How Grief Affects the Body

At some point, everyone will experience grief. Most commonly, we experience grief after the loss of a loved one or a pet. However, there are many more reasons why we can experience grief. Grief can occur after a job loss, not getting a promotion, or a big life transition. At its core, grief is the loss of anything.

Everyone has heard of the stages of grief, but not everyone goes through them the same way. It's an experience that is truly unique to each individual person. Even though no two people will experience grief in the same way, there are some commonalities between the signs and symptoms of grief.

How Does Grief Impact The Body

Digestive Issues

Digestive issues are one of the more common symptoms someone may experience during the grief process. Why?

After a loss, eating habits often change. Maybe somebody will eat less and not have an appetite. Or, they may eat only the foods they find comfort in, which are less nutritious. In both cases, it's completely understandable. After all, experiencing a loss of any kind can completely shake your world, so the last thing you are focused on is practicing good eating habits.

Also, the onslaught of emotions that grief causes us to feel can also contribute to feeling nauseous or queasy.

Pain

When processing grief, the human body experiences many emotions and thoughts quickly. This puts the body into a hypervigilant or constantly on edge state. Not only does it cause us to be on edge, but multiple studies have found that grief increases levels of inflammation throughout the body.

Due to the high amounts of stress and tension, someone may experience headaches, muscle pains, or even back pain that they can't contribute to any one cause.

Additionally, when the body is under stress, the immune system often responds and is weakened. This increases the chances that somebody will become sick on top of everything else.

Sleep Disturbances

During times of grief, it is not uncommon to also experience high amounts of anxiety. Anxiety is one of the leading causes of insomnia, but sleep disturbances also occur during periods of depression or PTSD. For many people, experiencing a great loss will cause them to develop any of those things.

As a result, someone may also experience insomnia, which is the inability to fall or stay asleep. Insomnia is not only frustrating to deal with, but the impact of it trickles down to every other area of life as well. It impacts somebody's ability to focus, drive safely, or make rational decisions.

Over time, lack of sleep can also begin to impact your body's ability to function well and may cause other issues.

How to Heal From Grief

Even though we will all experience grief at some point, that doesn't make it easy. For many of us, losing something profound, whether a person, a pet, or a job, can completely sideline us. It often wholly shifts our perspective in life, makes us question our own lives, and causes us to feel really low.

First, you should know that experiencing a tumultuous amount of emotions rapidly is normal during this process. Always remember that the grieving process is not linear. While there may be stages of grief, that doesn't mean they happen in order and then end once they're done. It's not uncommon for someone to experience the stages of grief "out of order" and then go through the same stage over again.

Grief is complicated and is a lot to work through. If you are struggling to cope after any loss, don't hesitate to reach out to us for grief counseling.