Top 10 Ways to Soothe a Grief Pang
What Is a Grief Pang?
You might be in the middle of making dinner when it hits. Or hear a particular song on the radio, catch a familiar scent, or notice the light changing in a way it used to change when they were still here. Suddenly, without warning, the grief arrives not as background sadness but as a full-body wave — heart pounding, chest tight, eyes flooding, a feeling that the world has tilted sideways.
This is a grief pang. And if you've experienced one, you already know: it feels nothing like ordinary sorrow. It's sudden, overwhelming, and can be as physically destabilizing as a panic attack. Sadness, fear, anger, and longing arrive all at once, and the body doesn't always know the difference between grief and danger.
Grief pangs are not a sign that something is wrong with you or your healing. They are a sign that love was real, and that loss is being processed — deeply, honestly, at a cellular level. But they do require a toolkit. Not to push the grief away, but to help your nervous system stay present with it without being overwhelmed by it. There is an important difference between adapting to grief and being wiped out by it.
A note before you begin: some of the most commonly taught calming techniques involve water, full-body pressure, or detailed body scans. This is often because these skills activate biological systems in the human body which most approximate time spent in the womb, when a being feels the safest. For people who have experienced certain trauma and water-based disasters — floods, hurricanes, etc.— these approaches can carry traumatic associations that may potentially exacerbate those symptoms. Where relevant, this article offers alternatives so you can find what genuinely works for your body and your history.
Using ice cubes can help soothe grief pangs by returning our attention to the present moment.
Practice Makes Perfection You Prepared
Here is something grief counselors wish more people knew: the worst time to learn a coping skill is in the middle of a crisis. When a grief pang hits, your thinking brain is largely offline — you are operating from the most primitive, reactive parts of your nervous system. Trying to remember a technique you've only read about, in that moment, is like trying to read a map in a hurricane.
The skills above work best when they are already familiar to your body — when they are grooves your nervous system has already traveled, so that accessing them during a pang is more like muscle memory than problem-solving.
The good news is that practicing takes very little time. Here's how to approach it:
Pick two or three skills from this list that feel intuitively accessible to you — not the ones that seem most impressive, but the ones that feel most natural. Practice each one for about two minutes a day for two weeks, ideally at a calm, low-stress moment. Morning works well for many people, before the day's demands arrive. The goal isn't to manufacture grief or emotion during practice — it's simply to make the physical actions familiar.
Notice what each practice feels like in your body when you are not overwhelmed, so you have a baseline for comparison. Some people keep a small practice card — an index card or phone note — with their chosen skills listed in shorthand, so that if a pang arrives, they have a prompt they can glance at rather than trying to reconstruct the technique from memory.
It also helps to practice in the spaces where pangs tend to find you. If you are often hit by grief in the kitchen, practice your butterfly hug in the kitchen. If pangs tend to arrive in the car, practice your extended exhale breathing at red lights. Your nervous system learns in context, and practicing where you'll need the skill gives it the best chance of being available to you.
Finally, share your toolkit with someone you trust — a friend, a family member, a therapist. Not because you'll always need someone with you, but because having someone who knows what helps you means you can simply say "I need the cold pack" or "can you just sit with me" rather than having to explain or manage yourself alone in the hardest moments.
The Top 10 Ways to Soothe a Grief Pang
1. The 5-4-3-2-1 Sensory Scan
This technique works by interrupting the brain's backward pull — into memory, into loss, into what is no longer here — and anchoring your attention in what is here, right now.
Move through your senses deliberately: name 5 things you can see, 4 things you can physically feel (your feet on the floor, fabric against your skin, the chair beneath you), 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. The sequential, effortful quality of the exercise is what makes it effective — it asks your thinking brain to come back online at a moment when your emotional brain has taken over.
Alternative: If a full body scan feels uncomfortable for you, try an eyes-only version: simply let your gaze travel slowly around the room, naming objects aloud or silently as you notice them. Staying focused on what you can see rather than feel can be just as anchoring with less physical intensity.
2. Temperature Regulation
Applying cold to the body is one of the fastest-acting ways to interrupt a nervous system flood. Cold activates the body's dive reflex, which physiologically slows the heart rate and begins to switch off the alarm response — often within seconds. Common approaches include splashing cold water on the face, holding ice in your palm, or running cold water over your wrists.
Alternative: Skip the water entirely. Instead, keep a cold gel pack, a chilled metal object like a spoon stored in the freezer, or even a cold can from the refrigerator nearby. Pressing it firmly against the inside of your wrist, the back of your neck, or your cheekbones accomplishes the same physiological effect without any water involved. A bag of frozen peas wrapped in a cloth works beautifully and costs almost nothing.
3. The Butterfly Hug
Cross your arms over your chest so your hands rest on your shoulders or upper arms, and begin tapping alternately — left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand — slowly and rhythmically. This bilateral (alternating side-to-side) stimulation, borrowed from a therapy called EMDR, helps the overwhelmed emotional brain communicate with the calmer, reasoning brain, gently integrating what feels unbearable.
Many people find that the posture itself — essentially, holding yourself — carries its own comfort. It's discreet, requires nothing, and can be done sitting in a car, in a waiting room, or in the middle of a difficult conversation.
4. Extended Exhale Breathing
When a grief pang hits, the instinct is often to gasp, hold the breath, or breathe in shallow, rapid bursts. Extended exhale breathing directly counters this pattern.
Inhale slowly for a count of 4, then exhale for a count of 7 or 8, making the exhale as long and slow as you can. The extended exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system — the branch that signals safety and rest — and even three or four full cycles can measurably shift the intensity of what you're feeling.
If counting feels difficult in the middle of a pang, simply focus on making each exhale longer than the inhale. That ratio is what matters.
5. Physical Containment
During a grief pang, the body often feels like it's chaos — like there are no edges or limits anymore. Physical containment gives the body the sensation of being within-limits, and thus safe, again. Wrapping tightly in a blanket, pressing your back firmly against a wall, applying firm hand pressure to your own thighs or arms, or using a weighted blanket all engage the body's deep pressure receptors, which have a well-documented calming effect on the nervous system.
Alternative: If being wrapped or enclosed feels activating rather than soothing — as it can for people with histories of certain traumas — try the wall variation instead: stand or sit with your back and the soles of your feet pressing firmly and intentionally into solid surfaces. The sensation of being supported by something stable and immovable can do similar work without the sensation of enclosure.
6. Naming and Narrating Out Loud
Speaking aloud — even just to yourself — activates the brain's language centers, and research consistently shows that putting an experience into words reduces activity in the amygdala, which is the brain's alarm center. It sounds almost too simple, but it works.
Try a script like: "I am having a grief pang. This is what missing [person's name] feels like. This is temporary. I am physically safe right now." This does several things simultaneously: it names the experience (which calms the alarm), honors the loss rather than fighting it, and provides a time container — this is temporary — that the panicking mind desperately needs to hear.
Alternative: You can write it down instead of speaking it aloud if that feels more natural.
7. Orienting to the Room
This technique comes from somatic trauma therapy and works with one of the nervous system's oldest built-in safety mechanisms. When animals — including humans — survive a frightening event, they instinctively scan their environment slowly, checking that there is no ongoing threat. This orienting response is hardwired, and deliberately triggering it sends a powerful signal to the survival brain: you are not in danger right now.
To practice: slowly turn your head from side to side, letting your eyes travel the room without rushing. Notice corners, light sources, textures, the distance between objects. Let your gaze rest somewhere neutral or pleasant. You don't need to think anything in particular — just look, slowly and with curiosity. Most people notice a subtle but real shift in their nervous system within about 30 seconds.
8. Scent Anchoring
Smell is the only sense that bypasses the brain's relay center and connects directly to the limbic system — the emotional brain. This is why a scent can deliver a memory so vividly it feels like time travel, and why scent can both trigger a grief pang (a person's cologne, the soap they used) and interrupt one.
Keeping a small, portable scent anchor — a tiny vial of lavender or citrus essential oil, a cedar sachet, a piece of clothing that carries a happy association, a spice from a comforting meal — and inhaling it slowly during a pang gives the emotional brain a competing, regulated signal to work with. The key is choosing a scent that is clearly associated with calm or safety for you specifically, not what research says is generically soothing.
9. Rhythmic Movement
Rocking, swaying, walking with a steady pace, or even tapping a rhythm on your own knees — rhythmic bilateral movement is one of the most ancient self-soothing mechanisms available to us. It regulates the vestibular system, gently stimulates the production of calming neurochemicals, and mirrors the rocking motions that have soothed humans since infancy.
During a grief pang, you don't need to go for a long walk or do anything elaborate. Standing and swaying gently from foot to foot, rocking slowly in a chair, or even tapping a slow steady rhythm with your hands for 60 seconds can shift the body's state noticeably. Moving with the grief rather than sitting rigid inside it often helps.
10. The Compassionate Witness
This is the most internal of the ten skills, and for many people, one of the most powerful. When a grief pang hits, one of its cruelest features is the loneliness — the sense that you are alone with something unbearable.
The compassionate witness practice works with that loneliness directly. Close your eyes, or soften your gaze, and imagine a presence sitting beside you — a wise friend, a therapist, a spiritual figure, a version of your future self who has come through this. This presence isn't trying to fix anything or make the grief stop. They are simply there, watching this moment with you, with complete warmth and without alarm. Let yourself feel accompanied.
This works because imagining compassionate company activates the brain's caregiving circuitry in ways that are measurably soothing — your nervous system responds to the felt sense of being witnessed, even when that witness is internal. If a specific person or figure doesn't come to mind, simply imagine warmth and presence beside you. That is enough.
A Final Word
None of these skills are about making grief smaller, shorter, or more convenient. Grief pangs are the mind and body doing the enormous, necessary work of integrating a loss that has changed everything. The goal of a toolkit like this is not to silence that process but to keep you present for it — so that grief can move through you rather than pinning you under it.
You are not broken when a pang arrives. You are human, and you loved someone. These skills are simply ways of reminding your body that it can bear what the heart already knows it must.
