Recognizing and Dealing with Grief Fatigue

No one can prepare you to deal with grief. It will affect you at every level of your being and in every facet of your life. It lasts far longer than you would have expected, and at some point, you will begin to experience grief fatigue. Most people know how it feels to be physically exhausted, but in grief, you can feel fatigued in a few different ways. Recognizing when you are feeling fatigued helps you deal with it.

Stretched Capacity

Grief is a complex process that affects everyone uniquely. However, there are a few universal experiences that people face while they grieve. For example, everyone has to deal with logistics and administration soon after a loved one passes. Some people take solace in the mundane processes that follow a loved one’s passing, such as organizing the burial or funeral service.

Others simply cannot cope with such tasks at that moment. The one effect that grief has on everyone is that it stretches their capacity to multitask, often in frustrating and emotional ways.

In grief, emotions tend to bubble to the surface and conflict with each other. You might wonder, “Why am I missing them, but I also feel a burning anger toward them?” Not only do you have to process this, but you often have to return to work and carry out daily responsibilities.

Being stretched in so many ways is a form of exercise; it’s as if your body, soul, and mind are working out simultaneously. It’s not surprising that you are fatigued, because grief is exhausting work.

Recognizing and Dealing with Grief Fatigue

Grief is an ongoing experience that doesn’t pass or finish. You can’t complete grief. You can only learn how to better cope with a loved one’s memory and absence. One of the things that helps you grieve is to recognize where grief is taking its toll on you.

Five main areas result in grief fatigue, some of which may be fairly obvious, while others might be things that you might not have considered or faced before. When you become aware of what is draining your energy or stealing your focus, you can brainstorm how to make things easier for yourself.

Physical Fatigue

The word “fatigue” often conjures images of someone who is physically exhausted, but few would imagine that grief could affect your body. The fact is that grief is as much an external experience as it is an internal one. Grief can feel like a physical weight that you carry, slowing you down and making it harder to complete tasks. Many people find that their sleep schedules are affected by grief, an issue that has many effects on daily rhythm.

To get over physical fatigue in grief, you only need one thing: rest. This doesn’t necessarily mean better sleep, or more naps (although those are both helpful things). Try to build easier rhythms and softer routines. Take it easier on yourself. Try to find enjoyable and relaxing activities that will charge your inner batteries.

Logistical Fatigue

It feels cruel that some of the first things you must do after the passing of a loved one are make a lot of logistical plans and important decisions. This is just a part of the process that cannot be avoided. Some find it a helpful part of the grieving process, but it is also exhausting. Often there are logistical decisions long after the funeral process, such as having to settle debts, deal with properties, or divide belongings between family members.

Even the people who enjoy making plans and working these types of things out will eventually become fatigued by doing so. Logistics can provide an unhelpful distraction from engaging with the more emotional aspects of grief.

Consider where you can lean on others for help. Is there a family member who could take on a more administrative role in things? Perhaps you could allow your partner or older children to pick up some extra household duties, to give you some space to rest. You are not selfish for needing help in grief. However, sometimes you need to allow yourself to receive support.

Mental Fatigue

It’s not just planning and strategizing that causes mental fatigue in grief. Many people are plagued by “what if” and “if only” thoughts. Mental health experts once said that this part of grief is called bargaining. However you define it, it causes fatigue.

Grief is a form of stress on your central nervous system that often comes with symptoms of forgetfulness, brain fog, and being distracted. Remember that you engage with grief with every part of you- body, mind, and emotions.

As with the other ways of finding rest, you need to go easier on yourself. It helps to find some kind of enjoyable, mindless activity that you can do to give your brain a break. That might be video or phone games, a creative hobby like crochet or pottery, going for long walks in nature, or bingeing a favorite TV show. Your mind simply needs a bit of time where it doesn’t have to do anything.

Emotional Fatigue

While grief is an ongoing process, it is different every day, from year to year. You go through phases where your emotions are high and you are irritable, depressed, anxious, or just impatient with those around you. Other times, you might start to feel worried by how you simply don’t feel anything at all.

In grief, your emotions are like the weather; they change unexpectedly and feel beyond your control. All of this can overwhelm you emotionally, whether you consider yourself an emotional person or not.

Some emotions are kinetic, meaning that they build up and beg to be released. You can release pent-up emotions like frustration, anger, and even fear by doing something physical. Activities like hitting a punching bag, vocalizing your fear in screams, and even swimming in the ocean or a discreet body of water.

Spiritual Fatigue

More than anything else, death and grief cause people to ask deep questions and consider new truths. If you had faith before, you might find it severely challenged, with most of your emotions directed at the One you hold responsible for not intervening.

If you didn’t have faith before, you might begin to hope for the first time that death was not the end, and that there might be something waiting for us after. You can navigate grief without faith in an afterlife, but it is normal to yearn for easy answers and grapple with beliefs you never had before.

If you are wrestling with questions, doubts, and fears, lean into them and don’t ignore them. Try to find someone you can talk to who will not offer you easy answers and patronizing comfort. You need to find some kind of truth, or at least an idea to grapple with. If you can build a relationship with someone kind and wise as you do so, that would be a bonus.

Rest for Your Soul

You might have realized by now that there is no easy, quick fix for dealing with grief. The only thing you have control over is how you spend your time and the things you devote yourself to in grief. Sometimes the best advice is the simplest. If you are feeling the strains of grief fatigue in any of the previously mentioned ways, try some of these things to find rest. No matter how it feels, you are never truly alone in your grief.

If you would like to meet with a counselor to discuss any aspect of grief, call our offices today. We can help connect you to one of the experienced therapists in our practice.