"My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness."
"But soon I retreated from fun, becoming very fixated on things like my resting heart rate and body fat percentage. I skipped social events for high-intensity interval training sessions followed by the sauna followed by meditation not a bad thing, but not a balance, either. I cut out caffeine, including dark chocolate. When I didn't stick to my new routine, I would have a panic attack, which I'd assume was a heart attack, which would lead to more frequent episodes of panic."
A cluster of five deaths in 2023, many unexpected and close in time, provoked intense grief. The narrator experienced successive losses including a grandmother, her son, and a cousin, which compounded shock and sorrow. The grieving response shifted into heightened vigilance: fixation on resting heart rate and body fat, rigorous exercise routines, sauna, meditation, and elimination of caffeine and dark chocolate. Social life was replaced by health rituals. Deviations from the routine triggered panic attacks misinterpreted as heart attacks. The nervous system entered sustained overdrive, producing grief-based panic disorder and pronounced health anxiety. A song at a fourth wake initiated healing and cognitive reframing.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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