Suppressing or denying grief prolongs the process; a look at what is happening to our brains when we are grieving

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

A great metaphor for understanding how the brain works is to look at it like a computer that is continually updating programs in the background. It can be very difficult to type in a word document while it’s churning in the background, making the words appear slowly on the screen. In many ways the brain is similarly distracted when we are trying to do simple tasks in life, and certainly when we are trying to do complicated ones. It becomes a little more challenging when we are dealing with difficult emotions. Once such emotion is grief.

I became interested in this topic because I have noticed in the last year; there has been an overwhelming amount of reports surrounding sudden deaths. The total number of excess deaths in 2022 was among the highest recorded since the aftermath of the Second World War, according to figures from the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI). With so much death around us, I was curious as to how it is affecting the community.

Grief is a complex response to loss. It includes: emotional, cognitive, behavioural and physiological changes, and this means that many parts of the brain are involved in generating the grief response. Research into the neuroscience of grief is still in its early stages, and the question is, when someone is experiencing grief, what exactly is happening to their brain?

According to Dr Lisa M. Shulman, a neurologist at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, our brains perceive traumatic loss as a threat to our survival.

“From an evolutionary perspective, our brains developed to preserve our survival, so anything perceived as a threat to [this] triggers a massive response from the brain that has repercussions for many regions of the body. We’re accustomed to thinking of physical trauma as a threat, but serious emotional trauma has similar effects.”

The amygdala (the brain’s centre for emotions) is always on the lookout for threats. When it is triggered, it sets off a cascade of events that put the entire body on high alert, something we like to call fight or flight: the heart speeds up, breathing rate increases and blood circulation is increased to the muscles to prepare to fight or flee. If this continues for: days, weeks and months it can result in the amygdala becoming increasingly sensitized and hyper-vigilant.

Our brain works overtime to respond to the threat of emotional trauma, summoning psychological defence mechanisms like denial and dissociation. This is why when you first hear that someone has died; there is that sense of disbelief that sets in. Then follows The Five Stages of Grief.

The Five Stages of Grief is a theory developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. It suggests that we go through five distinct stages after the loss of a loved one. These stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance.

The emotional trauma of grief results in profound changes to brain function due to the repetitive stress of the fight or flight response and neuroplasticity, which is the re-modelling of the brain in response to experience and changes in our environment. Over time, these mechanisms result in a strengthening of the primitive fear centre of the brain and a weakening of the advanced brain, what we know as the cerebral cortex.

These changes are long lasting, but can be reversed by therapy and post-traumatic growth. Post-traumatic growth is a technique that enables individuals to find a way to take new meaning from their experiences in order to live their lives differently than before the trauma.

Post-traumatic growth often happens naturally, without psychotherapy or other formal intervention, and it can be facilitated in five ways: through education, emotional regulation, disclosure, narrative development, and service.

Research now shows that negative experiences can spur positive change, including recognition of personal strength, the exploration of new possibilities, improved relationships, a greater appreciation for life, and spiritual growth.