Grief is not just emotions

Grief isn’t just emotional - living in our thoughts only. It inhabits our breath, our bones, and the spaces between heartbeats. When the mind can’t carry the weight of loss, the body takes over—ramping into fight or flight, collapsing into numbness, or quietly storing pain in tight jaws, aching shoulders, and uneasy stomachs. 

In this episode, we walk through these patterns with care, naming what so many feel but rarely have words for, and show how the nervous system tries to protect us even when it feels like it’s working against us.

You’ll hear a clear map of the body’s grief responses: the wired-but-tired urgency of anxiety, the heavy fog of freeze, and the somatic signals that appear as headaches, throat tightness, and disrupted sleep. We dig into why breath becomes shallow, why spontaneous sighs matter, and how loss can make even familiar rooms feel unfamiliar. 

To support healing, I share three simple practices you can use right away: hand on heart, slow exhale breathing, and grounding with bare feet in grass. Pairing gentle words—“I’m safe, I’m okay, what I feel is okay”—with steady breath begins to regulate the nervous system and restore a felt sense of safety. 

If you’ve wondered whether your aches, restlessness, or sudden fatigue might be grief, this conversation offers validation, language, and a path forward. 

Press play, try the practices with me, and share this with someone who needs a softer way to meet their loss. If this resonated, subscribe, leave a review, and share with me what your body has been trying to say.

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Chapters

• 1:23 Welcome & Core Premise
• 2:53 Fight Or Flight Signs Of Grief
• 4:08 Freeze, Numbness, And Collapse
• 5:11 Tension, Pain, And Somatic Symptoms
• 6:55 Breathing Changes And Deep Sighs
• 7:36 When Safety Feels Out Of Reach
• 9:08 Simple Practices To Regulate

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:42

Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining me today in the Caring Death Doola podcast. Today we are going to talk about how grief is not just emotional. When your mind cannot hold those emotions that you're going through, those feelings, the situation, the loss, the change. What you suppress or push away of these emotions, of these circumstances, situations, loss, change. What your mind cannot hold, what you push away, what you suppress will be held in your body. And often people don't realize that. Grief is not just emotional, it's physical. And often we have symptoms and we don't understand, we don't know, we don't realize that it's the grief. And when we don't express that grief, that's when we have issues. So I'm going to go through today some ways that your body will show that you're carrying that grief. You haven't released it. You haven't felt safe or free, or that you have the time because maybe you're taking care of everyone else. Maybe you don't want to face it. So let's go through the different ways that our body handles grief. And then we're going to end with a practice that will help us to begin to heal, to soothe and heal, and regulate our brain and our nervous system. Now, probably it's something that you're familiar with. Is the grief when you have the racing heart, uh, the racing thoughts. You're wired but tired, maybe. Your chest can be tight. Your throat can even be tight where it's like it feels difficult to swallow. Your breathing will change. It can get shallow. Sometimes you'll you'll you'll kind of notice that you're holding your breath. There may be a restlessness, irritability, even anger. That edgy, anxious feeling, sleep difficulties, and a sense of urgency, like I must, I must do something. And then other times our body goes more into the parasympathetic system where it freezes or collapses. And that's the response that we have. And that can feel like numbness, disconnection, heavy fatigue, just weighed down, brain fog, not caring, loss of motivation, loss of any pleasure, any enjoyment in your day, in your life. This is an example of that your emotions, of the loss of the change in your life, feel so overwhelming that your brain is just, we can't handle this right now. And your body conserves energy. So it shuts down, it freezes. Then another way, and I want to I want you to know that you can have um more than one of these. It's not like you're just in the fight or flight, or you're just in the freeze, or you're just gonna have tension and pain. These can be interlocked together. So the third one is tension and pain. When unexpressed grief will settle into our body as tightness in your chest or throat, and it feels difficult to swallow, the aching in your shoulders and neck, like you're carrying the weight of the world, the weight of your family. Digestive issues can be caused by grief, headaches, jaw tensions. Remember, what your mind cannot hold, what you suppress or push down, will go into your body. It has to go somewhere. If you don't deal with it, it will go into your body. Grief can change our breathing patterns. Maybe you've noticed that your breathing is more shallow, irregular, or even that you've held it. Deep sighs are often your body's way. It's a natural way for your body to attempt to regulate and reset your nervous system. I don't know if you've ever been aware of that, that you just sigh. Or maybe somebody else has commented, well, you're sighing a lot today or this week. That is your body trying to naturally reset itself. And the last one that I want to discuss is when there's a loss of feeling safe. After you go through a change of loss of a loved one, of a pet, of you know, your dream, your job, your house, whatever your loss is, even your familiar places can feel unsafe or they feel unknown, like you don't know what to expect. You you don't you just don't know. It just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel safe. So I want to encourage you that if you feel any of this, especially if you feel unsafe, know that that's a natural part of grief. It can be. Not all of us are going to experience all of these, and none of us are gonna, or not all of us are gonna experience this unsafe feeling, but it is something that I want you to be aware of. And I want you to be aware of when you're considering or or wanting to help or observing or working with somebody, be aware that they can often feel unsafe in their in their own homes. You find it hard to relax, to trust others, and you may even feel unsafe in your own body. Because safety, remember, safety is huge for your brain. Your brain is protecting you, your nervous system needs to be regulated so that everything can feel safe and smooth and just flowing. And so grief is not just emotional, it's also physical. And I think a lot of us that aren't aware of that, don't know that, don't understand that. And we need to be aware of that. We need to learn to listen to our bodies. And so I want to give you two things that you could do right now, today, or perhaps three things. I want to give you three things that can help you just to relax, to start the healing of grief within your body to help begin the process of regulating your nervous system. I want you to put your hand on your heart and just take a deep breath in and a deep breath out. And just do that for a little bit. Just pause and just breathe. You can add to that by saying, I'm safe. It's okay. I'm okay. What I'm feeling is okay. I'm safe. You can go further with that with your hand on your heart, and you can go out into a patch of grass and put your bare feet in grass. Hand on your heart, say the words they come to you, say the words if that comforts you, or sit in silence and just breathe with your eyes closed. Just take a moment and breathe. You are safe. What you're feeling is okay. There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. This is the caring death, dealer, and I am here for you.