Losing someone we love could be the hardest thing to deal with in life. It is like losing a part of ourselves and never becoming complete again no matter what. However we try, this emptiness that was brought by losing this important person in our lives will never be filled. Grief can suck your energy and leave you floundering.
Grief can not only be caused by a loved one’s death, including pets. It can also be caused by loss of job, a heartbreak or breakup of relationships, or realizing that your dreams will not come to pass.
How do you deal with it? How can it suck out all your energy and how can you re-energize yourself to get back up?
How Grief Can Suck Your Energy And How To Re-Energize Yourself
What grief does to your body
When you mourn, your body or well-being is affected.
You are either unable to sleep or you do nothing but sleep. You are deprived or you get uneasy sleep at night. You might also oversleep. The person grieving may experience nightmares from memories or fears of what could happen. Either way, your sleep cycle becomes irregular.
Grief can also lower a person’s immune system. This means that you become sickly or prone to disease because your body is not strong enough to fight it. Also, any pre-existing illness is aggravated.
Your digestive system is also affected. Like in a person under stress, churning stomach is common. Hyper acidity may happen because of stress and lacking appetite to eat. For some people however, they eat their emotions so they eat more than they normally do. The person would feel nauseous and may have irregular bowel movement.
The respiratory and cardiovascular is affected as the person would experience irregular heartbeat, tightness in the chest, and difficulty in breathing; usually, when grief triggers.
When you’re down and grieving, you have low energy and you get tired easily. It’s as if you feel a heaviness in your body; making it hard to move around and impossible to function normally. You also constantly feel your body ache although most of the time, you’re not certain from which part.
Migraine can be a common complaint as well as grief makes you overthink. The headache may also come from not having enough sleep or not being able to eat decently due to lack of appetite.
Your body may be made of different parts but it is one. So what the little pinky finger feels, the whole body can feel. If you are in emotional pain because of grief, this pain is manifested in the physical.
How to re-energize yourself
Grief may just be one emotion, but it is a powerful one that can suck your energy and leave you knocked down for days. For some people, even months or years!
Grief can weaken you but it must not be a permanent situation. Allow yourself to feel pain, let your body feel normal. But don’t let grief paralyze you from moving forward.
Pray.
Never underestimate the power of prayer in times of grief. Be vulnerable before God. Pour out your emotions to Him. Let yourself be opened to receive His grace and comfort.
Write down your feelings on a journal or a blog.
This could be an outlet for you to lessen the burden in your heart and if you want to share it, it will bless others who are going through the same thing.
Go out there.
Attend an art class if you’re into it. Practice yoga. Run. Bike. Hike. Surround yourself with nature. Go to the beach and let the breeze caress your skin and bring you comfort. Listen to the relaxing sounds of the waves. Or better yet, let the water wash away your grief in a way.
Volunteer to charities or organizations that make a difference in the world.
Channel your energy into something good. This will not only help you realize that there is more you can do for others, it will also remind you that there are people who has less than you have but are still fighting to live.
More importantly, know that no matter what, you need to take care of your body. Nourish it, try to get enough rest, and bask in other people’s love for you to fill up your energy again. After all, love is more powerful than any negative emotions.
Would you like to take part in #MondayMusings?
Here’s how it works:
- Write a post sharing your thoughts with us – happy, sad, philosophical, ‘silly’ even. Make it as personal as possible.
- Use the hashtag #MondayMusings.
- Add your link to the linky below
- Use our #MondayMusings badge to encourage other bloggers join in too.
- Visit and comment on the posts of other bloggers linked here.
- Share the love.
Also joining in with Mac for the #mg linky.
The landscape of grief can be hard to navigate. It creeps up on us in so many different ways. And yet, we must go on…and rise…and heal…
Grief can be overwhelming to handle all of it in one go and I feel its the healing process that helps us deal with it better! Great post Corinne with some very practical and easy to do advice.
Corinne, I can totally relate to this post, especially the tips you have given your readers about dealing with grief. I have done all of that in the last one month, and I’m so grateful these things have kept me uplifted and going in this period of irreparable loss.
Great post. Think I’ll share it with my Dad, who is grappling to come to terms with losing a life partner of fifty six years.
Thank you.
Its not just about losing someone, grief or stress about anything can really manifest the way you have said in the post. Exam stress, personal problems, relationship troubles all end up eating you from within if you don’t get a hold on yourself. Great post!
Sorry about clogging your comments section but I also wanted to add that prayer can work wonders like you said. I feel it brings a certain calmness and peace within yourself. More than the thought that your prayers will be answered it’s the process of praying that actually helps!
Something I’ve learned about grief in the past year is that we are never stagnant. Even in loss, we are different every day in our response to the loss and in our movement toward healing.
Thanks for your good thoughts about feeling all the feelings and then moving forward as we are able.
Funny I too am experiencing sleeplessness but that is because I’m in a different time zone . Very practicaland sage advice Corinne .
Grief is one of the most awful things to face, loosing someone we love is just way too painful. When my best friend died I felt my heart was ripped out of my chest, it has been almost 9 years and I still ache so much for her. It does go in waves, I can laugh about fun times and smile at songs we used to sing, but then I can also just burst into tears some days. I hope you are doing well my dear friend, you have been through so much. Please know you are in my prayers. You truly are one of the most inspirational women I known and although we do not know each other personally I feel a connection with you through your words, I can see you have a beautiful soul. #mg
Great post about tackling grief . Praying and going out , walking, talking to a friend , little bit of yoga helps in my case
After I lost my father, I joined a chanting group, it helped my grief to heal. So, I absolutely agree the power of prayers. Beautiful post as usual.
A helpful post Corinne. Grief can pull a punch on the strongest of us and have us flat out with no respite unless we force ourselves to snap out of it. Surrounding oneself with people who make us feel better, sometimes talking it out, exercising and simply being in the sun, does help. But probably time is the biggest healer.
Corinne,it is natural,at times one finds it difficult to tide over.
A post straight from the heart. Tucking it away in the corner of my mind for when I need it
Super agree.
Last September I lost my grandfather. My first ever encounter with death from such close quarters. I couldn’t handle it. More sad was the fact that i couldn’t be with him during his final moments. I was away, out of town, in Hyderabad while my entire family and extended family was in Bhubaneswar. I was not with my mother on that fateful day.
Crying didn’t ease my heart. Couldn’t concentrate on studies. I came home for a week to grandmother and family. It was then i could accept this a bit- that he was just gone. Gone. Family time relieved the heavy heart a bit. Being with grandma helped. Her loss is greater than mine.
And his passing bonded the estranged members of his family. Death is a unifying force, i saw that time. Those brothers who didn’t contact him for years owing to certain disputes, spearheaded all the after funeral rituals.
Family is truly healing power. Prayer too is.
Corinne, you have wonderful tips for grief and all of it’s forms. It is so important to let the process happen and not bury it or compartmentalize. You are a wise one! #mg xo