Somatic Grief Therapy: When Loss Settles in the Body
It's been a while now.
Long enough that people have stopped asking. Long enough that you've started to wonder whether you should be past this, and what it says about you that you aren't.
And it hasn't moved.
Maybe it's not even in your thoughts most days. It's somewhere else. In your chest. In how tired you are. In a weight you carry around without being able to say what it weighs.
I want to talk about grief that stays in the body, because it's more common than anyone tells you, and because it doesn't respond to the things people usually suggest.
Where Grief Goes When It Doesn't Go Anywhere
Grief is physical. People are sometimes surprised by that.
It can sit in the chest as a tightness that doesn't ease. In the throat, as something you keep swallowing against. In the arms, as an ache with nothing to hold.
It shows up as exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch. As appetite that vanishes, or won't switch off. As a heaviness in the limbs that makes ordinary tasks feel like wading.
Some people find they've been holding their breath, on and off, for months.
None of this is imagined. It's grief, taking the only route left to it.
Why Grief Gets Stuck
Grief needs room. It doesn't always get it.
Sometimes there wasn't time. There were arrangements to make, children to look after, work that didn't stop. You kept going because you had to, and the grief waited.
Sometimes the loss wasn't recognised. Nobody sent flowers. Nobody knew there was anything to grieve, so you didn't grieve it either, not out loud.
Sometimes the relationship was complicated, and the grief came tangled with anger, or relief, or guilt, and there was no clean version of it you felt allowed to feel.
And sometimes it was simply too much. The body did what bodies do with too much. It set it down somewhere and closed the door.
That's not weakness. That's a system protecting you at a time when you needed protecting. But what gets set down doesn't disappear. It waits.
Stages and Timelines
You've probably heard of the stages of grief.
Denial, anger, bargaining, and so on, arriving in order and ending somewhere called acceptance.
Most people I work with don't recognise their own experience in that. Grief doesn't arrive in stages. It arrives in waves, out of sequence, sometimes years apart. You can be fine for a month and flattened by a song in a supermarket.
There's also the timeline. The unspoken one. A year, perhaps. After that, something's wrong with you.
There is no timeline. I'd like to say that as plainly as I can. The idea that grief should be finished by a certain date is one of the heaviest things people carry on top of the loss itself, and you're allowed to put it down.
Why Talking Doesn't Always Reach It
Talking helps many people. I don't want to dismiss that.
But grief that has settled in the body isn't always reachable through words. You can describe the loss, understand it, tell the story a hundred times, and your chest stays exactly as tight as it was.
The grief isn't in the story. It's somewhere the story doesn't go.
What Somatic Grief Work Involves
We start with the body rather than the loss.
You don't have to talk about the person. You don't have to explain what happened, or how it happened, or why it still hurts. If you want to, you can. But the work doesn't depend on it.
Instead, we pay attention to where the grief is sitting. The tightness. The heaviness. Whatever is there. We give it room, at a pace your body can accept, and we notice what it wants to do when it's finally allowed.
Sometimes that's tears that never came at the time. Sometimes it's a breath that finally goes all the way down. Sometimes it's quieter than that — a loosening, a shift, something you only notice a few days later.
I don't push. I don't dig. Grief that's been held this long has been held for a reason, and it comes out on its own terms or not at all.
For some people, the grief connects to something older — a pattern, an earlier loss, something underneath the loss they came in with. When that happens, regression work can be part of it, and I've written about that separately.
Otherwise, this is the work I offer for grief. Somatic and slow.
Grief That Isn't About a Death
Not all grief has a funeral.
The end of a marriage. A friendship that stopped without explanation. An estrangement from a parent or a child that's been going on so long it has its own weather.
A diagnosis that took a future you'd been counting on. A pregnancy that ended. A career, a home, a country.
And the person who is still alive but no longer who they were. Illness does that. Addiction does that. Sometimes people just change, and the one you loved is gone while someone with their face is still in the room.
The body doesn't distinguish between kinds of loss. It grieves what it grieves. This work meets all of it the same way.
Grief That Starts Before the Loss
Sometimes you know it's coming.
A parent in decline. A partner with a diagnosis that has a shape to it. You're grieving someone who hasn't gone yet, and you feel guilty for grieving, and you feel guilty for not being able to just be present, and you're exhausted from carrying both at once.
This kind of grief is real, and it's allowed, and it doesn't take anything from the person while they're still here. The body has already started. Letting it is not a betrayal.
This Sits Alongside Other Support
I want to be clear about what this is and isn't.
If you're experiencing physical symptoms — the chest, the exhaustion, the appetite — see a doctor first. Grief can cause all of these, and so can other things, and you deserve to know which.
If you're part of a bereavement group, or seeing a counsellor, or leaning on your community, keep doing that. This work sits alongside those things. It doesn't replace them.
And if at any point you find yourself not wanting to be here, that needs a person, today. A doctor, a crisis line, someone who can sit with you. Not an article, and not a session in three weeks.
Somewhere to Start
You don't have to book anything.
The Gentle Guide for Grief is free, and it's built for exactly this — grief that's settled and doesn't know where to go. It's a way to begin without having to speak to anyone.
If You're Ready to Talk
I offer a free 30-minute clarity call.
You can tell me as much or as little as you want. I'll tell you honestly whether this work fits where you are, and if it doesn't, I'll say so and point you somewhere that might.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Yes. Tightness in the chest or throat, exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch, a heaviness in the limbs, appetite that disappears or won't switch off, and aches with no clear cause are all common. Get physical symptoms checked by a doctor first. If nothing is found, grief is often what's underneath.
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There isn't a number. Grief doesn't run on a schedule, and the idea that it should is one of the heaviest things people carry on top of the loss itself. What matters isn't how long it's been. It's whether the grief has somewhere to go, or whether it's stuck.
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Grief work that starts with the body rather than the story. Instead of talking through the loss, we pay attention to where it sits physically — the chest, the throat, the exhaustion — and give it room to move. It's slow, and it's paced to what you can hold.
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Yes. Estrangement, the end of a relationship, a future that won't happen, a person who is alive but no longer who they were. The body doesn't distinguish between kinds of loss. It grieves what it grieves, and this work meets it there.
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Often, yes. Grief that was never given room doesn't fade on its own; it settles. Many people come to this work decades after a loss, sometimes without realising that's what they're carrying. The distance in time doesn't make it harder to reach. Sometimes it makes it easier.
