When someone close to you dies, grief can work in mysterious and painful ways. It can make you feel sad, angry, or lost. It can make you feel sensitive, vulnerable, timid, or fragile. People change as a result of their grief. Today I want to focus on what grief feels like to a highly sensitive person.

The highly sensitive person is a term brought to mainstream attention by Elaine Aron, Ph.D. Dr. Aron helped to define a highly sensitive person as someone who experiences acute physical, mental, or emotional responses to stimuli. Highly sensitive people can easily become overwhelmed with noisy or crowded places. Their inner worlds are quite complex because of the mass amounts of stimuli they process.

If grief can impact anyone’s sensitivity, what does it do to someone who is already highly sensitive?

Although I can’t make a general claim for all highly sensitve people, I can share a bit about my own grief journey- from a perspective as someone who is highly sensitive. I am highly sensitive and I’ve experienced a lot of loss in my life. I have lost all of my grandparents, biological father, stepfather, at least a dozen friends (to either suicide or cancer), and several pets that were true companions.

What follows are some of my own observations about how grief has impacted my sensitivity, as well as input from highly sensitive people I have provided grief support to. My hope is that you will gain a better understanding of your own grief process if you identify as highly sensitive. Knowledge is power and knowing more about how grief and being highly sensitive work together helps for healing and moving forward with life.

What’s been more obvious about grief for highly sensitive people is how heavy the sadness and sorrow feels. It really weighs on the heart, almost feeling like it is trapped and squeezed like a vice between the lungs. The sensation carries over into the back and the spine compacts and builds tension all throughout the upper and mid back. No matter how many deep breaths you take, the rib cage feels like it gets smaller and more compact. It kind of feels like life is being sucked out of you.

As a result of all the sadness, depression comes easy. Because things are felt so deeply, it can take you to a dark place rather quickly. Getting out of bed seems pointless. You don’t really want to be asleep or awake. The mind doesn’t race with thoughts. There’s just black- everywhere. And it’s dense, dark, and cold.

The feelings can be quite overwhelming and it’s very difficult to talk to someone about it. It’s almost impossible to trust that they completely understand- no matter how good of a listener they are or how much empathy they have. There’s this sense of “Why would I burden you with these awful feelings?” so the feelings stay inward. External expressions don’t feel safe.

Sometimes internalizing the feelings creates more depression. You begin to feel trapped with no escape or outlet. At this point, there’s nowhere to go except to acknowledge that you’re truly suffering. Crying gets easier now because you’re no longer fighting the intensity of your feelings. You’ve reached a point of surrendering to your own suffering.

Mind you, all this is going on internally. People in your immediate surroundings will likely not be aware of what you’re experiencing. And if they ask… they still won’t know because it’s too difficult to formulate into words what actually is happening to you. You’re beyond overwhelmed by all the emotions swirling inside of you.

The safest thing to do is to retreat; to be alone in a remote setting. Getting off the beaten path is helpful, even more so if you end up somewhere that has only natural sounds and all you see is Mother Nature’s creation. Man made things and sounds just add more distraction from your process or cause more turmoil.

Highly sensitive people need safe and sacred spaces to grieve. It has to be more than a man cave or a she shed. It has to be a space that is peaceful, natural, and protected. Protected in a sense that people are respecting the property, it is clean, and sound is minimal. I personally find settings along the Pacific coast where I sit on the sand and stare out into the ocean. Nobody is around and all I hear are the waves crashing.

Because highly sensitive people seek out spaces that are sacred and remote, it’s easy to be perceived as aloof and inconsiderate of others. That perception couldn’t be more inaccurate. What’s really going on is the highly sensitive person is feeling so much- so intensely, that it gets quite overwhelming when more people are around. Highly sensitive people easily take on feelings that others are experiencing. They need the alone time to sort through everything and come to terms with the internal whirlwind.

That’s why grieving almost feels safer when alone. If alone, there’s less to feel. Less to take on. There’s also more time and space to process the complicated inner world.

Although the aloofness exists to protect yourself, it’s very easy to feel lonely. Even if you have loving family members who are compassionate and caring, it can be challenging to feel connected to others. Loneliness is an ongoing battle for highly sensitive people in grief.

Many people seek bereavement support groups when they are grieving. For the highly sensitive person, it’s hard to find a group that’s a good fit. The group may be facilitated in a way that is uncomfortable, there may be too many people in the group, or you may feel misunderstood or like you don’t belong because often the focus of the conversations seem so different than from what your personal focus would be.

Not feeling like you belong feeds a belief that your best solution for grief care is in isolation. You think you have to do it alone and grieve all by yourself. Otherwise, it’s too painful if your grief is not understood, is undermined, or just feels so different from others.

What’s ironic about this isolation is that if you are or try to be available to support others, it’s easy to believe that there’s more you can do to help them. You sometimes feel responsible even though things are realistically and logically beyond your control. It’s easy to think your efforts are not good enough because you’re so in tune with what other people are feeling. You feel their pain very easily.

Add to the mix worry. You worry about being lonely. You worry about what other people think of you. You worry about not being understood by your family, friends, and community. You worry about being accepted or judged. You worry about everything being okay.

You may hate the way you feel; judging yourself for feeling something so deep and sorrowful. You may be more hard on yourself because you simply don’t like the way you feel and you want things to be very different from what they currently are.

You will need more time than you think to heal your grief. This is true for everyone experiencing loss. However, for the highly sensitive person, you will have to remind yourself that patience will be needed. You will need a lot of patience with your feelings. You will also have to be very careful about your self talk. If your self talk is very negative, you will feel ultimately defeated, exhausted, and hopeless.

You will also need to set clear boundaries. You will need to schedule more time to yourself. You will need to spend more time in sacred spaces, with no distractions, especially technology.

Creative expression may need to be part of your daily ritual. Crying alone may not move the feelings enough. Drawing, painting, or dancing may need to be done in order to help shift the density of what’s felt internally.

Shame will be your worst enemy in grief. So much of all that you feel will seem so different than what the rest of the world experiences. It can be very easy to feel shame because your level of sensitivity is not the norm. Your uniqueness isn’t embraced or honored by the rest of society. Shame will come instantly and it will be a constant battle to counter it.

How familiar does this sound? Yes, it’s quite difficult to grieve as a highly sensitive person. Hopefully, what you’ve read here is validating and helps you know you’re not alone. 1 in 5 people are highly sensitive. We’re few of many but we’re not completely alone.

In this article, I shared a lot of traits for what a highly sensitive person can feel in grief. I have written a Part 2 that offers more for what a highly sensitive person can do to manage grief, such as creating rituals for personal healing. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Reid Peterson is the Creator of the Grief Refuge app. The Grief Refuge app is a daily companion to help support people on the grief journey. Download for free on iOS or Android to get daily support.