Where does grief reside?

Grief is an emotion that we all feel and is one of the emotions we experience that is the most undesirable.  Everybody has a different reaction to grief, and it can be helpful to try and think through where grief resides in your body and how it expresses itself.  For some people, grief resides more in their heads.  When grieving, some people feel like their minds are very foggy, and they cannot focus.  When someone feels grief in their minds, they can also struggle with sleep.  Some people might sleep a lot and feel very tired throughout their grief, whereas others might struggle with sleep.  Sometimes, people struggle to focus so much on their grief and the person they lost, and their minds can feel very occupied.  Another symptom that can be in the head is that people will struggle with puffy and irritated eyes. Tears are a very common reaction to grief and can definitely be hard on the eyes the more that they happen.  We tend to wipe our eyes more when we are more tearful, which can irritate them more.

For some people, their grief resides more in their hearts.  When grief resides in the heart, it can even feel like a tightened chest.  This can sometimes lead to panic attacks if someone does not realize what it is. When grief resides in the heart, that person’s heart can also feel very heavy.  When the heart feels heavy, it can feel hopeless and like you will not feel the same ever again. 

A lot of the emotions we feel in our bodies are connected to our gut and stomach area.  Therefore, it is not uncommon for people to feel grief in their gut whenever they are grieving.  When someone feels grief in their gut, it can be really common to lack hunger.  When we have an upset stomach, it is natural not to feel as hungry as we normally do.  This is a difficult symptom of grief because it can actually cause the negative symptoms of grief to worsen since food is fuel for our bodies.