Some Daily Post readers may be familiar with Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and her ground-breaking 1969 book, On Death and Dying, wherein she proposed that a person experiencing a transition out of this worldly realm typically experiences ‘Five Stages of Grief’.
Kübler-Ross based her ideas, not on statistical studies or controlled experiments, but rather on her personal experiences helping patients through their final months or days on earth.
Following a psychiatric residency at the Manhattan State Hospital working with schizophrenics and “hopeless” patients, she accepted a teaching position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where — as a junior faculty member — she gave her first interview of a young terminally ill woman, in front of a roomful of medical students. She wanted to share with her students, not an example of pathology, but rather with “a human being who desired to be understood as she was coping with her illness and how it has impacted her life.” According to Wikipedia, she told her students:
Now you are reacting like human beings instead of scientists. Maybe now you’ll not only know how a dying patient feels, but you will also be able to treat them with compassion — the same compassion that you would want for yourself.
The Five Stages through which a grieving person passes, as suggested by Kübler-Ross:
Denial… anger… bargaining… depression… and acceptance.
In a 2004 book co-authored with David Kessler and published posthumously, Dr. Kübler-Ross expanded her model to include any form of personal loss, such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, major rejection, the end of a relationship, drug addiction, incarceration, the onset of a disease… even minor losses, such as a loss of insurance coverage.
Many people in America — millions of people, in fact — may be going through a grieving process right now, with the election of presidential candidate Joe Biden, and the defeat of candidate Donald Trump.
According to Dr. Kübler-Ross’ model, the first stage will be “denial”.
That appears to be exactly what’s going on with President Trump, many leading Republicans, and many of the people who voted to give the President a second term in office. Specifically, the denial comes in the form of rejecting the unofficial ballot counts reported by hundreds of county clerks across the nation, who were responsible for conducting a fair and legal November election. Especially, the people in denial of the election results are questioning the counts in certain swing states — Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia — that Trump won four years ago, but which have now (unofficially) landed in Joe Biden’s column.
Let us consider the advice given to the medical students by Dr. Kübler-Ross.
Now you are reacting like human beings instead of scientists. Maybe now you’ll not only know how a dying patient feels, but you will also be able to treat them with compassion — the same compassion that you would want for yourself.
We can hardly imagine a sense of loss greater than the one now being experienced by President Trump. From his position as, arguably, the most powerful individual in the United States, adored by millions, the President will now have little to look forward to, other than guest appearances on various TV shows and websites, and dealing with the numerous lawsuits connected to his private business — lawsuits that could not proceed for the past four years, due to the protection from prosecution afforded to every US president.
I seriously doubt any Daily Post reader will ever suffer a personal loss of a similar magnitude… except perhaps the loss of a spouse, or child, or their own death.
On the other hand, many Daily Post readers may be dealing with a private version of grief and denial, as the result of President Trump’s loss in the November election. How serious that grief and denial will be, depends upon each person’s personality.
Those of us who are not grieving — those of us who may, in fact, be celebrating the results of this election — will be tempted to treat our grieving fellow citizens with disdain and ridicule. But certainly, that is not how we would want to be treated, if we were the ones grieving. We would want to be treated with compassion.
That’s part of the work ahead, over the next few weeks, as we transition to a new Commander in Chief. It’s not always easy to treat a grieving person with compassion.
In fact, it’s downright difficult work… to help your fellow citizens deal with the death of a dream.
But it’s worth the effort.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.