The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss

by Mary-Frances O'Connor

Being in the present moment is awareness beyond your focal point, awareness that includes those who are with you in the here and now, whether they are friends, cashiers, children, old folks, or strangers.

In the long term, finding a way to spend more time in the present moment helped me to figure out what that life was like now, and when I knew what life in the present really felt like, I could choose how to spend it.

One way we can help our natural sleep system is to reinforce its regular rhythms.

during bereavement, our brain is smart enough to give us what we absolutely need, by taking a slice of each of the stages of sleep.

This river of people may or may not understand you and your particular grief, but they have struggled with grief themselves. You are not alone.

The content of these similarities may differ, but the human experience overlaps.

Without getting feedback from what is happening in the present, adaptation may take longer. It may take longer to learn to live without our beloved, in order to live fully.

the content of our thoughts, or where we deploy our attention, changes the hard drive of the brain, the wiring of our synapses.

Her role is to guide attention; the change is actually being made internally by the client.

A beautiful depiction of the therapist/client relationship

In the present, I enjoyed having flowers, even though they were a reminder that he was gone. It is not a simple trade-off;

the more they tried to avoid thinking about the person, the more they thought about them unintentionally during mind wandering.

higher avoidance also goes along with a higher number of intrusive thoughts.

Suppressing one’s thoughts is, ironically, related to a rebound of those thoughts.

We do not always need to be engaged in grief work or deliberately focusing on the loss, because the brain is learning and adapting even when we are not explicitly aware of it.

physical makeup of our brain—the structure of our neurons—has been changed by them.

cheering them up is not the goal. Being with them is the goal.

Grief is the painful emotional state that naturally rises and fades away, again and again.

You have a better chance of reaching your goal if you have many ways you might consider your life meaningful.

Grieving is the change from having your attachment needs fulfilled by your deceased loved one, to having them consistently fulfilled in other ways.

Death has a brutal way of clarifying to us what is meaningful.

This discovery of the mismatch between our values and day-to-day minutiae may lead us to feel annoyance at the situations we find ourselves in, or it may make us feel fearless in expressing strong emotions or pursuing new goals.

During grieving, we are sometimes redefining our identity,

The ability to imagine our future, a new and unknown future that no longer includes our deceased loved one, seems to use a similar brain network as remembering our past.

To restore a meaningful life, we have to be able to imagine that life.

(The first year in particular means a lot of trial and error.)

Somehow, I came to believe that if she were no longer constrained by her human form, on this worldly plane, she would be the best parts of herself all the time. At some point it seemed I could take those best aspects of her going forward in my own life.

My relationship with her, present and past, was transformed when I focused on all the good she wanted for me, despite all the difficulties we’d had throughout our relationship.

The restoration of a meaningful life very often means developing a new relationship or strengthening an attachment with someone we already know. Bringing someone new into your life can lead to an eruption of grief, even after a period of relative calm.

For those who are supporting someone who is grieving, there is real benefit in listening and offering encouragement, without judging when it is “normal” to develop new relationships.

If losses are psychologically twice as powerful as gains, then we would have to feel twice as good in a new relationship as we did in our previous relationship in order to feel the same level of happiness. Gaining a new relationship is simply not going to fill the hole that exists.

Here is the key—the point of new roles and new relationships is not to fill the hole.

When explaining who an attachment figure is, I ask two questions. First, does this person think I am special, and do I think they are special, compared to other people in the world? Second, do I trust this person would be there for me if I needed them, and do I trust I would make the effort to be there for them, if they needed me? If a relationship fulfills those two questions, regardless of what the social role of the person is, then likely one’s attachment needs are being met. This could be a neighbor, a sibling, a secretary, a pet, or a partner. What society calls them is much less important than the role they play in your life.

we must learn to be connected to them with our feet planted firmly in the present moment.

Our relationship with our deceased loved one must reflect who we are now, with the experience, and perhaps even the wisdom, we have gained through grieving. We must learn to restore a meaningful life.

If you feel as though you are treading water, or barely keeping from going under, it is time to try some new approaches to your memories, your emotions, and your relationships.

I also do not think that other people can give advice to someone who is grieving.

People are experts on their own grief, their own life, their own relationships.

I cannot tell anyone how their values and their beliefs feed into what they should do with their life. You are already in your newly restored life, full of love and grief and suffering and wisdom. I can only encourage you to stay in the present and try to learn from what happens day to day, and to learn from what works for you. I believe in your ability to solve your problems and to live a meaningful life after having experienced devastating loss.