve.

If You Are in It Right Now

If you are deep in your own grief journey—please know that what you are feeling is valid.

There is no timeline. No wrong way. No single stage means you are doing it right.

You may never go back to who you were. But you will grow into someone new. Someone who knows the depth of loss and the power of love. Someone who knows how precious life is. Someone who can hold space for others, because you have walked through fire yourself.

And maybe, just maybe, you will find that grief does not only destroy. It also shapes. Softens. Awakens.

You are not alone in this. We see you. We honour your journey.

With love,
Rebecca

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