What Grief Triggers in Us, Long Before the Tears

We often talk about a broken heart as if it were just a poetic image. Yet when we move through grief, something very real happens in the body. It isn’t only a heaviness in the throat, it’s the entire nervous system tightening, shifting into alert, as if the world had suddenly lost its stability.

When the body absorbs the impact before the mind does

Researchers have shown that in moments like these, a small area of the brain becomes intensely active: the amygdala, the part that scans for danger and triggers stress responses.

When it stays alert for too long, the body can no longer find real rest. The heartbeat shifts, the breath shortens, sleep becomes fragile. Grief isn’t “in the head” in the dismissive way people sometimes suggest, it’s a full experience, emotional, nervous, and physical.

What’s striking is that this shock doesn’t start only at the moment of loss. Often, the ground was already weakened by months, sometimes years, of accumulated stress. Grief arrives like one more wave, the one that finally spills over the edge. Suddenly we feel drained, emptied out, unprotected, yet somehow expected to keep functioning as if nothing had happened.

Rebuilding Yourself Through Small Openings

In that state, many people turn inward. We decline invitations, we answer less, we feel as if we no longer know “how to be” with others. We feel too fragile, too slow, slightly out of place. I don’t see this shyness as a flaw in someone’s character, but as a form of protection: the nervous system tightens to keep from taking in more than it can handle.

With time, though, we can gently soften this instinct to withdraw. Not by forcing ourselves to “get better,” but by giving ourselves small points of support. A steady breath, a bit of warmth, a space where emotions can exist without being judged. We don’t fling the doors open all at once — we open them just a little, for a few minutes, and see whether the body is ready to follow.

In all this inner work, the body and the senses play an enormous role. We don’t change our state through willpower alone. We need an environment that helps us drop a few levels, that brings back a bit of softness.

A scent can do exactly that: open a small window inside when everything feels stuck. Some essential oils bring warmth when we fold into ourselves, like sweet orange or cardamom. Others soothe and recentre, like Bourbon geranium. Others still offer the feeling of dry wood and quiet stability, like amyris or Virginia cedar. They don’t create happiness, but they prepare the ground, they help things settle just enough for the outside world to feel a little less overwhelming.

With that in mind, I also enjoyed creating a bath salt using this kind of synergy: a base of mineral salts blended with notes of citrus, soft spices, and wood. Nothing spectacular, just a warm bath that becomes a quiet place where the body softens, where the inward tension loosens a little, and where closeness, with oneself and with others, becomes possible again. It’s not a treatment or a miracle solution, just a sensory gesture that helps the system feel a bit safer. Discover it here >.

And it’s often there that something very simple begins to shift. When we become a little gentler with ourselves, we regain a small margin to be kind with others. A word that lands less sharply. A smile that returns without effort. A conversation we allow to last a little longer before withdrawing again.

Grief doesn’t disappear; it doesn’t fade like a bad chapter we turn the page on. But slowly, it stops dictating the entire landscape. Between two waves, small moments remain: a scent that comforts, a bath that releases tension, the quiet presence of someone we allow a bit closer.

And perhaps happiness, after a loss, no longer looks the way it did before. It rebuilds itself differently, from these tiny gestures that tell the body and the heart: you still have the right to be here.