Everyone repeats the same five stages of grief as if they were a checklist: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, in that order, then done. It is one of the most trusted ideas in modern life, and it was never validated as the path grief takes. Grief moves in loops and bursts for almost everyone, and for an adult whose brain handles time and emotion differently, it loops harder and hits later. Your brain is not broken. Feeling like you are grieving wrong is not a character flaw, it is a sign you were handed the wrong map.
FROM THE VIDEO
Key moments from Sorry I Missed This with therapist Rachel Hopkins, LPC/CRC:
Common questions from parents
Are the five stages of grief real?
Why is grief so much harder with ADHD?
Is it normal to forget for a moment that someone died?
What actually helps when grief feels impossible to process?
The five stages of grief were never validated. If grief with ADHD loops back and hits late, you are not grieving wrong. Your brain tracks time and emotion differently.
The five stages were never the route grief takes
The staircase is everywhere, printed on sympathy cards and repeated by well-meaning friends. Here is the part almost no one mentions. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross built those stages from interviews with dying patients, not the people left behind. The model was never tested as the path grief follows.
When researchers finally put it to the test in the Yale Bereavement Study (Maciejewski et al., 2007), grief refused to march in order. Acceptance showed up from early on, and yearning, which is not one of the five stages at all, was the feeling that dominated. The tidy arc turned out to describe almost no one.
Grief moves in loops and waves for everyone. So if you have been quietly measuring yourself against a staircase and coming up short, the problem was never you. You were handed a map that leads nowhere.
Feeling like you are grieving wrong is not a character flaw. It is a sign you were handed the wrong map.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Why grief lands harder and loops back with ADHD
ADHD is a difference in how the brain regulates attention, impulse and emotion. It was named for focus, but the emotional side is the part that reshapes grief. When a loss hits, the feeling arrives fast and huge. You are drowning while everyone around you looks calm. Then you are worn out by the time the funeral logistics arrive.
Then there is time. Time blindness means a loss feels like it happened yesterday and six months ago at the same moment. It also means you forget, for a few seconds, that the person is gone, and then the shame arrives on top of the grief. That forgetting is a difference in how your brain tracks time, not a lack of love.
These same patterns show up long after the loss. That is why grief with ADHD often surfaces late, once the hard work of holding everything together finally stops. Catching an emotional spiral before it takes over is the tricky part. This walkthrough of how stress narrows access to focus and planning names the mechanism and offers tools for coming back.
Key takeaways
- The five stages were never proven: Kubler-Ross studied dying patients, not grief, and testing later inverted the model.
- Time blindness is not forgetting to care: An ADHD brain holds a loss as both yesterday and years ago at once.
- Chunk grief, do not schedule it: Five-minute anchors and a wins log fit a loaded, dysregulated brain.
Small, tangible steps beat “get over it”
Because executive function is already loaded during grief, the advice to “sit with your feelings” lands as one more overwhelming task. Therapist Rachel Hopkins breaks it into microtasks instead. Light a candle and sit for five minutes. Write one sentence about how you feel today. Send a friend a short note saying you are thinking of the person. Each one is finishable, and that is the point.
Grief anchors work the same way. A bracelet, a playlist you walk to, or talking to the person out loud on your commute all help. Each gives grief a set place to live rather than flooding every hour. Distraction has a place too. Leaping into action is a real coping skill, not avoidance, as long as you return to the grief when you are able. It tips into avoidance when you have taken on too much and sense you are on the edge.
One more tool undercuts the shame directly: a grief wins log. Made it to work after crying while getting dressed? Asked for help instead of pretending you were fine? Write it down. Learning and attention differences are associated with lower self-esteem and a heavier load of shame, and the research is clear that support softens that. Keeping visible proof of your own effort is one honest way to give that support to yourself.
Forgetting for a moment that they are gone is time blindness, not a lack of love.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
What you want is room to grieve someone you loved without a stopwatch running, and the self-compassion to know that a jagged, looping process is still real grief. The villain here is not you and it is not your brain. It is a borrowed timeline that hands out two to four days of bereavement leave and then expects everyone to function, as if loss ran on a schedule. Your brain is not broken. It regulates time and emotion differently, and that difference deserves supports, not a deadline.
The wiring behind jagged grief rarely stays in one lane. The same executive function, attention and emotional regulation that shape how you cope also shape daily life, and often show up in a child who struggles with focus at the kitchen table too. Learning Success All Access is built to strengthen exactly those underlying systems, with a plan and the coaching to use it. Explore Learning Success All Access.
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