The five stages of grief and vitiligo
The five stages of grief is a beautiful and often misunderstood model for tracking the psychological journey of loss. For vitiligo investigators it provides a clear metric for diagnosing where the patient is in their process of dealing with vitiligo. It is not fixed, but a sort of status check that can guide us on what inner work we need to do. Here are the stages explained and linked to our skin condition.
Stage 1: Denial
“This white mark on my skin is not vitiligo. It's just something else. I will use some creams or maybe if fix my habits it will just go away. I'm sure it's not vitiligo, it can't be. Other people have it but what are the chances that I could get it? It’s sooo unlikely.”
Stage 2: Anger
“Why did this happen to me? It's not fair. What did I do to deserve vitiligo? What does the doctor mean that there is no cure? They should do their job correctly. My life is lost. How will I get married now? have kids? A normal life for me is over. Bad things happen to good people”
Stage 3: Bargaining
“OK I'm going to change my habits and listen to what the doctor is saying if I eat healthy, start exercising, stop all this negative thinking. I can fix it, I know. If the marks stay on my hands and don’t touch my face I will be happy. OK, God If I stop smoking. Then please cure this and I will promise to give money to charity every year too.”
Stage 4: Depression
“Nothing works. these marks are not going to go away. I've tried everything. And my situation is hopeless. I can't do anything else now. My dreams are broken and my heart is broken too. I have to live my life like this now. I cannot talk to people normally. People look at my marks all the time. forget about marriage, kids, a good job. Where is my place in the world now?”
Stage 5: Acceptance
“All is well. I can see that my value is not in my skin or in anything physical. I am important and have many things to contribute to the world. What is most important is on the inside and there is how I choose to see myself and other people. I don’t feel limited by my white marks.”
Here Dr. Kübler-Ross later added a new stage for clarification after many people misunderstood what “acceptance” means.
Stage 6: Meaning /Non acceptance
Now that I don’t feel limited by my vitiligo. What is the correct thing to do? While I am not suffering, it’s true that there are millions of people in the world who are still suffering from this condition. What if I used my unique position as someone who has vitiligo to investigate it and bring support to those people to help them reach where I am. This is not cancer. Nobody dies from this so what would independent investigation in an organised way do towards finding the cause of this? I know how bad people with vitiligo suffer emotionally and psychologically. I'm going to create conditions to serve them. I will honor the experience of having vitiligo like this.
Find the cause. Be the cure
