When Your Only Job is To Survive
I’d like to talk about what you do when your grief is so raw that it feels unsurvivable. This is especially true in early grief, but it can be true at any point when your grief feels acute (think death anniversaries, unexpectedly hearing a song that sends you spiraling, or even those random Tuesdays that inexplicably become heavy grief days).
In these moments, your task is to care for yourself as best you can to get from one moment to the next. The time to figure it all out will come, but this is not that time.
When you’re in a space where the pain of your loss feels all-consuming, here are a few strategies for getting yourself through:
Remember that sometimes your only job is to survive. When you are in acute grief, if all you’re doing is getting through to the next moment, you are doing enough. You are not the same person right now, and as terrible as that feels, one of the kindest things you can do is let yourself be a person who is grieving.
Tend to your body as much as you can. This is important not only to support goal number one (survival), but also because our bodies are less able to cope with the emotional demands of grief when they are not resourced. Drink water. Eat regularly (sometimes small meals or light snacks are easiest). Sleep when you can. Rest when you can. Move your body when you can.
5-4-3-2-1. This is a common exercise used to help slow anxious thoughts by grounding you in the present. When you find yourself spiraling, take a moment to find your breath if that’s available to you, and then notice and name: five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
Use distraction. We can’t sit with our pain all the time. It’s perfectly healthy to do things that take you away from your grief and give your brain and a heart a break. If you need a couple hours to escape into some trash TV and pretend that this all isn’t real, that’s okay.
Pay attention to what makes your grief just a little more bearable, and bring in more of that. Nothing can make the pain of loss go away, but there may be things that make it easier to live alongside it. Do you feel the slightest bit better if you take a 10-minute walk in the sunshine, connect with someone else who loves the person you’ve lost, or even organize a drawer? Keep a running list of what makes life just a little more bearable, and bring in more of that when you can.
Living through the hardest moments of your loss can feel like an impossible task. While this is by no means an exhaustive list, this is your reminder that sometimes living through grief and stress means tending to the basics. You can’t stop the pain, but you can care for yourself through it, one moment at a time.
As always, take gentle care of yourself.
P.S. - Megan Devine’s book It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand is a fantastic resource, particularly for early grief. If you’re looking for some practical guidance on managing the stress, anxiety, and challenges of acute grief, this is my most recommended book.
