The bottom line of this active work of grief and mourning is to help you recognize that your loved one is gone. Then you must make the necessary internal, psychological changes, as well as the necessary external, social changes, to accommodate this reality. And it all takes time.
Physical Symptoms of Grief and Loss
So sometimes the body keeps the score when emotional pain isn't addressed. That pain can show up in illnesses, digestive issues, muscle tension, headaches, high blood pressure, and other physical symptoms.
Grief increases stress levels in your body, which can lead to physical discomfort and illness. The most common symptoms among bereaved people are digestive issues, sleep disorders, pain, and “brain fog.” As grief has no set timeline, it is hard to predict how long these symptoms will last.
“The imprint of trauma doesn't 'sit' in the verbal, understanding, part of the brain, but in much deeper regions- amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, brain stem – (similar to the grief response) which are only marginally affected by thinking and cognition.
Lung. The lungs bring oxygen into the body and remove carbon dioxide. In TCM, this organ is believed to be connected to grief and the following conditions: Emotions: Grief, sadness, and detachment.
“Research to date shows, like many other stressors, grief often leads to changes in our endocrine, immune, autonomic nervous system and cardiovascular systems.” For example, sometimes our hearts change shape as a result of a profound loss.
For some people, the tremors are big movements in the muscles. For others, they are tiny contractions that feel like electrical frequencies moving through the body. TRE® is not painful—in fact, most people enjoy the sensations.
The emotion associated with the lungs is grief. The lungs receive and let go, keeping the movement in and out in a healthy exchange with the outer world. If that exchange is blocked emotionally by grief and sadness, it affects the smooth action of the lungs.
Distorted grief
Often characterized by an extreme reaction, distorted grief provokes an intense response from the griever. This type of grief can be identified by the griever's immense emotional response and often hostile behavior. This anger is directed at other people and/or the griever themselves.
But some of us feel nothing at all. Emotional numbness can be linked with a type of grief called 'inhibited grief,' which is characterised by suppressed emotions. This type of grief may not fit with the way society expects us to behave after a death.
Whatever the circumstances of the loss, the common thread is that the sufferer tries to deny or avoid the normal aspects of their grief. Most often, they tend to hold on to their loved one and refuse to accept the loss.
Grieving necessarily has a time component to it. Grieving is what happens as we adapt to the fact that our loved one is gone, that we're carrying the absence of them with us. And the reason that this distinction makes sense is, grief is a natural response to loss — so we'll feel grief forever.
Their behaviors and reactions, which are normal responses to grief, are met not with support and understanding, but with negative labels and punishment. This results in a concept Dr. Bordere has identified as suffocated grief and is rooted in systems of oppression and discrimination.
There is no written manual or predictable patterns on the types of grief triggers you may experience after the loss of a loved one in your grief recovery process. Depending on your personal history and experiences, triggers of pain can come from anything from special dates, songs, places, and even specific smells.
Treatment for trauma
By concentrating on what's happening in your body, you can release pent-up trauma-related energy through shaking, crying, and other forms of physical release. Cognitive-behavioral therapy helps you process and evaluate your thoughts and feelings about a trauma.
"In a fight or flight situation, your muscles respond by tensing up. If you think of your pelvis as the center point for your body to work off of when trying to get away from trauma, and your body's response to trauma includes making your muscles tense, it makes sense that your hips tend to store a lot of tension."
Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event. Most people who go through traumatic events may have temporary difficulty adjusting and coping, but with time and good self-care, they usually get better.
Some of these changes will be forever and long lasting, but some will only be part of the acute and early stages of grieving (whatever that timeline looks like for you). And some of these changes aren't necessarily all bad. Losing a loved one is just about the worst thing that can happen to any of us.
Can grief permanently damage your brain? Though grief can have a significant effect on the brain, these changes are temporary for most people. The brain is resilient and able to rebalance itself over time, even after very painful experiences.
Not only does grief completely turn your life upside down, but it also plays havoc with your outward appearance, too. The activation and prolonged experience of the fight or flight response can result in dull and dry skin, which is exactly what I experienced.
It disrupts your memory storage processes and changes the way your brain works. Trauma left untreated can have a big impact on your future health. Trauma can lead to physical and emotional distress, which can lead to more serious health conditions, such as heart attack, stroke, obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
That is because the experience of stress, particularly traumatic stress, can trigger active survival responses of fight, flight, or freeze. When your body can't activate or complete these responses, those sensations become trapped in your nervous system.
Trauma can cause our memory processing system to malfunction: the declarative explicit memory system fails, so the traumatic memory isn't logged and stored properly. Instead, our supercomputer subverts to a simpler method of recording signals and encodes traumatic memories as pictures or body sensations.
Often the second year is the hardest as that's when the real grief work might begin. This is the time when you may be ready to face your grief head on and deal with any issues that are holding you back.