There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from doing too much, but from carrying something invisible. If you have ever lost someone — a person, a relationship, a version of yourself — you know exactly what I mean. Grief is not just an emotion. It is a full-body experience, and the way most of us are taught to handle it — push through, stay strong, keep moving — is quietly making us sicker.
I am writing this not as someone with all the answers, but as someone who has sat in the thick of loss and learned, often the hard way, that the body keeps score. What mourning does to you physically is not weakness. It is biology. And understanding it might be the permission slip you didn’t know you needed to finally stop pretending you’re fine.
The Physiology of Grief: What’s Actually Happening Inside You
When we lose someone or something significant, the brain registers it as a threat. The amygdala — your brain’s alarm system — fires up. Cortisol and adrenaline flood the body. Your nervous system moves into fight-or-flight mode, even though there’s nothing to fight and nowhere to run. This is why loss can feel so disorienting. You’re not falling apart. You’re having a completely appropriate physiological response to it.
According to research published in JAMA Internal Medicine, bereaved individuals face a significantly elevated risk of cardiac events in the days immediately following a loss — a phenomenon so well documented it has been named “broken heart syndrome,” or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The heart literally changes shape under extreme emotional stress. This is not metaphor. This is medicine.
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Beyond the heart, loss affects nearly every system in the body. The immune system takes a hit. Sleep becomes fractured and non-restorative. Digestion slows. Inflammation increases. Some people experience what feels like physical pain in their chest — again, not metaphorical. The anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that processes emotional pain, also processes physical pain. Grief and a broken leg register in overlapping neural regions. Your body is not lying to you when it tells you the ache hurts.
Why “Pushing Through” Is Not the Answer
We live in a culture that rewards resilience — or what it mistakes for resilience. Get back to work. Be strong for the kids. Keep yourself busy. Don’t dwell. These messages are everywhere, and they are genuinely well-intentioned. But they are also, in many cases, deeply harmful.
When we suppress sorrow, we don’t eliminate it. We relocate it. Unprocessed pain gets stored in the body — in tightened shoulders, in chronic fatigue, in unexplained digestive issues, in anxiety that seems to have no origin. Psychologist and author Dr. Gabor Maté has spent decades documenting the way suppressed emotional pain manifests as physical illness. “The body says no,” he writes, “when the mind has been trained to say yes to everything else.”
After a significant personal loss, I threw myself into productivity. I was praised for how well I was “handling things.” What nobody saw was that six months later, I was exhausted in a way no amount of sleep could fix. I had headaches that wouldn’t quit. I was snapping at people I loved. My body was trying to speak what I wouldn’t let myself feel. If you recognise this pattern in yourself, I’d encourage you to read our piece on How to Rebuild Your Life After Everything Falls Apart — it speaks directly to what comes after grief refuses to be ignored.
The Stages of Grief Are Not a Checklist
Most people have heard of the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — popularised by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. What fewer people know is that Kübler-Ross herself, before her death, expressed concern that her model had been misapplied. These were never meant to be sequential steps. They are not a checklist. You do not “complete” mourning.
Loss is nonlinear. You can feel acceptance on a Tuesday and rage on a Wednesday. You can laugh at a memory and fall apart at a supermarket because someone is wearing the same perfume. It has no timeline. Anyone who tells you that you should be “over it” by now has simply not yet experienced a loss significant enough to teach them otherwise.
Modern grief researchers, including Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor at the University of Arizona, are moving beyond stage theory to understand mourning as a form of learning. The brain is literally trying to recalibrate to a world that no longer includes the person or thing you’ve lost. That rewiring takes time — and it cannot be rushed.
What Your Body Needs When You’re Grieving
If you are in the middle of loss right now, here is what the research — and a lot of lived experience — suggests your body actually needs.
Rest Without Guilt
Mourning is metabolically expensive. Your brain is doing extraordinary work — processing loss, consolidating memories, trying to make meaning of absence. Sleep and rest are not indulgences. They are how this processing happens. If you are sleeping more than usual, your body is not failing you. It is doing its job. Allow it.
Gentle Movement
This is not about hitting the gym. It’s about moving the body gently to help cortisol metabolise and prevent it from accumulating. Walking in nature — particularly in green spaces — has been shown to lower cortisol levels and reduce rumination. Even ten minutes of gentle stretching can signal to the nervous system that the immediate threat has passed. Our piece on why movement is one of the most powerful tools for emotional health explores this further.
Nourishment, Not Comfort Eating
Loss disrupts appetite in both directions — some people can’t eat, others eat constantly. Neither is a moral failing. But because sorrow increases inflammation in the body, foods that reduce inflammation — omega-3-rich fish, leafy greens, berries, nuts — can genuinely support your body’s ability to process stress. This is not about being perfect with food. It’s about feeding your body the building blocks it needs to heal.
Connection, Even When You Don’t Want It
Isolation is the enemy of recovery. Not because you need to talk about your loss constantly, but because human connection activates the parasympathetic nervous system — the “rest and digest” counterpart to fight-or-flight. Being in the physical presence of someone safe, even in silence, can regulate your nervous system in ways that solitude simply cannot. If you’re struggling to ask for help, you might recognise yourself in The Silent Pressure of Being Strong.
When Grief Becomes Something More
There is a difference between ordinary mourning and what clinicians call “prolonged grief disorder” — a condition now officially recognised in the DSM-5-TR. Prolonged grief is characterised by intense longing, difficulty accepting the loss, emotional numbness, a sense of meaninglessness, and an inability to engage with life that persists beyond twelve months after the loss. If this sounds familiar, it is worth speaking with a therapist who specialises in bereavement, not because something is wrong with you, but because you deserve specialised support.
The American Psychological Association’s bereavement resources offer a good starting point for understanding the difference between ordinary mourning and prolonged grief disorder, and how to access appropriate help.
Giving Grief the Space It Deserves
One of the most radical things you can do in a productivity-obsessed world is to give your sorrow space to exist. Not to wallow — there is a difference — but to acknowledge it as real, valid, and worthy of time. To stop performing okayness. To let yourself cry in the car. To cancel plans without explanation. To say, “I am not fine right now, and that is allowed.”
Loss is not a disruption to your life. It is proof of how deeply you loved. It is a sign that something or someone mattered. And your body, in all its complicated, exhausted, aching wisdom, is simply trying to honour that.
If you are rebuilding after loss, you might also find comfort in understanding how chronic emotional weight affects the body — because sustained stress and heartache are more closely linked than most people realise. And when you’re ready to start thinking about the future, our piece on what happiness actually looks like after hardship offers a gentler framework than the toxic positivity we’re often handed.
You are not behind. You are not broken. You are grieving. And that is entirely, completely human.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical or psychological advice. If you are struggling with grief, prolonged grief disorder, or any mental health concern, please consult a qualified healthcare professional or licensed therapist. The experiences shared in this article are personal and should not replace professional support.
Rubie Le’Faine is the founder of Rubie Rubie and a writer specialising in emotional well-being, self-identity, and the psychology of modern relationships. She holds a Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills and has spent over eight years studying attachment theory, cognitive behavioural principles, and human development — first through formal study, then through lived experience that no course can replicate. After navigating a significant relationship breakdown, an identity rebuild, and the complex terrain of rediscovering herself in her 30s, Rubie began writing to make sense of what she had learned and to offer honest, human guidance to others going through the same. She founded Rubie Rubie in 2022 as a space for women seeking real answers, not platitudes. Based in Surrey, UK, her writing is grounded in research, shaped by experience, and centred entirely on the reader’s genuine wellbeing.
