Heal Within with Dr. Evette Rose

Healing the Heart After Loss + Meditation

• Dr. Evette Rose • Season 15 • Episode 10

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Why does grief feel like an ache that lives in both the heart and the body? The answer lies not just in emotions, but in the brain’s wiring.

When you love someone, your neural pathways literally rewire to include them in your inner world. Their presence becomes part of your identity, part of your daily map of safety and belonging. When they’re gone, your brain faces a profound conflict: one part knows they’ve passed, while another—shaped by years of attachment—still expects them to be there.

This is why grief creates such a powerful neurological crisis, showing up as emotional and physical turmoil. You may catch yourself:

  • Thinking you saw them in a crowd
  • Feeling your heart race at the sound of their name
  • Saying “a part of me is missing” and truly meaning it

These aren’t illusions. Nobel Prize–winning research shows that your brain’s object-trace cells can continue firing days after someone is gone. You’re grieving not just the person—but who you were with them.

Contrary to popular belief, time alone doesn’t heal grief. Healing happens through living again—through repatterning, creating new experiences, and allowing your nervous system to update. Along the way, you’ll face many emotions: sadness, yearning, anger, guilt, even panic. And grief isn’t limited to death—it arises in the loss of relationships, health, identity, or career.

If you’ve felt stuck in prolonged grief, know this: you’re not broken. You’re simply learning how to update a love that once had a face but now lives inside you.

✨ Inside this episode:

  • Why grief is both an emotional and neurological process
  • The role of object-trace cells in attachment and loss
  • Why intrusive thoughts and yearnings are part of healing, not signs of weakness
  • Why repatterning—not just time—is essential for moving forward
  • A guided meditation to visualize emotions as leaves in a stream, grounding you in peace

The people we love change us permanently—their imprint remains in how we think, speak, and dream. With compassion and daily presence, you can take one step at a time, one breath at a time, toward healing.

You don’t have to walk this journey alone.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Heal Within here with me, Dr. Evette Rose, trauma therapist and also creator of Metaphysical Anatomy Technique. And this podcast is your safe place to explore emotional healing, nervous system repair and also deep inner transformation. And if you are ready to go deeper and you would like to be supported on your healing journey, you can always book a one-on-one session with me or with one of my certified metapsychology coaching practitioners. You can also join our upcoming live healing events, workshops or retreats at metaphysicalanatomycom. Now let's begin our journey back to wholeness, one breath and one breakthrough at a time.

Speaker 1:

Now, have you ever asked yourself why does it hurt so much when you lose someone? You see, if you have, you are not alone, and I want to take a moment to also talk with you through that question, not only with compassion, but with the insights that I also have come to understand through psychology, neuroscience and also deep emotional healing. Now let me explain something that many people don't always necessarily know. When we lose someone, it's not just our hearts that break, it's actually also our brain that is profoundly disrupted as well. Now I have read some powerful research, also by a grief scientist who actually led one of the earliest neuroimaging studies on grief, and what she found, and what I've witnessed in so many of my clients, is that love literally rewires your brain. So when someone you love passes away, it's not just an emotional loss, it's a neurological crisis. You see, your brain doesn't immediately comprehend that your loved one is necessarily gone, and there are two powerful systems at play in your mind One part that knows that they have passed and you remember, perhaps, that they're not there anymore. But another part is the part that, built through attachment, the one that bonded with their voice, their smell, their touch, still believes that they are just around the corner. And this is why you might think that you saw them in a crowd, why your heart jumps for a second when you hear their name. That's not foolish. That is your brain struggling to update a system that was built around love and attachment. I call this the gone but everlasting experience. It's almost like love didn't die. The neural patterns, the physical architecture of that relationship, it's still firing.

Speaker 1:

So when we also, for example, even fall in love, when we become a parent or a friend or a partner, the neurons in our brain don't just light up, they recognize. You see, your brain forms a map of that person. You see, your brain forms a map of that person. Their presence becomes part of your internal world. It's really deeply, almost like woven into your routines, your reflexes, your beliefs. So when they are gone, you don't just miss them, you are disorientated and you are living in a world that no longer matches your internal prediction system. You see, grief is not a flaw in your system. It really, truly is a feature of love.

Speaker 1:

Let's go a little bit deeper. You see, you're not imagining when you say it feels like a part of me is missing. That's not just poetic, that's neuroscience. When you've bonded with someone, that bond changes your brain on a cellular level, even the proteins in your neurons that is used to communicate. When we look at Nobel Prize winning research, they even show that the brain has an object, traced cells that keep firing for days, even when something or someone is no longer there. You see, your brain is wired to expect your loved one and that wiring doesn't ease overnight. So what happens? You feel split, you know that they are gone and yet you feel like they should walk through the door at any moment.

Speaker 1:

These conflicting truths cause emotional turmoil. That is why some people feel angry, yes, even angry at the one who passed away. They feel ignored, they feel abandoned. They might even feel like they are going crazy, but they're not. Their brain is learning to adapt, and learning takes time. You see, grief is a form of learning. It is your brain trying to actually create a new model of the world, one without the person who was part of your everyday. It's like learning a new language, but the language is one of absence. It's one of a new identity, and you're not just grieving them, you're grieving who you were with them.

Speaker 1:

You see, people often say that time heals all wounds, but I want to offer you something a little bit different. You see, it's not that time alone helps you to heal. It's also experience and repatterning over time, your brain I mean your brain doesn't heal by simply existing. It heals by living again. So if you're struggling to sleep, eat, concentrate this too is grief. Your cortisol rises, your heart rate increases, your body is reacting as if it's almost like as if your survival is threatened and almost in a way it is is. Your emotional safety has not been regulated yet and you might start to feel, as a result of that, panic. It's almost like when a toddler disappears in a store.

Speaker 1:

Grief carries all these emotions, sadness, yearning, anger, blame, guilt, panic and even shame for feeling them. So please hear me now. This is all normal, and while grief most often shows up after death, you can grieve many kinds of loss. It can be the end of a relationship, a divorce, a child leaving home, estrangement from a friend, even the loss of health or the loss of a job. Even the loss of health or the loss of a job. You see, these experiences fracture our attachment maps. You are not just missing what was, you are mourning what will no longer be, and for some of us, grief also becomes almost like a constant companion. This is what we call prolonged grief. It's almost as if it feels like nothing has changed, even after many months or years, that you're still just as raw and stuck, and that doesn't mean that you're broken. It means that your brain hasn't yet had, let's say, enough experience or support to build a new model, and that's where trauma-informed healing and therapy really, truly can help.

Speaker 1:

Now let's also talk about the intrusive thoughts this is something that a lot of people don't seem to mention of thoughts this is something that a lot of people don't seem to mention the ones that come at 2am in the morning, or maybe while you're washing dishes, the what ifs, the I, should have the loops that your brain can move into trying to almost like rework the past. Trying to, it's almost like it's trying to find an outcome where your loved one is still living. It's very natural. However, it doesn't help us to adapt. Instead of wrestling them, we actually learn to let those thoughts float.

Speaker 1:

By Now I also understand that grief and understanding grief and how it works on a neurological level. It doesn't erase the pain, but it does validate it and it makes the loneliness much less confusing. It definitely also tells you that you are not mad, you are not weak, you are learning to live again. And here's a truth that helped me to also bring peace when I went through a moment of grief and mourning and loss is that the people that we love changes us permanently. Their imprint remains in our neural circuits in a way that we think, speak, love and dream as well. Even in their absence, they are physically within us. So if you are grieving, know this. You are learning. You're not falling apart. You are updating a love that once had a face but now lives inside. And know that, even if it doesn't feel like it every day, you are doing your best.

Speaker 1:

Acknowledge that, and for those of you who are ready for a healing meditation, this is going to be a very beautiful, powerful meditation. This one is specifically going to focus on helping you to work through these sad moments or when you feel that it's becoming too much, when you start to feel the pain, when you start to feel the intrusive thoughts. Let's start, and when you are ready, you can either lie down, you can sit up whatever you feel most comfortable with. I invite you now to take a nice deep breath and exhale Very good, very good. And let's begin by softening into this moment. I invite you to take a nice slow, deep breath and let's start with breathing in the nose and a long sigh out your mouth. Let's do that one more time Breathe in the nose and out the mouth and as you do that, feeling your body settling, let gravity hold you, feeling is anchoring you, and there's no need to rush, there's no need to fix anything, need to fix anything Right now. We are simply arriving with honesty, with kindness and with.

Speaker 1:

I invite you now to gently bring your attention to your heart center, that quiet place behind your chest. I invite you to imagine a warm, soft light there, a place of love. A place of love, a place of memory. Noticing your shoulders as well, just letting them drop. Notice your jaw also softening. There's nowhere else to be, just here, now. I invite you now to bring your awareness to your nervous system. Imagine the fibers of your vagus nerve unwinding Almost like threads, unspooling gently down your spine, telling your body that you are safe. Now you are held in this moment and now I invite you, as you're finding yourself in that space where you are unwinding, hear, feel, see or sense yourself stepping into a calm, quiet forest. And in that forest where you are standing, you notice in front of you a beautiful gentle stream flowing very gently, very peacefully, quietly lay.

Speaker 1:

And notice, as you're looking at that stream, what do you see? What do you notice About that stream? That stream Is always moving, it's never standing still. And notice how that stream is just continuously Gently moving. Maybe there's a leaf that falls into the stream. Just notice that leaf, see how it's flowing down the stream Out of your sight. Maybe there's a small twig now that lands in the stream and it's just gently moving down the stream until it's out of sight. I invite you to notice how this stream can also represent you and the leaves and twigs that perhaps fall into the stream can, can often perhaps be thoughts, emotions that might be upsetting. Notice, as they come up, how they just flow down the stream, moving out of sight and with this same flow, and observing that, allowing emotions also, just like these leaves in a stream, to come and go, to come and go, come and go Come and go and release.

Speaker 1:

Even finding yourself stepping into that river with your feet, that little stream, feel the water gently moving around your feet continuing to flow and, as you're standing in that stream, feel how any feelings of stress, distress, sadness is moving from your body down out, your into that stream and notice how that stream is just taking these emotions, these moments, taking it with it down, down, down, down down, as it's flowing and flowing, and flowing.

Speaker 2:

Until it's out of sight.

Speaker 1:

Notice how your body is starting to feel relieved, almost like you can take a deep breath. Feel how grounding that is the stream continues to take more and more energy, more stress. It's taking that heaviness gently flowing down that stream, down, down, down, down down that stream, going going down, down down that stream.

Speaker 2:

Going going going gone.

Speaker 1:

Very good, very good.

Speaker 1:

And when you are ready, you can step out of the stream, sitting there on the river bank or the stream's bank on the sand, feeling your feet in that sand, touching these little sand crystals. You can even find yourself lying down, feeling that surface beneath your body, closing your eyes, staring at visualization and gently following my voice back into the room, back into the here and now, feeling fully held and supported by the surface beneath you, feeling lighter, calmer and more balanced, allowing your mind and your body to continue to heal throughout the day and night. And remember, you can always come back to this meditation if you feel that you need to let go or just unwind and just ground yourself and, when you are ready, taking a nice deep breath, wiggling your fingers and your toes, opening your eyes, giving yourself a nice big stretch and welcome back. Welcome back everyone. Well done, well done, well done.

Speaker 1:

And affirmation for today take one step at a time, one breath at a time and if this episode touched you, please share it with someone who could also be on the healing journey. And, as always, breathe deep, listen within and stay gently curious. I love you and thank you for being here with me until the very end, and until next time, be the light that you are. Bye everyone.