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

by Mary-Frances O'Connor

As I described in this book’s introduction, grief is different from grieving. Grief is the painful emotional state that naturally rises and fades away, again and again. People might imagine that grief is “over” when the waves happen less often, or less intensely. They are right in one sense: if the goal is to suffer less-intense and less-frequent pangs of grief, this reduction is likely to happen naturally over time with experience. On the other hand, if a bereaved person does not experience the lessening of intensity and frequency over time as they were anticipating, they may begin to ruminate not just on their loss but on their reaction to it as well. They may begin to wonder, Is my grief normal? Others are expecting me to “move on” and I do not feel as though I have “moved on.” Does that mean that I will always feel this way? Monitoring like this has the unfortunate effect of keeping grief at the forefront of your mind, which can heighten and prolong your grief reaction instead of allowing it to gradually become less painful with time.