How does it feel for your loss?

I have recently posted on a loss in this subreddit and I wish to understand how you manage your grief.

I have discussed recently with friends and health professionals and came to know my grief for losses are substantially more severe than the usual. I wish to understand if anyone has similar experiences that can share more on how you overcome such struggles. An emotional investment of 1 year can really break me into pieces.

I know myself that I struggled a lot because I have loss someone 6 years ago and it took me about a year to feel a difference and officially about 4 years to say I have healed.

1. During the first few weeks, I will have nightmares everyday and will wake up drenched in sweat every 2 hours interval of sleep. The nightmare can be very intense ranging from getting chased, attacked, killed by sharks/tigers, zombies. I will wake up with severe chest pain and brain tightness, as though something is squeezing it. My limbs will go numb and weak as though I just got off a roller coaster irl. Usually I will sit around for a few minutes to let the body settle in before continuing anything. This is probably the most awful out of everything.

2. Weight loss. During the first few weeks, I will be bound to the bed until dinner time and will skip breakfast and lunch because I just feel super awful to even move. Even if I manage to eat something, I won’t have the appetite and will eat the bare minimum.

3. Insomnia. Some days I get so afraid to sleep, knowing I will wake up feeling worst than not sleeping from the intense pain. There were days I didn’t sleep for 2 or 3 days.

4. Spiralling. I realise I spiral often through out the day, replaying memories, reading old messages and finding any glimmer of hope. I have to cut myself off by archiving the messages or deleting my social media as the first step and have affirmations that spiralling will not help with my healing.

5. Anger and irritation. I get angry and irritated with loud noises pretty easily.

6. Self harm. This might be triggering to some and I apologise for it. My grief always comes with such thoughts. I have been hospitalised because I didn’t felt safe or I was found unresponsive. From such experience, I usually tell myself the pain will end to remind myself not to do foolish things.

Please feel free to share tips that you tried that can help with grief management. I have tried journaling to express thoughts and emotions, affirmations to stay grounded and discipline and lastly meditation to cope with pain and sleep.

A good friend of mine today shared a perspective that it isn’t worth it suffering so much over a friend that probably have moved on and go about his life as though this is nothing. For context I was blocked and cut off contact. As much as I want to disagree with him, he might be actually right on this. I will never know but some part of me hope that it was tough for him too just so I can feel better knowing the friendship was worth it.