Grief and Your Brain

Is there something wrong with me?

“If someone close to us dies, then, based on what we know about object-trace cells, our neurons still fire every time we expect our loved one to be in the room. And this neural trace persists until we can learn that our loved one is never going to be in our physical world again. We must update our virtual maps, creating a revised cartography of our new lives. Is it any wonder that it takes many weeks and months of grief and new experiences to learn our way around again?”

Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss

If you are in acute grief, you may find yourself

· Struggling with things that used to be easy

· Having difficulty remembering things, keeping track of small details, and/or focusing

· Feeling irritated, frustrated, sad, or exhausted easily and more than your “normal”

It is likely that…

Your brain is having a normal reaction to grief.

Here are some common symptoms of/in acute grief. Mark the ones you experience.

· Brain fog

· Difficulty sleeping

· Difficulty concentrating

· Intense moods

· Dramatic mood changes over “little things”

· Exhaustion and fatigue

· Anger and potentially rage

· Expecting to see or hear your person

· Thinking you did see or hear your person

· Numbness

· Change in appetite

This phase is often the worst in the first six months.

What’s going on with my brain?

Martin Roddis created this amazing video about the grieving brain based on Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss.

The Double Whammy of Stressors

Your brain is trying to make sense of the unsensible—your person is no longer physically here. The networks in your brain that hold your person’s memory, emotion, and physical space memories have to re-learn ALL that your person is not physically here.

You are also in this new world of settling someone’s logistical affairs. Most of us have never had to close someone else’s financial accounts, memorialize someone’s social media, or empty a whole home (sometimes under the crunch fo time and money.) So, your braining grieves while you enter a new world that often requires learning new “languages” and skill sets. It’s a double whammy.

That’s right. It isn’t fair or right that just as your brain, body, and spirit are suffering this loss, you are also entering into this new terrain where the road map can seem to be written in a different language.

The Dual Process Model of Bereavement

Although nothing can take the pain of grief away, bring back your person, or magically settle your person’s affairs, having a frame of reference can help clarify. Stroebe and Schut developed the Dual Process Model. Grievers travel back and forth from loss orientation to restoration orientation. Stressors can be part of both experiences. While the sphere outside represents “everyday life.”

When Feeling Stressed or Overwhelmed with Grief and Logistics

Pause and consider

Grief makes ALL brains and bodies stressed out.
Grief doesn’t just go away in a week, month, or year—you learn to live with grief rather than it resolving…(and you will learn to carry it.)
Grief comes in waves and can feel “out of the blue”
Settling someone’s affairs is stressful on an ideal day WITHOUT grief.
The system is not built for grieving bodybrains
You’re experiencing a double whammy. You’re stressed and that makes sense
You’re doing Olympian mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical work