Lifestyles Ideas Management - Shattered Lives

Those survivors of the Myanmar cyclone and the Sichuan earthquake face long term emotional anguish for a long time. They may lose a family member, a friend or their livelihood and are left with shattered lives that cannot be rebuilt with financial aid. The grief of the natural disaster is different from other types of grief. While the death of a parent from old age or disease may seem “natural” order of life but earthquakes and tsunamis go against the “natural order” of things. They create situations where a parent will have to bury a child, or where entire villages are wiped out. The sudden and unexpected nature of a natural disaster will also affect the grieving process.

Five stages of grief:
Survivors of a natural disaster may also go through a “cycle of grief” which according in Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who developed the theory takes five stages:
Denial – refusing to accept what has happened.
Anger – bitterness that life has been unfair
Bargaining – survivors hope and seek in vain to reverse what has happened.
Depression – This stage is characterized by despondence and perhaps passivity when life has become meaningless for the survivor.
Acceptance – last stage of the cycle where the survivor is ready and actively involved in moving on to the next stage of his life.

But although most people go through the five stage of grief but some people may go through them in a different order, or not at all.