Episode 30: Grief and Your Brain

In this short episode,  April discusses how grief affects our brains--hers in particular, because she just lost one of her best friends and it hurts. So this might be more for her than for you, but you should listen anyway.

The good news is that she'll be ok. Eventually...

Episode 30 Show Notes

Great article from the Today Show website about how our mind deals with death:
https://www.today.com/health/mind-body/grief-changes-brain-rcna13613

Two excellent NPR articles that reference works and interviews with grief specialist Mary Frances O'Connor:
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/04/1052498852/what-happens-in-the-brain-when-we-grieve

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/20/1056741090/grief-loss-holiday-brain-healing

Dr Lisa Shulman discusses brain neuroplasticity and dealing with loss:
https://www.americanbrainfoundation.org/how-tragedy-affects-the-brain/#:~:text=Grief%20and%20loss%20affect%20the%20brain%20and%20body,lead%20to%20cognitive%20effects%2C%20such%20as%20brain%20fog

Psych Central article about how grief affects your physical and mental health:
https://psychcentral.com/lib/your-health-and-grief

Transcript

Episode 30—Grief and Your Brain

Hello and welcome to Episode 30 of think it through. Okay so…this short but important episode is titled Grief and Your Brain, but maybe it should be called Grief and MY Brain because it’s something I’m dealing with after the sudden tragic loss of one of my dearest and best friends to suicide. What I have noticed as I’ve been going through my days is that my brain isn’t working very well (not that it necessarily EVER was, but it’s just more pronounced). And because I think for a living, plus I’m one of those people who must have an explanation for everything, and since this podcast is called Think It Through and it’s about the how we think and how we can do that more clearly, I’ve decided to look at grief from the perspective of how it affects our thought processes. Grief is a universal experience; all of us have gone through it, or will at some point, so it’s good to know what’s happening in our heads during this process. Plus creating this episode is giving me something to do, and I really need that right now. So, here we go…

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When Today show health reporter A Pawlowski’s loved one passed away, she says she kept being haunted by the feeling that she didn’t know where he was. She’d always known how to reach him, and now, even though she knew he was gone, her mind kept trying to place him somewhere, and it was disconcerting and upsetting. Grief expert Mary Frances O'Connor says that this panicky response, which she refers to as a “brain pop-up”, is very similar to what a parent goes through when their child gets lost in the mall and they can’t find them. She says that these brain pop-ups are going to happen for a while as your brain continues to adjust to the knowledge that this person is no longer in the world. Obviously, grief is a complex emotional state made up of all kinds of feelings. Many of these emotions are ones we tend to feel regularly throughout the day; like anxiety, sadness, yearning, maybe a little flash of anger here and there. But in grief these emotions are ramped up to an intensity that can overwhelm us. 

When you are in any kind of interpersonal relationship, be it a close friendship or a family member or your intimate, significant other, part of who you are (sometimes a very large part) is bound up in that other person. You and that person have been a “we,” and when that person is no longer there, it’s completely natural to feel like a part of YOU is gone. Yes, it’s the “we” part of you that is missing now, and one component of grief is trying to keep that “we” part going when that other person isn’t physically here to complete that part of our identity. In fact, neurologist Dr Lisa Schulman says that this kind of traumatic loss is perceived by our brain as a threat to OUR own survival, and our “fight or flight” defense mechanisms kick in. Blood pressure, heart rate, the release of specific hormones are all part of this process. These things can cause changes in memory, behavior, sleep, and even affect our immune system. And of course what I’ve been experiencing, “brain fog,” is incredibly common in the grief process. In fact, according to an article in Psych Central, it is typical to feel “spacy,” forgetful, and even be unable to make decisions. “Grief brain” is a real thing; because of the stress associated with trauma, blood is being diverted from the higher-order thinking functions of your brain to the more emotional and fear-based areas. 

So what is my brain doing during this emotional time? According to Dr. Shulman, and I quote, “In response to traumatic events, the brain creates connections between nerves and strengthens or weakens existing connections depending on the duration and degree of the emotional response. Neuroplasticity, or the ability to alter neural connections, allows the brain to compensate for injury, illness, loss, and other life-altering traumatic events by forming new neural connections based on these experiences. This helps an individual adapt to new situations or environments.” End quote So my brain is changing, learning, and adapting to this new world that doesn’t have my friend in it. Grief is a kind of learning, according to O’Connor; when a loved one dies, your brain is trying to solve a problem. It’s working overtime to update its virtual map of the world. Sometimes we want to fight this updating, and we ruminate about what we would have done, could have done, should have done, to keep this trauma from happening and keep that person with us. Certainly when suicide is involved, as in my friend’s case, those ruminations can take over your mind and make the process take longer. But those counterfactuals don’t really help us adapt to our new reality and learn to be in the world as it is NOW.

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Thankfully, grief diminishes over time. How much time is a very individual thing, and while you might want to be alone with your grief (and that’s something I have a tendency to do), connecting with your other friends and loved ones is actually an extremely important part of moving through this process. You need to be able to imagine a future where you’re not constantly knocked over by waves of grief. But it will happen. Psych Central says, “People with resilient grieving patterns usually shift back and forth between loss-related thoughts and restoration-related thoughts, like testing out their new role or identity.” When O’Connor lost her husband, she taped a note up in her kitchen that said, “Cook. Clean. Work. Play.” It helped to remind her what she needed to do to get through each day to take care of herself. This is not to say that she didn’t spend time curled up in a ball crying, but she understood the need for emotional flexibility, so she tried to neither avoid nor ruminate over her situation too much. Most of us make it through this period and come out okay; however there is a small percentage (maybe 10%) of people who continue to experience high levels of grief for a prolonged period of time and may need a counselor, therapist, or psychologist to get back on track and be able to function normally. I was on an anti-depressant for about a year after the death of my mother, and it was very helpful in getting me through that period of time. I mean, don’t rule things like that out; if you need help, please get it.

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Even though grief becomes less immediate and overwhelming as time passes, the grieving process itself doesn’t ever end, because we don’t just forget that person existed. My mother passed away more than two decades ago, but occasionally I still long for her sweet presence. Right now the pain I feel over losing my friend is very intense, but I know it won’t always be that way. Even though my brain is changing and adapting to these new circumstances, the neural connections related to my relationship with my friend won’t change. O’Connor says that the physical wiring of our brains that create a bond with another person doesn’t go away, it’s permanently encoded there. According to her, we are literally carrying that other person in our brain forever. And she says, and I agree, that there is something very comforting in that knowledge.

Thank you for listening to me, it really helped me to do this. And I hope I helped you to understand what’s happening in our brains when we grieve, and that you use the information in this episode to help you Think It Through.