Trying to roll with it
According to experts, fatigue is a very common physical symptom of grief, often experienced as extreme tiredness or exhaustion. This fatigue can manifest in waves and significantly impact daily functioning. –NHS, Cleveland Clinic, and WebMD
Three things stand out for me in this quote:
- A common symptom in grief is fatigue.
- The feeling is one of extreme tiredness or exhaustion.
- Fatigue for the grieving person manifests in waves.
I can begin my day with an action plan and literally find myself falling asleep in the middle of it.
What’s wrong with me?
Recently, rather than blame myself, I decided to track the regularity of days that I call “slug days” to determine how to support the part of me that worries about this inertia that comes and go.
Seriously! Some days I am a slug. Literally. I obsess on my to-do list it and then I completely ignore it. After three-and-a-half-years observing the arrival of occasional slug days, I started tracking patterns and had an epiphany.
What might happen if I just roll with it?
A few reasons brought me here.
- I discovered that if I give in to the slug day, the next day is usually productive. It is interesting how it makes me feel when I remind myself in real time that the world will not end if I change plans from action to rest. In doing so, I am finding that the next day I feel the benefits from laying low when fatigue signals a need for slowing down.
- Upon examining the pattern, I’ve concluded that my grief sometimes requires a rest from routine. In other words, I think I’ve been missing the lesson in observing my own body’s rhythms. Is my body is trying to help me?
- In early grief, I felt I always needed to ignore my body’s signal and “fight” my way through it. In the past few months, I realize that this is the opposite of self-care. As one who tries to consciously utilize self-care as “good medicine” it’s interesting how long it took me to stop fighting the rhythms of my grief which seem to arrive in random waves, as researchers have noted.
- As I experiment with rolling with the random slug days, I may have stumbled on a new self-care opportunity. Looking at things through the lens of listening to my body’s needs in the area of grief fatigue may be a healthy solution for me.
The research continues . . . I’ll report back as I learn more.
