238: When You're Tired of Grief

This episode was inspired by a conversation I had with a mom in Grieving Moms Haven. She was just talking about how tired she is. How she’s so exhausted of grieving and so tired of the pain. So tired of feeling this way. She doesn’t want to do anything more. She just feels exhausted beyond belief.

And I knew exactly what she was talking about. This exhaustion is just beyond belief. But she shared with me, that she was in Grieving Moms Haven to have a place of accountability, a place to process and do the things that will support her on her grief journey when she’s just so tired she doesn’t want to do anything.

I found this in a journal I wrote in the year after Aria died and I wanted to share it with you-

”I’m just done. Ready to be done with this life and move on to the next. So sick of the sadness, the stress, the anxiety, the anger, the snappiness. No one else understands, everyone wants to try but they have no clue how awful each day is. I guess I wouldn’t want others to understand either, but it sure makes you feel alone”.

This bone-deep tiredness is just not something you can easily explain to another person until you’ve lived it or truly are living with this level of exhaustion.

So…I wanted to talk about this exhaustion, this tiredness, some ways of thinking about it that can be useful, and some ideas for how to support yourself through this exhaustion.

So something I was reminded about after Aria died was your tank is beyond empty. There is just no energy in the tank. There’s no gas in the car. It’s not because you are doing it wrong, but because grief affects you on every level of your mind, body, and soul, and drains all the energy from you. So it’s not because you are doing it wrong or you’re not doing enough.

I would offer that you are probably pushing yourself too hard and trying to do too much and not giving yourself enough grace for what you are going through.

So when you are this exhausted, how do you even begin to do anything besides go to sleep, and then not sleep, and then get more exhausted because you can’t sleep, and then do the things you need to do and the cycle continues?

So the first thing here: There’s nothing you need to do. Absolutely nothing you need to do. When your mind reads something as a need, it connects it with the things you need to do to survive this moment. Like taking another breath. You need to take another breath to live the next moment. So you do need to do this.

This is the only thing you need to do right now.

But when you’re thinking things like, I need to send out those thank you cards, I need to get back to that person, I need to wash these dishes. Your mind reads this as a life-or-death situation and creates that level of stress in your body like it would if you weren’t taking your next breath.

So I was using my phone the other day, and it kept being super slow. If you’ve ever used slow technology or had a phone like that, you know how frustrating it is when it doesn’t work and you click on an app and it takes a little while for it to pop open. My phone kept popping up with this notification, that some systems and functions will not work properly as the storage is too full. I would delete some items, but some things kept getting added, and I had to delete quite a bit of items before my phone started to work properly again, and before all the systems were working properly and functioning properly. It wasn’t that the phone was broken or not working, it was that the memory or storage was full and there wasn’t any room for anything else to come into it.

When you are navigating through grief and trauma, every storage system is jammed, full, or otherwise plugged in some way. So it’s not that you’re broken, or anything like that, it’s that your systems and where the mind is processing data might be plugged, jammed, or trying to process information that’s just not going through the processor.

So- even if you’re not conscious of all the layers of grief or trauma at the moment, your mind is trying to process and work through it all, and of course, it takes a ton of energy. Just like I wasn’t aware that the data on my phone wasn’t filling up and slowing down the capacity, the same way grief and trauma in the background and even in the very front row seat slow down the capacity of your mind to be clear and to be able to function in a way where you have a ton of energy.

It takes a lot of energy to have all that stored in your mind and body and to have your mind trying to process things that are not being processed.

In a similar vein as this, during my Rapid Resolution 1:1 calls with moms this kept coming up, this idea of not having any energy at the end of their work day to clean, or get the things they wanted to get done around their house. That they go to work and come out absolutely drained and look around at their house feeling like they should be doing more.

So, the number one thing is, there’s nothing that you need to do. Right? And then, if you have a little more space in your grief, the things that rise to the top as what is to do next, are getting done. Right? So nothing is needing to, but the things that rise as the things to do next, are getting done, so notice how these little things at the bottom of the list take up so much brain space and begin bigger in your mind as things that need to be done, and things that aren’t getting done, and then start weighing you have done.

But if these little things were things to be done, they would rise to the top as the next thing to do.

So, again, there is nothing that needs to be done. Grief and trauma drain energy constantly, and if you don’t begin to care for them, they will always be in the background draining your energy even if you don’t see them. So taking care of them and clearing parts of them, will help give you more energy.

When you are just too tired to do the things you want to do and know that would be good for you to do, again, reach out. Go watch my free video o the best way to ease the pain of grief www.lifeafterchildlosscoaching.com, because you don’t have to continue to just try to muddle through this alone.

When you can get assistance in closing out some of those windows that are draining your energy, you can begin to feel lighter and find some more energy to do the things that are good for you to do and have done.