A short YouTube clip featuring David Kessler explaining the denial stage of grief. Kessler defines denial as a common first reaction after a loss characterized by shock and numbness; people process the loss incrementally because the emotions are overwhelming. He describes denial both as disbelief ("I can't believe they're dead") and as distraction (engaging in movies, current events, travel) that serves as an escape from unbearable pain.
Chapters
What is the denial stage of grief? The denial stage of grief is usually the first stage that happens after a loss. We talk about is when you're just in shock, you go numb. Your body has more feelings to process than it could possibly do in a short amount of time. Too much information about that loss is coming in. So what happens is we process it little by little. Someone who's in denial is going to be making, I can't believe they're dead. This can't be true. This couldn't have happened. And the other way denial sometimes looks is as grief goes on, it looks a bit like distraction all of a sudden from talking about the loved one dying. You're suddenly talking about.
An interesting place that you visited or something, a current event. And it looks like to other people, I don't understand how they are going to a movie or how they are doing this when this loss has occurred. But denial is escape from the pain. So that movie is a distraction from the pain, that talking about a current event is a distraction from the pain, because the pain is too enormous to sit with constantly.
