The Physical Effects of Grief
While grief is often framed in our culture as something to get over quickly— as an abnormal, undesirable state— it is a part of the human experience that is both inevitable and transformative. Just as death is a part of life, grief is a part of connection and love. The grief process is a time of transition. It is through grief that we “move forward,” oftentimes with a changed sense of who we are. Grief is liminal, separating who we were before the loss and who we have become afterwards.
We tend to be familiar with many of the emotional sides of grief. Feelings of sadness, despair, emptiness, loneliness and pain are common ways in which we expect grief to show up. In reality, grief impacts our whole selves: our physiology, cognitive abilities and, of course, our emotional states.
This article will focus on the lesser known physical effects of grief. Studies show that loss impacts our biochemistry and that physical symptoms have a directly material— not simply cognitive or emotional— origin. Put another way, feelings of missing a loved one are not “just” emotions, our body misses them as well. Being near familiar people and animals has a regulating effect on our nervous system: our heart rate and respiration are influenced by those around us. When we lose someone we love, these basic biological functions are impacted. We miss our loved ones entirely.
Exhaustion and Insomnia
Perhaps the most well known physical effects of grief are exhaustion and insomnia. It is very common for folks to find themselves sleeping too much or too little when grieving. This can look like grief keeping us up constantly, making it feel impossible to sleep even when we’re exhausted. It can also look like being consumed by grief, with our awake periods severely shortened. When we do sleep, grief can make it difficult for sleep to feel restorative: grief has a way of entering into our unconscious moments and disrupting them.
To complicate things further, these changes in sleep quality and/or quantity can impact our ability to process loss. Just as lack of sleep can make our day to day functioning more difficult, lack of sleep can impact our process of moving through grief.
Insomnia can lead to overall exhaustion, but fatigue can appear on its own as well. Physical feelings of low energy, lack of motivation and general overwhelm are often a part of the experience of loss. This said, grief and clinical depression are two distinct experiences: while they share many symptoms, they differ in one’s ability to move through them. If you believe you may be experiencing depression, seek out further assessment and aid from a mental health professional.
Tools and techniques for coping with exhaustion and insomnia
If you’re encountering issues with sleep, know that they’re par for the course. If accessing sleep is feeling difficult, try prioritizing getting rest; allowing your body to relax without necessarily falling asleep. Good sleep hygiene can also be helpful: practices such as trying for a consistent bed and wake time, avoiding screens an hour or so before bed, limiting caffeine and alcohol intake, as well as avoiding food close to bedtime may help. When it comes to general exhaustion, try and allow yourself the time and space to “recover” as you would from a physical illness.
Dreams
Dreams and nightmares are very common experiences during grief. Our system doesn’t stop processing when we sleep; dreams are often how we continue to reckon with loss when we aren’t conscious. Despite being possibly painful and challenging, dreams are a natural, healthy part of the grief process— they are a part of our system trying to process and make sense of loss. Dreams and nightmares can run the gamut from agonizing to transcendent.
Dreams may offer moments of solace, a way of experiencing closeness with the one who died, help us make sense of the reality of our loss, and may illuminate who we are becoming through our grief. They can be a space where we resolve old issues and search for new meanings. Oftentimes, our dreams may reflect ways in which our grief is shifting over time.
Tools and techniques for coping with dreams and nightmares
When encountering dreams and nightmares, it can be helpful to first acknowledge what is happening— part of your system is trying to make sense of your loss. It can be helpful to bring awareness and notice it as a nightmare, rather than rushing to try and understand what it means. One way to do this is to name the experience (e.g. “I just had a nightmare”) to create a bit of mental space in between you and what you just went through.
From here, tools for self-regulation can be helpful; oftentimes, nightmares can rev up or freeze our nervous system. It can be helpful to go to sleep prepared with a tool or two ready to help you regulate when nightmares occur.
Box breathing is a technique that is easy to remember and access from different positions, including laying down. It has four steps: slowly inhale through your nose, (4 count) hold your breath, (4 count) slowly exhale out your mouth, (4 count) and hold the exhale (4 count). You can experiment with how many seconds you count for each step. Other mindfulness exercises that may be useful include “calm/safe place,” “container,” or “drop the anchor,” which are all easily accessed via an internet search. Journaling, gentle movement, or washing your face with cold water can also be helpful.
Physical symptoms
Grief can cause massive amounts of stress which, in turn, impacts our bodies. Symptoms such as heart palpitations, headache, stomach pains and feeling faint or dizzy are all common physical effects of grief. Grief may also show up in the form of “mystery” pains and illnesses. Although these symptoms have an unknown physical origin, that doesn’t make the experience of them any less real.
The experience of loss can overwhelm our bodily systems, including its basic functions. Our bodies may respond to certain anniversaries, with an uptick in symptoms around the time that we experienced loss; this can happen on a monthly or yearly basis. It’s also common for our bodies to exhibit symptoms mirroring those of the loved one who died. And of course, as mentioned earlier, grief commonly appears in the form of fatigue and exhaustion.
This said, if you are experiencing persistent or distressing physical health symptoms it is important to speak to your doctor or establish a relationship with a physician if you don’t have one. While grief does manifest in a plethora of ways in the body, only a physician can rule out other possible origins as well as offer up possible medical treatments for the symptoms you are experiencing.
Changes in eating and appetite
It is very common for our appetite to change dramatically while grieving– in fact, changes in eating may be one of the most well known physical effects of grief. As far as how it changes, there is no “normal”: some people eat more under stress and others lose interest in food altogether. Just as lack of sleep impacts our ability to move through grief, over and under eating can make it more difficult to feel grounded and regulated when we are experiencing loss.
If you are experiencing shifts in appetite and/or weight, it is important to stay compassionate with yourself and to practice speaking to yourself from a place of understanding rather than shame. Appetite shifts are a part of our body’s response to loss and are not something you are “choosing” to experience. Taking an approach of “working with” your body’s reaction to loss can be useful— try and move toward more healthy choices in a way that is gentle, acknowledging the challenges you are currently facing. This can look like, for example, eating small portions of healthy food if full meals feel difficult to eat right now. If changes in eating are having a significant impact on you and/or your health, speaking to a doctor or dietician can help.
Caring for your body: back to basics
While it may feel incredibly challenging or even pointless, caring for our bodies is often one of the few ways we can directly impact our experience of grief. In the face of excruciating pain it may be tempting to throw our hands up and cease doing things to care for ourselves. However, taking small steps to improve our wellbeing can be not only a way to make a difficult time as gentle as it can be, it is also an opportunity to practice real self care and compassion. By taking care of ourselves and our bodies during grief we actively practice what it looks and feels like to care for ourselves, even when the going gets tough.
Just as an illness requires us to slow down and take care, grief calls us to tend to our bodies. When caring for our physical self during grief, it’s important to think realistically and incrementally. What are small, actionable ways we can show up for ourselves right now? The pain will still persist, but how do we reduce our suffering, even if it’s just by a little bit? What are ways in which we can ask for and/or receive care from others?
It can be helpful to inventory ways in which you’ve cared for your body in the past and try and integrate these practices, perhaps titrating them to match where you’re at right now. This can look like brainstorming ways to integrate movement, rest, nutrition, sleep, and connection- paying attention to what your current needs are. The key is making small, supportive changes rather than aiming for a complete overhaul.
Our bodies are, undoubtedly, impacted by loss. If you have any questions about the physical symptoms you are experiencing, please reach out to your healthcare provider. And, if you’re looking for support through the process of grief, therapy can help. Call us at 215-922-5683 x 100 to speak to a clinician that can help connect you with the right therapist or book directly on our website here.
