5 Ways to Improve Your Sleep Patterns While Grieving

It’s not uncommon for people to experience sleep problems while grieving. You might feel physically exhausted but unable to fall asleep because your mind is racing, or maybe because it feels strange to be sleeping alone for the first time in years.

Sleep is a valuable thing for those grieving because there is often so much change to adapt to and emotions to process in grief. It’s possible to regain a healthy sleep pattern even while grieving, but it might require you to try some new things.

Tips to Help Your Sleep Patterns

Try sleeping in a new place

There are no rules that say you must sleep in the same bed as you always have. It can be challenging to sleep alone when you have always had a spouse next to you, for example. Try sleeping in a new place, like a spare bedroom, a single bed, on the living room sofa, or at a friend’s house. It might seem strange at first, and it won’t be forever, but sleeping in a new environment might help you to break out of insomnia.

Develop a sleep routine

You might never have had a sleep routine, but if you can develop one, it might help you sleep. For example, you could tidy up your living space, do some pampering and skincare, have a cup of green tea, and do some stretching each night before bed. Repeating this routine each night before bed will calm your nervous system and get your brain into the habit of unwinding.

Your sleep routine can be highly customizable and as long or short as you prefer. Make sure to involve calming activities that bring you joy. However, it is often repetition that soothes an exhausted mind more than the activities themselves.

Try journaling

A large part of grief is feeling like we need closure. There might be things we wish we had said or done, or feelings that we are left with that can’t go anywhere now. Someone once described grief as “Love with nowhere to go.” There might be a lot of feelings besides love that now have nowhere to go.

It can be helpful to express your emotions or thoughts in writing. Alternatively, if you don’t feel up to writing, you could use a voice recording app on your phone to verbally express your feelings. The more you express your thoughts and emotions during the day, the less you have to fill up your mind at night before bed.

Schedule time to feel things

Late nights are often the hardest part of the day for grieving people. As the day winds down and the world is quieter around you, your thoughts become louder, and your emotions feel more overwhelming. You might find that you are fixating on a detail or memory, and try as you might, you can’t let it go and try to sleep.

An important part of grief is to process the thoughts, emotions, and memories you have, but it is disruptive and unhelpful to process these things late at night when you should be sleeping. You can schedule a time during the day to dig into the feelings. Give yourself an hour after work or in the morning on weekends to feel whatever dominant emotion you have.

Lean fully into worrying or feeling fear, anger, sadness, or regret. It’s a bit like taking an overactive child to the park to work their energy out; your emotions need to be felt, but you can choose to feel them at a more appropriate time.

Allow yourself to stop

Sometimes, the best you can do is simply make it to the end of the day. Allow yourself to stop thinking, planning, and worrying, even just for an evening. Tomorrow, you will have enough to worry about, and there is nothing you can achieve before then. Relax, breathe in and out, drop your shoulders, and rest. You have made it this far, and you will only be able to carry on if you take things one day at a time.

Christian Grief Counseling in Huntington Beach

Grieving can be a lonely and isolating experience, especially when those around you don’t seem to understand what you are going through. Thankfully, there is always someone that you can talk to and share your experience with.

Christian grief counseling in Huntington Beach, California is a good option for those in mourning because you don’t have to do anything except share your thoughts. You can go as deep or keep it as shallow as you like, and it will always be a judgment-free zone. Contact us at Huntington Beach Christian Counseling if you would like to find out more about grief therapy in California.