After the strong emotions wear off, you start to look at yourself and what you “could have” done. The next stage of grief is bargaining.
“After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce…We become lost in a maze of ‘If only…’ or ‘What if…’ statements. We want life returned to what it was; we want our loved one restored. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. That ‘if onlys’ cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we ‘think’ we could have done differently…”(Kessler & Kubler-Ross, 2018, pg. 1).
Children feel this as much as adults do. Children will often think about what they could have done differently to keep their loved one alive. They might think that it is something that they have said or did that cause that person to
“After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce…We become lost in a maze of ‘If only…’ or ‘What if…’ statements. We want life returned to what it was; we want our loved one restored. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. That ‘if onlys’ cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we ‘think’ we could have done differently…”(Kessler & Kubler-Ross, 2018, pg. 1).
Children feel this as much as adults do. Children will often think about what they could have done differently to keep their loved one alive. They might think that it is something that they have said or did that cause that person to