Grief is an inevitable part of life that leaves many of us feeling uprooted. Whether it’s the loss of a partner, a pet, or a job, grief is hard to manage and can disrupt many facets of both long-term and everyday life. We all handle grief in different ways, but many people experience sleep disruptions while processing grief. Some people find themselves sleeping much more than normal, while others struggle to get a few hours of rest each night.
Since sleep is critical for functions like cognition and emotional regulation, getting good sleep while grieving can make a big difference in the process. However, getting restorative sleep can feel impossible and may fall low on your list of priorities.
To help make getting sleep while grieving seem more attainable, we gathered tips from Dr. Jade Wu, a sleep psychologist, and Dr. Jill Gross, a grief counselor and therapist. If you’re struggling to sleep while experiencing grief, here are some points to consider that could lead to getting the rest you need.
How grief affects sleep
Bereavement looks different for each of us. There’s no schedule, timeline, or instruction manual we can expect to follow. In this same way, sleep disruptions caused by grief are much the same. They can look very different from person to person.
“Grief, especially in the very beginning, is highly dysregulating,” Gross explains. “If you think about losing something that we care about, like a job or a relationship or a person to death — all of those are staples in our lives and become the structure that holds it up. When one of those things goes away, or a person we care about dies, it's destabilizing.”
Gross explains grief from a death is difficult for the brain to interpret initially. The body compensates by kicking into a mode of extra vigilance. This response can often cause sleep to become an afterthought. “Psychologically speaking, there is something traumatic about death in particular that makes it hard for the nervous system to calm itself and be relaxed enough to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep,” Gross says.
Resources if you’re struggling to sleep while grieving
If you’ve been experiencing sleep disruptions for a lengthy period of time while grieving, and it’s impacting your ability to perform basic tasks, it might be time to seek out help. Wu explains it’s normal to either sleep more than normal or struggle to get enough sleep during periods of intense grief. Gross explains that most people start seeing sleep patterns stabilize in about three to six months.
“Eventually, we should be able to return enough to baseline that we can do the basic functions of life and take care of the important responsibilities that we have,” Wu says. “If that feels really difficult after a while, then that means more help is needed.”
Sleep specialists, therapists, and grief counselors could be beneficial if you’re feeling the long-term consequences of sleep deprivation or sleeping too much throughout the day.
How to get better sleep while grieving
If your sleep schedule is thrown off because of grief, here are some tips to help your body and mind get the rest it needs.
Allow yourself to rest without pressure
“Be very flexible with yourself because your sleep may very well be different than before,” Wu says, “Grief is a major event that causes changes in your brain, and your brain needs to adjust everything that it does to take the best care of your whole being.”
Gross mentions that people who are upset by these changes in sleep should focus instead on getting rest, and not necessarily put pressure on getting to sleep. “I encourage people to try to speak in an open, calm tone of voice to say to yourself, ‘It's okay if my sleep is interrupted. I'm going to consider this a period of intentional rest,’” she recommends.
Schedule quiet time during the day
Many people find the dark and quiet nature of bedtime troublesome. It’s often one of the only times of the day when distractions fade away, and we’re left with our own thoughts. Since grief can be profoundly emotional and heavy, experiencing these thoughts before bed can lead to a long, unsettled night. To help avoid this, Wu recommends setting aside time each day (during daytime hours) for quiet reflection.
“Instead of letting grief catch you by surprise at night, schedule a time during the day to not be distracted and actually just focus on the grief,’ Wu recommends.
Anchor your wake-up time
It’s normal to struggle with sleeping during periods of grief, and it can manifest in either sleeping more than normal or having trouble sleeping at all. While both situations are typical, Wu recommends getting out of bed at the same time every day. This serves as an anchor point to a day that might not look like your typical everyday life.
“It's really important to get out of bed at your normal time and start your day, even if your day looks a lot different or you have less energy and do less during the day, that's okay,” she says. “You can take your time to rest, but you do have to get out of bed to show your brain that the day and the circadian clock are starting.”
Wu also explains that once you anchor a wake-up time, your body will naturally tell you when it’s time to go to bed for the night.
Work in physical movement
Gross says one of the most effective ways to access better sleep is to make time for some physical activity during the day. “Physical movement is a really important way to help regulate sleep,” she says. “It's really hard to be freaked out when you're tired.”
If possible, it’s ideal to get exercise during the first half of the day so it doesn’t interfere with relaxation hours later in the evening.
Keep a consistent sleep routine
Times of grief can feel overwhelming and uncontrollable. Gross recommends keeping a set bedtime routine as this can help us focus on something we still have control over. “When someone dies, everything feels so out of control, and so trying to have some sort of good stewardship over the things you can control is a great way to try to get regulated again,” she says.
Since our sleep routine is within our control, Gross says this can be a soothing experience. She recommends relaxing activities like having a cup of tea, a warm bath, or listening to podcasts or audiobooks.
It can also help to pay attention to your sleep environment by keeping it dark, cool, and comfortable.
Don’t let the bed become a negative space
We all know how frustrating it can be to lie awake in bed, regardless of the cause. Some sleep experts mention you shouldn’t stay in bed for too long if you can’t fall asleep, but Wu has another perspective. “It's really more about the feeling rather than the amount of time. If you're happily cozy in bed and you're kind of awake, maybe your mind is wandering, but you're totally happy about it, by all means stay in bed,” Wu explains. “But if you're starting to feel kind of frustrated or you're getting in your head too much, and it's starting to feel bad, that's your sign to get out of bed.”
The overall goal is to keep the bed associated with calm and relaxed feelings, so if you’re feeling upset or stressed, it’s best to move elsewhere.
How sleep affects grief
Unlike a few nights of bad sleep, sleep deprivation that lasts for weeks can have negative consequences. Sleep plays a role in emotional regulation, which can be especially important during a time of grieving. A study in 2017 noted that sleep deprivation makes us more sensitive to stressful events and found that without adequate healthy sleep, negative emotional responses become significantly intensified.
During bereavement, Wu points out that many individuals are not only feeling strong emotions, but they’re also having to make large decisions about the future. “You not only have to deal with the emotional grief of loss, but you might also have to deal with a lot of logistics,” she mentions. Unfortunately, sleep deprivation also diminishes physical energy levels and overall cognitive ability. Long-term memory and the ability to make decisions can suffer from a lack of sleep.
Wu and Gross agree that changes in your sleep patterns during grief are to be expected. Depression can be a strong element of grieving, and is associated with various kinds of sleep disturbances. This can manifest in either trouble falling asleep and staying asleep or sleeping significantly more than usual. “A lot of people retreat and then end up sleeping more,” Wu explains. “For other people, it takes on more of a form of stress. It can be almost like anxiety, where the grief is more like a jittery feeling of thinking there are so many things to take care of.” Both Wu and Gross emphasize that sleep changes are a normal part of grieving, and it’s important to be patient with these changes.
