Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Five Stages to Acceptance - #3 Mindfulness Series

 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Five Stages to Acceptance - #3 Mindfulness Series

November 9, 2020 

Henry T. Hill

From June of 2018 to today I have faced Amyloidosis, chemo and peripheral neuropathy. In my Amazon book, "Mindfulness vs Disease and Debilitating Symptoms Such As Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Coordination" and in my Mindfulness Series essays posted on Latitude Attitude at  https://latitudeattitude.blogspot.com/ and on Marketplace Mission Learning Center at http://marketplacemission.squarespace.com/, I present my journey.

To achieve the healthiest me, daily, I use the following mindfulness techniques:

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and Five Stages to Acceptance

Pragmatism

Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy

Transactional Analysis

Making Sense with General Semantics

Somatosensory Part of the Brain and the Role of Behavior Chemicals, Emotions and Physical Activity

Placebo Effect Concept

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Marshall McLuhan and The Medium Is the Massage

Words and Questions and Grammar and Chaos

Learning Theories

Poems and an Essay and Quotes

Feelings and Reactions

Every day I use Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages in my mindfulness journey. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance - think DAB - DA. Many people lock into denial or anger or bargaining, investing psychic energy, in essence, to pretend that denial or anger or bargaining will improve their situation. Many people sink into depression seeing no way out. Well, depression surrounds us with its “always” presence. But Acceptance, real Acceptance, dispels depression and helps hold depression away. 

Using Denial in the face of accurate diagnosis simply will not work against a disease. Denial, pretending that something is not real does not marshall the mind-body to fight the disease. Anger works for some situations and may even save your life. Anger against a disease only stresses the mind-body and may make the symptoms worse. Bargaining with others and with ourselves becomes at an early age a way of life. Bargaining with a disease does not work and only postpones taking real mind-body action. Depression does not present an end, a place to stay. Depression is a part of the path one must take to move to acceptance. Depression will not disappear. Depression presents a shadow waiting to drive the sunshine away. Acceptance pushes the shadow away, but acceptance must be renewed every day and every night. 

Depression, recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the leading cause of disability and the fourth leading contributor to the global burden of disease, often shares a comorbid relation with anxiety, a distinct emotion. Patients must address the threats from depression and from anxiety. Chronic disease and chronic conditions such as amyloidosis and peripheral neuropathy contribute to depression and anxiety because of the loss of sense of self, lack of energy, reluctance to engage with friends because uneventful days leave nothing to talk about, sadness, anxiety and uncertainty about the future, loss of relationships, social isolation, feelings of guilt because of the need for others to become your caregiver and fear of death. Positive thinking, medications and exercise can help address anxiety and depression. Move to acceptance, leave anxiety and depression there because they will always stay there ready to move back in and will move back in again where a patient must embrace acceptance again and again.

To fight depression call on your life badges you earned through real experience. I had a great advantage growing up from 1943-1961 when I faced my medical challenges starting in 2018. In the 1940’s and 1950’s we got sick with mumps, measles, chicken pox, whooping cough and sore throats. Because both my parents smoked, I got sick more often every fall and winter when we had to keep the windows closed. But my real advantage in facing amyloidosis and PN consisted of me getting scarlet fever in the summer of 1948, being quarantined and almost dying. After that experience any thoughts of my dying held a different meaning for me then for most people. I had learned real Acceptance of mortality.

Remember Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer:”

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can, 

And Wisdom to know the difference.

On June 18, 2018 when I first heard the words, Amyloidosis AL, I did a Goggle search and learned about the in curable and serious nature of Amyloidosis,  I said to myself using my internal dialogue, “OK, I am 74 soon to be 75 years old and have enjoyed good health my whole life, so now the health challenge begins. The adventure of my life has opened a new path.” No denial, no anger, no bargaining, no “why mes” and at that point, no depression, just acceptance of the new journey, but I knew that depression would enter my world. My study of Kubler-Ross and my application of her stages throughout my life helped me jump through denial, anger and bargaining and helped me to realize that depression would always hang over this new journey, but I knew that acceptance, cold, objective, rational, scientific acceptance, everyday acceptance, would help hold depression away and give me the best chance to face this new challenge. Lesson: stop any denial, anger and bargaining thoughts right away and accept that depression will always be there. Use acceptance to push away depression and use acceptance thoughts to immediately face a new reality. Do not indulge yourself in self pity. Do not say, “Why me?” Instead say, “Why not me.” Do not let denial, anger and bargaining enter your daily world, and hold depression back with acceptance. Use the continuum of Sane ----- Unsane ----- Insane, found in “Making Sense with General Semantics,” which I will explain in a later essay, to monitor your thoughts. Is this thought observable, measurable, rational, scientific verifiable, dated and timed and indexed, with the underlying et cetera (etc.) meaning that there is always more to any immediate situation/episode/event as this thought can be?  If my thought does not meet that criteria, than that thought falls in the Unsane or even Insane category. Unsane thoughts may contain words like: “always,” “never,” “can’t stand it,” “no answers,” “no cause,” “no solution,” “no cure,” “no relief,” etc. For example, when someone says that they can’t stand it, that statement is false to the facts because they are standing it by simply being here and saying that thought. For example if your hand and then your arm were caught in a machine that was grinding flesh and bone, you would be standing it until you either passed out or died. So when someone says that they can’t stand it, they are making an Unsane statement. What they are saying as a Sane thought is that they do not think that they can stand it very much longer without passing out or dying. Now take that Sane thought and turn it into a “badge” that you have earned by standing it. Unsane thoughts, “fictions”,  take valuable and limited psychic energy to maintain and as with most mental disorders require a person to spread their Unsane thoughts to others. Maintaining Unsane thoughts is like bailing a leaking boat without trying to plug the holes. The leaking boat will eventually swamp and sink because you can’t bail fast enough. Stop Unsane and Insane thoughts right away. Plug the holes in your leaking boat. Substitute Sane thoughts which require very little psychic energy to maintain. Remember the lesson about lying: liars need to have good memories to remember their lies. Truth tellers just tell the truth. Unsane thoughts and insane thoughts are lies we tell ourselves and others. Monitor every thought using the Sane---Unsane---Insane continuum and use mindfulness techniques to change Unsane and Insane thoughts into Sane thoughts. Remember the four categories of thoughts: positive, negative, neutral and waste. 

Use mindfulness. This process may seem difficult, but when you change one Unsane thought into a Sane thought and practice that Sane thought, you will not go back to that old Unsane thought. New Unsane thoughts will appear so filter them and change them into Sane thoughts. Just keep doing this using mindfulness tools. These tools and others help you keep yourself in the Acceptance frame of mind and help you keep Depression away.  

For more see "Mindfulness vs Disease and Debilitating Symptoms Such As Pain, Fatigue and Loss of Coordination" by Henry T. Hill on Amazon (September 23, 2020 and 153 pages and 3359 KB). Henrythill@gmail.com

Works Cited

“5 Stages of Grief®.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/5-stages-grief/. 

Bolognesi, Marianna. “How Language Shapes Your Thoughts - What Researchers Know.” ResearchGate, The Conversation, 26 July 2018.

“Depression.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 30 Jan. 2020, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression. 

Lorentz, Madeline M. “Stress and Psychoneuroimmunology Revisited: Using Mind-Body Interventions to Reduce Stress.” Https://Www.mm3admin.Co.za/Documents/Docmanager/6e64f7e1-715e-4fd6-8315-424683839664/00025132.Pdf, Alternative Journal of Nursing, July 2006. 

Murray, Greg, et al. “The Mind-Body Relationship in Psychotherapy: Grounded Cognition as an Explanatory Framework.” Frontiers, Frontiers in Psychology, 1 May 2014, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00472/full.

Satsangi, Shipra, et al. Thought Consciousness : A Panacea For All Ills And Evils Of Mind. Dayalbagh Educational Institute, www.consciousness.arizona.edu/documents/TSC2018AbstractBookfinal3.pdf.