Grief feels unbearable, disorienting and chaotic – a grief researcher and widow shares evidence-based ways to face the early days of loss

• Grief can feel unbearable, disorienting, and chaotic, disrupting daily routines and leaving individuals feeling lost and alone.
• Intense emotional swings, physical symptoms, and cognitive fog are common experiences during early grief, making everyday moments feel overwhelming and painful.
• Learning to manage and bear emotional pain is a crucial task in early grief, involving allowing oneself to feel the weight of loss while also knowing when to step away without slipping into avoidance or numbness.
• Five evidence-based tools can help make painful moments more bearable: gentle touch to ease loneliness, riding the wave of emotions, soothing with soft textures, cooling down overwhelm, and rating pain levels.
• With support from loved ones, counselors, or hotlines, individuals can begin to adapt to their changed world, slowly rebuilding a life shaped by grief, love, and the courage to keep going.

The July 4 floods in Kerr County, Texas, sent shockwaves across the country. Now that most of the victims’ burials are over, the weight of grief is just beginning for loved ones left behind. It’s the daily devastation of an upended world where absence is glaringly present, nothing feels familiar, and life is paused in dizzying stillness.

I know this pain intimately. I’m a grief researcher, social work professor and widow. I lost my husband, Brent, in a drowning accident when I was 36. He went missing two days before his body was found.

Brent was a psychologist who specialized in grief, and we were trained to support others through suffering. Yet nothing could prepare me for my own loss.

Research and personal experience have shown me that profound loss disrupts the nervous system, sparking intense emotional swings and unleashing a cascade of physical symptoms. This kind of pain can make ordinary moments feel unbearable, so learning how to manage it is essential to surviving early grief. Thankfully, there are evidence-based tools to help people get through the rawest phases of loss.

Why early grief feels so disorienting

Losing someone central to your daily life unravels the routines that once anchored you.

Traumatic losses, the kind that arrive suddenly, violently or in ways that feel horrifying, carry a different kind of weight: the anguish of how the person died, the unanswered questions and the shock of having no time to prepare or say goodbye.

Everyday acts, like eating or going to bed, can highlight the absence and trigger both grief and dread. These moments reveal that grief is a whole-being experience. It affects not just our emotions, but also our bodies, thoughts, routines and sense of safety in the world.

Emotionally, grief can be chaotic. Emotions swing unpredictably, from sobs one moment to numbness the next. Mental health professionals call this emotional dysregulation, which includes feeling out of touch with emotions, reacting too little or too much, getting stuck in one emotional state or struggling to shift perspective.

Cognitively, focus feels impossible and memory lapses increase. Even knowing the loved one is gone, the brain scans for the person, expecting their voice or text, a natural attachment response that fuels disbelief, yearning and panic.

Physically, grief floods the body with stress hormones, leading to insomnia, fatigue, aches, heaviness and chest tightness. After losing someone close, studies suggest a brief increase in mortality risk, often from added strain on the heart, immune system and mental health.

Spiritually and existentially, loss can shake your beliefs to the core and make the world feel confusing, hollow and stripped of meaning.

Grief research confirms that these intense symptoms are typical for some time, exacerbated after traumatic loss.

Finding a new baseline

Eventually, most people begin to stabilize. But after traumatic loss, it’s not uncommon for that sense of chaos to linger for months or even years. In the beginning, treat yourself like someone recovering from major surgery: Rest often, move slowly and protect your energy.

Initially, you may only be able to manage small, familiar acts, such as brushing your teeth or making your bed, that remind you: I’m still here. That’s OK. Right now, your only job is survival, one manageable step at a time.

As you face everyday responsibilities again, allow space for rest. After Brent died, I brought a mat to work to lie down whenever fatigue or emotional weight became unbearable. I didn’t recognize this as pain management then, but that helped me survive the hardest days.

According to grief theorists, one of the most important tasks in early grief is learning to manage and bear emotional pain. Mourners must allow themselves to feel the weight of the loss.

But pain management isn’t just about sitting with the hurt. It also means knowing when to step away without slipping into avoidance, which can lead to panic, numbness and exhaustion. As Brent used to say, “The goal is to pick it up and put it down.” Taking intentional breaks through distraction or rest can make it possible to return to the grief without being consumed by it.

It also involves soothing yourself when the grief waves hit.

Five small but powerful ways to face painful moments

Here are five simple evidence-based tools designed to make painful moments more bearable for you or a grieving loved one. They won’t erase the pain, but they can quickly offer relief for the raw, jagged edges of early grief.

1. Gentle touch to ease loneliness

Place one hand on your chest, stomach or gently on your cheek – wherever you instinctively reach when you’re in pain. Inhale slowly. As you exhale, say softly aloud or in your mind: “This hurts.” Then, “I’m here” or “I’m not alone in this.” Stay for one to two minutes, or as long as feels comfortable.

Why it helps: Grief often leaves you touch-starved, aching for physical connection. Soothing self-touch, a self-compassion practice, activates the vagus nerve, which helps regulate heart rate, breathing and the body’s calming response after stress. This gesture offers warmth and grounding, reducing the isolation of heartache.

2. Riding the wave

When grief surges, set a timer for two to five minutes. Stay with the emotion. Breathe. Observe it without judgment. If it’s too much, distract yourself briefly, such as by counting backward, then return to the feeling and notice how it may have shifted.

Why it helps: Emotions rise like waves. This skill helps you stay present during emotional surges without panicking, and it helps you learn that emotional surges peak and pass without destroying you. It draws from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, or DBT, an evidence-based treatment for people experiencing intense emotional dysregulation.

3. Soothing with soft textures

Wrap yourself in a soft blanket. Hold a stuffed animal. Or stroke your pet’s fur. Focus on the texture for two to five minutes. Breathe slowly.

Why it helps: Softness signals safety to your nervous system. It gives comfort when pain is too raw for words.

4. Cooling down overwhelm

Therapists often teach a set of DBT skills called TIPP to help people manage emotional overwhelm during crises like grief. TIPP stands for:

Temperature: Use cold, such as holding ice or applying cold water to the face, to trigger a calming response.

Intense exercise: Engage in short bursts of movement to release tension.

Paced breathing: Breathe in slow, controlled breaths to reduce arousal. Inhale slowly for two to four seconds, then exhale for four to six seconds.

Progressive muscle relaxation: Tense and release individual muscle groups to ease stress.

Why it helps: During grief, the nervous system can swing between high-arousal states, like panic and racing heart, to low-arousal states such as numbness and sadness.

Individual responses vary, but cold exposure can help calm a racing heart in moments of overwhelm, while pacing breathing or muscle relaxation soothes numbness and sadness.

5. Rating your pain

Rate your pain from 1 to 10. Then ask, “Why is it a 7, not a 10?” Or “When was it even slightly better?” Write down what helped.

Why it helps: Spotting even slight relief builds hope. It reminds you that the pain isn’t constant, and that small moments of relief are real and meaningful.

Even with these tools, there will still be moments that feel unbearable, when the future seems unreachable and dark.

In those moments, remind yourself that you don’t have to move forward now. This simple reminder helped me in the moments I felt completely panicked; when I couldn’t see how I’d survive the next hour, much less the future. Tell yourself: Just survive this moment. Then the next.

Lean on friends, counselors or hotlines like the Disaster Distress Hotline (1-800-985-5990) or the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (988). If deep emotional pain continues to overwhelm you, seek professional help.

With support and care, you’ll begin to adapt to this changed world. Over time, the pain can soften, even if it never fully leaves, and you may find yourself slowly rebuilding a life shaped by grief, love and the courage to keep going.

Liza Barros-Lane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

link