{"id":340087,"date":"2025-12-29T00:07:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T00:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340087\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T00:07:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T00:07:09","slug":"how-to-cope-with-world-upheaval","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/340087\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Cope with World Upheaval"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past year, many of my friends have been struggling to make sense of recent events, including perceived attacks on democratic and other values globally, feeling bewildered, frustrated, and other complex and frequently contradictory emotions. Yet recognizing that we may be undergoing psychological processes of grief<\/a> can help us cope and respond as effectively as possible.<\/p>\n

In 1969, Elizabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross described five stages of grief that patients commonly undergo: denial<\/a>, anger<\/a>, bargaining, depression<\/a>, and acceptance. These phases may not all occur, or they can appear in a different order or direction, or more than one at a time. We can experience them in losing a spouse or beforehand, in \u201canticipatory grief\u201d before the loss occurs, when we sense it looming.<\/p>\n

This framework has assisted countless patients, therapists, and others, and can now aid many of us in finding ways to move forward in the midst of these fears. Clearly, perceived threats to democratic values differ from certain other threatened losses, but important parallel processes exist.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been undergoing these stages at various points. I cannot read more than three articles a day about certain events around the world. I start feeling overwhelmed, viscerally upset, and numb\u2014it\u2019s all too much to contemplate. Yet these reactions reflect efforts at minimization and denial, which can be self-protective but ultimately create problems.<\/p>\n

At other times, friends and I have felt helpless\u2014as if nothing we can do will stem these challenges. These emotions, along with hopelessness, despondency, and despair, often reflect depression. Countless people also feel anger. Some people bargain. Patients occasionally say, \u201cPlease God, if I get through this cancer scare, I\u2019ll attend church more.\u201d This stage can involve statements such as: \u201cIf only__.\u201d “What if__.\u201d \u201cIf only I had left my house ten minutes earlier, I wouldn\u2019t have gotten into that car accident.\u201d Many people now wonder: \u201cWhat if I had spent more time volunteering for candidates, causes, and organizations I support?\u201d<\/p>\n

Businesses and other leaders also seek to bargain and hope to win favor, and universities debate whether to alter their policies regarding applicants\u2019 and students\u2019 race and ethnicity<\/a> in response to various pressures.<\/p>\n

These types of bargaining clearly differ. Whether various negotiations will succeed, and if so, how much, remains uncertain. Individuals\u2019 psychological bargaining will not alter recent, broader political turmoil.<\/p>\n

K\u00fcbler-Ross called the fifth stage of grief \u201cacceptance,\u201d but this term is misleading; it does not encompass all that can occur in this phase. It does not mean resigning oneself to a perceived loss, but rather embracing the threat as real, rather than denying it, or simply getting depressed or angry, or ineffectively bargaining about it. <\/p>\n

As a psychiatrist, I\u2019ve seen how identifying and labelling confusing feelings can help people better grasp and explicitly talk about them, and decide how best to respond. Recognizing that the psychological challenges we are experiencing are parts of inherently human processes of mourning gives us language and frameworks to better understand these reactions. As we struggle with each stage, we can thereby feel less alone, realizing that these constitute parts of larger processes through which we can and should work to pass. We need not be mired in any one phase. Many people, for instance, remain stuck in denial, leading them to avoid reading all the news. Yet this understandable impulse may ultimately fail to be effective and can carry costs. Others are trapped in depression and despair, or attend rallies but feel they can do nothing more.<\/p>\n

Instead, we should recognize that we are experiencing stages of anticipatory grief that we may need to undergo, and that can take time, but will not resurrect the dead. This realization can, however, help us in progressing to more effective strategies and solutions.<\/p>\n

(A version of this essay also appeared in The Hill)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the past year, many of my friends have been struggling to make sense of recent events, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-340087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}