Anxiety

Anxiety often arrives after grief like an unwanted companion.
Your heart races. Your chest feels tight. Your thoughts won’t slow down.
Everything feels urgent, even when nothing is happening.

This isn’t because you’re “not coping.”
It’s because your nervous system has learned that the unthinkable can happen.

When someone dies, especially suddenly or traumatically, your body updates its rules about safety.
The brain shifts into threat-detection mode.
The nervous system stays alert, scanning for danger, trying to prevent another catastrophe.

Biologically, anxiety is a survival response.

Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol stay elevated.
Your body prepares to run, fight, or freeze - even when you’re sitting still.
That buzzing, shaky, on-edge feeling is your system saying: Stay awake. Stay ready.

The problem is, grief isn’t a short-term threat.
So the alarm doesn’t know when to turn off.

Anxiety in grief can look like:

• racing thoughts or constant “what ifs”

• panic out of nowhere

• feeling unsafe in ordinary places

• tight chest, shallow breathing, dizziness

• needing control because uncertainty feels unbearable

None of this means something is wrong with you.

It means your body is trying - desperately - to protect you from more pain.

Understanding this doesn’t make the anxiety disappear.
But it can soften the fear that something has gone terribly wrong inside you.

You are not broken.
You are responding exactly as a human nervous system does after loss.

And slowly, with time, safety, and gentleness, the alarm can learn to quiet again.

Not all at once.
Not on command.
But little by little.

For now, it’s enough to know this:

Your anxiety is not the enemy.
It’s a signal from a body that loved deeply - and is still learning how to exist in a changed world.