How the 5 Stages of Grief Can Help Small Businesses Get to Plan B

The pandemic has been devastating to small businesses:

It’s November 2020 and as the pandemic rages onward — in some parts of the world spiraling out of control — many small business owners are at their wits’ end, trying to figure out a way to salvage their livelihood. The people who work for small businesses are equally desperate, wondering from day to day if they’re going to have a job or if they do have a job, whether or not they’re going to get paid.

Here in certain regions of Ontario, we’re in another lock-down, which means that things will only get worse for those business owners and their staff who work in restaurants, gyms, spas, boutique hotels and small retail shops. Everyone in small business is under so much pressure these days and they’re feeling an acute sense of loss.

We’re going through the 5 stages of grief:

It’s got me thinking about loss and grief in general, and how it’s likely that many people these days are unknowingly going through the five stages of grief. These stages are the typical emotional responses we have to painful loss. They were identified by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

The five stages of grief are:

1 Denial

2. Anger

3. Bargaining

4. Depression

5. Acceptance

We feel a sense of impending doom:

In this time of Covid with all the losses small business people are experiencing, it’s not surprising that owners and workers are feeling a sense of impending doom, as though a kind of death were approaching. It can almost be compared to the sense that someone has when they receive a cancer diagnosis, when they feel the sword of Damocles hanging over their head.

They go through denial, insisting that the doctor got the diagnosis wrong; then anger at the unfairness of their diagnosis; then bargaining with God that if they become a better person, perhaps they can be spared; and then they fall into a depression, feeling a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, ultimately arriving at an acceptance of their diagnosis and hopefully, then, being able to take whatever measures are needed to successfully fight the disease.

Working through the 5 stages can get us to Plan B:

I was thinking that the livelihood-threatening experience of the pandemic is so similar to the experience of a life-threatening diagnosis that it might be possible to consciously use these stages of grief to work through our emotions, so that we can get to a place of clarity which could then help us to consider a viable Plan B.

Right now, it’s exceedingly difficult for most of us to get to Plan B and I think that, in part, it could be because many of us are still in the anger stage (and probably a few are in bargaining, or depression). We won’t be able to arrive at a viable Plan B for our small businesses until we move past the anger, etc. and get to a place of acceptance.

How the 5 stages of grief can help small businesses get to Plan B:

Stage one: This was our reaction to the first lockdown, when we felt the shock and the pain of our businesses being shuttered and no money coming in while there were still loads of bills to be paid. Many of us went into denial at this time, convincing ourselves that this was a temporary glitch and that it would soon be over. This denial was reinforced by the re-opening in the spring and summer when we convinced ourselves that everything was going back to normal and would surely stay that way.

Stage two: This was our anger when the fall arrived, the numbers started going up and restrictions returned. We got even angrier when another lockdown was threatened. We hated that things were not back to normal. We got frustrated, and then we got furious.

Stage three: This is the bargaining stage. We haven’t all gotten there quite yet but it’s the inevitable next step. I predict that small business people will be spending a good part of the winter bargaining with their landlords; the government; their lawyers; the banks – anyone they can think of – to see if they can salvage their businesses and their jobs, most likely with varying degrees of success.

Stage four: For many, following this stage of bargaining will be the stage of depression. Winter will have arrived, the numbers of cases will have sky-rocketed and many areas will he headed for — or will be in — another lock down. Small businesses will be even harder hit, and it’s likely that this is the point at which owners and staff could sink into despair.

Stage five: As the New Year arrives and a vaccine is on the horizon, small business people can emerge from their winter depression with hope renewed and an attitude of acceptance. With the possibility of good news, they can acknowledge the painful reality of Covid-19 and in facing the truth, they’ll be empowered to brainstorm reality-based solutions.

Problem-solving is only possible when we face reality:

It’s impossible to problem-solve effectively when we’re in denial, when we’re angry, when we’re bargaining or when we’re depressed. The only way to make effective decisions on how to proceed with our small business is to be fully in acceptance of the reality that we’re living in. And that’s why working through each of these phases of grief can make getting to Plan B possible.

Plan B could be the decision to abandon our business and envision a new role for ourselves, or it could be a revised version of continuing onward. We can’t know what we’ll decide, though, until we get to the stage of acceptance because it’s only when we’re grounded in reality, both emotionally and intellectually, that we can make the choices that work best for us moving forward.

As a psychotherapist in practice for many years, I’ve learned that facing the truth about our situation is the first step in all healing and growth. When small business people work their way through the five stages of grief and arrive at a place of acceptance, that’s the point when they’ll be in the best possible position to brainstorm creative and viable solutions.

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