Grief fog, emotional whiplash, and nervous system protection

why “I was okay… and then I wasn’t” is normal

One of the most unsettling parts of grief isn’t the pain.

It’s the sudden shifts.

You wake up and feel almost steady. You answer an email. You make a plan. For a moment, life feels manageable.

And then — without warning — the floor drops out.

Your chest tightens. Tears come fast. Everything feels heavy and unreal again.

The swing is so abrupt it can make you wonder:

Was that calm fake?
Am I going backward?
Why can’t I stay in one place emotionally?

What you’re experiencing is not instability.

It’s protection.

Grief fog is not confusion — it’s a buffering system

Grief fog often feels like:

• mental slowness

• difficulty concentrating

• feeling detached or distant

• trouble tracking conversations

• a sense of unreality

This can be frightening, especially if you’ve always been clear-minded or high-functioning.

But grief fog isn’t your brain failing.

It’s your nervous system reducing input when the emotional load is too high.

When loss overwhelms the system:

• attention narrows

• sensory detail softens

• emotional distance increases

This is the brain saying,
We cannot take all of this in at once.

Fog is not avoidance.
It’s mercy.

Why calm can appear suddenly — and disappear just as fast

Many widows feel ashamed when moments of calm appear.

They wonder if it means:

• they’re “doing grief wrong”

• they’re forgetting

• they’re minimizing the loss

But calm doesn’t mean grief is gone.

It means a different part of the brain has come back online.

Grief involves rapid switching between brain systems:

• attachment and threat networks activate during pain

• the prefrontal cortex (reasoning, grounding) re-engages during calm

These shifts can happen quickly — sometimes within minutes.

So the experience of:
“I was okay… and then I wasn’t”

is not regression.

It’s the nervous system cycling between states.

This back-and-forth is how the brain prevents overwhelm.

Emotional whiplash is common — especially in early grief

In widowhood, emotional whiplash can feel extreme because every area of life has been touched by the loss.

Home.
Identity.
Future.
Security.
Belonging.

When everything is connected to the same absence, the system doesn’t get clear breaks.

So the brain alternates:

• immersion in grief

• temporary reprieve

Again and again.

This oscillation is known in grief science as dual-process coping — the natural movement between:

• loss-oriented states (pain, yearning, tears)

• restorative states (neutral focus, small moments of functioning)

You are not supposed to stay in one state.

You are supposed to move.

Why fog often lifts before the sadness does

Many widows notice something strange:

• the fog clears

• thinking sharpens

• orientation returns

But the sadness remains.

This can feel confusing.

But it makes sense physiologically.

As the stress response settles:

• oxygen and carbon dioxide balance improves

• muscle tension decreases

• the brain regains clarity

Emotion lingers longer than confusion.

So when you feel clearer but still sad, nothing has gone wrong.

Your body simply completed one part of the stress cycle.

Gentle ways to work with fog and whiplash

You don’t need to fight these states.

You can support them.

• Name what’s happening
  “This is fog.” “This is a shift.” Naming reduces fear.

• Lower expectations during fog
  This is not the time for decisions or deep conversations.

• Orient gently when clarity returns
  Notice where you are. What feels solid. Let yourself re-enter slowly.

• Trust the rhythm
  Calm does not mean forgetting. Pain does not mean failure.

No forcing.
No fixing.

Just cooperation.

What your nervous system is really doing

When grief swings between fog, pain, and brief calm, your body is not betraying you.

It’s pacing the loss.

It’s protecting you from carrying the full weight all at once.

It’s keeping you alive inside a world that no longer matches the one you knew.

A sentence to return to when the shifts feel scary

The movement between fog, pain, and calm is not instability — it is the nervous system protecting you from overwhelm as you grieve.

You are not broken because you change throughout the day.

You are surviving something that changed everything.

Closing the series

Grief is not one feeling.
It is a process moving through a body.

Waves rise and settle.
Tears release pressure.
Fog buffers what’s too much.
Calm returns — not as closure, but as breath.

None of this means the loss mattered less.

It means your body is doing what it was designed to do:
carry love, survive rupture, and bring you back to yourself — again and again.

Why grief can feel like a storm and what your body is actually telling you.

Grief rarely arrives as something gentle.

It comes like weather — sudden, disorienting, and powerful enough to change the landscape of your inner world without asking permission.

One moment you are functioning.
The next, your chest tightens, your breath shortens, your thoughts scatter, and something inside you braces as if danger has entered the room.

This is why grief so often feels like a storm.

Not because you are dramatic.
Not because you are unstable.
But because your body is responding to loss exactly the way it is designed to respond to threat.

A sudden loss creates a pressure shift inside the body

In a physical storm, the air pressure changes before the rain ever falls. The body senses it first.

Grief works the same way.

When someone you love is suddenly absent, your nervous system does not interpret that as “sad news.” It interprets it as a rupture in safety and attachment.

So the body responds:

• Heart rate increases

• Breathing becomes shallow or tight

• Muscles brace

• Thinking narrows

• Emotions surge quickly and intensely

This is not emotional weakness.
It is the acute stress response activating to protect you.

Your body is trying to survive a world that no longer makes sense.

Grief moves in waves because the body cannot hold everything at once

One of the most confusing parts of grief is how it comes and goes.

You may feel relatively okay one moment — and then suddenly overwhelmed the next. The shift can be fast enough to make you wonder if something is wrong with you.

What’s actually happening is this:

The nervous system cannot stay at peak intensity indefinitely.

When grief surges, the body enters a high-alert state. Stress hormones rise. Attention narrows. Emotion intensifies.

But that state is not sustainable.

So the body does what it is designed to do:
it crests — and then begins to settle.

Within a single day, grief often moves in waves:

• rising suddenly

• peaking intensely

• then easing enough for breath, clarity, or orientation to return

The loss does not disappear.
But the wave passes.

This cycling is not instability.
It is protection.

Crying is often part of the release, not the problem

Many people fear the moment tears arrive.

“If I start crying, I won’t stop.”
“If I let this out, I’ll fall apart.”

But emotional crying is not usually what prolongs a grief wave. In many cases, it signals that the body has reached the crest of the stress response.

Crying activates calming pathways in the nervous system. It can help shift the body out of high alert and toward settling.

The tears do not mean the storm is getting worse.
They often mean pressure is being released.

The fog is not failure — it’s protection

Alongside the waves, many people experience fog.

Thinking feels slow.
Words don’t land.
The world feels distant or unreal.

This fog is not confusion or denial.

When the nervous system is overloaded, clarity is often the first thing to go. Narrowing awareness helps protect the brain from taking in more than it can handle.

As the wave settles, many people notice:

• the fog thinning

• orientation returning

• the ability to engage coming back online

This does not mean the grief is gone.
It means the body found its way back to you again.

What your body is actually saying

When grief feels like a storm, your body is not saying,
“Something is wrong with you.”

It is saying:

• This loss matters.

• I am trying to keep you safe.

• We cannot carry all of this at once.

The waves, the tears, the fog, the sudden quiet — these are not signs of failure.

They are signs of a nervous system working hard to survive love that was torn away.

A sentence to return to when the wind picks up

Grief moves through the body in waves, and while the loss remains, the nervous system is designed to rise, crest, and settle — even when the storm feels overwhelming.

You don’t have to control the storm.
You don’t have to rush the calm.

You could try saying this out loud as a reminder:

“This wave will move.
My body knows how to come back.”

Telling yourself this often will remind your brain and body of these simple truths and help regulate you, and build trust with your process.

I hope this help!

Sending yo uso much love,

Kimber

Coming next in this series

In the next posts, we’ll slow this down and look more closely at what’s happening inside the body — including:

• how long grief waves typically last and why they feel endless

• why crying often helps complete the stress cycle

• and what to do when waves don’t seem to settle at all

Understanding the body doesn’t take the pain away.
But it does remove the fear — and fear is often what makes grief harder than it already is.

Grief often feels like a storm because it moves through the body in waves. In this post, I explain what happens in the nervous system after the loss of a spouse — including grief surges, emotional fog, crying, and sudden shifts between calm and overwhelm. This grief education is designed specifically for widows who feel confused by their body’s responses and want a science-informed, compassionate understanding of why grief comes and goes. Understanding how grief waves work can reduce fear, normalize physical symptoms of grief, and help widows trust their body during acute grief.