Why Is This Happening
Your brain is trying to recover. You are experiencing a deep biological response to your loss, just as you are experiencing physical, psychological, and emotional responses. Hormones and chemicals are released, internal reactions are disrupted, important bodily systems shift into emergency mode. And it all starts in the brain.
Overcoming Trauma & Grief: Eliminate The Hurts That Haunt You
Going through emotional trauma or grief can leave a lasting imprint on the brain. In order to properly heal it, it is critical to get the right diagnosis. It is critically important because the symptoms of PTSD and traumatic brain injury often overlap , but the treatments are very different. In fact, treating PTSD as if it is a TBI, or vice versa, can actually make people worse, which is why we believe neuro- imaging studies are so important when people struggle and find that the simple treatments to feel better fast are ineffective.
As mentioned in Dr. Daniel Amens new book, Feel Better Fast and Make it Last, overcoming trauma and grief is often mislabeled as depression, ADHD, PTSD, panic disorder, and other psychiatric conditions. If you experience symptoms of these conditions after a loss, consider doing grief work before taking medication. If grief is misdiagnosed, psychotropic medications can get in the way of or even prolong recovery.
Grief Symptoms: How Grief Affects The Brain
by Barbara Fane, LCSW, BCD | Jan 13, 2016 | Grief
In the aftermath of your loss, have you begun to wonder about your grief symptoms?
Have you found they are different than you imagined?
On some level, you expected the sorrow and the anxious thoughts.
The longing and disbelief are extremely painfulbut expected.
So what is this dull numbness and fog in your brain?
Why do you get the sense that you simply feel off line somehow?
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Care For People Suffering A Grief Disorder And/or Ptsd
It is usually best practice to treat traumatic grief and / or PTSD with therapy using cognitive behavioural techniques tailored to the individuals needs. This means talking through things with a therapist in a number of one-to-one sessions . In these sessions it is usually the case that the suddenly bereaved person will:
- Address the event and try to come to terms with what is known to have happened. This can be achieved through talk, writing, visiting the scene, or other methods.
- Talk about any painfully-upsetting aspect of the event that is presumed and therefore may not be true, to enable these thoughts to be corrected and stopped .
- Talk about any unfinished business with the person who has died. For example, any feelings of guilt or lost plans.
- Talk about the future and find a way to think positively about it.
The therapist assigned will need to be qualified and experienced in providing this therapy. Ask them how many times they have worked with people suddenly bereaved, and the success of their work. It is also important for the suddenly bereaved person to feel they have a trusting and positive relationship with their therapist. If they dont connect well with their therapist, it is always possible to change, and suddenly bereaved people should be encouraged to keep trying therapy with a different therapist, and not be put off by an unsuccessful first attempt.
Build A Resistance To Change
Grief changes you in many significant ways. One of those is the building of resistance to change in many different aspects of your life. Sometimes, resistance to accepting new things is a psychological reaction to grief from not knowing how to handle life without your loved one in it. Some things to look out for are:
- Not accepting your life has changed
- Denying that your loved one died
- Refusal to move on and adjust to your new identity
- Hesitating on downsizing your house
- Not wanting to stick to budgetary changes
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Consequences Of Brain Dysfunctions In Ptsd
Hyperarousal
Because the amygdala is overactive, more norepinephrine is released in response to threat and its release is not well-regulated by the PFC.
Effects of excess norepinephrine include:
As a result of hyperarousal, people with PTSD can get emotionally triggered by anything that resembles the original trauma . Symptoms of hypervigilance means they are frequently keyed up and on edge, while increased wakefulness means they may have difficulty sleeping or wake up in the middle of the night.
Eye Movement Desensitization And Reprocessing
EMDR helps people process trauma on an emotional level. It has been shown to help PTSD sufferers heal faster than through traditional therapy. In fact, a study funded by the Kaiser Permanente HMO found that 100% of single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims were no longer diagnosed with PTSD after just six 50-minute sessions.
In PTSD, traumatic thoughts and memories work against the brains healing process. Flashbacks, nightmares, and disturbing emotions cycle through the brain, keeping the ordeal in the forefront of the persons mind. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy can break that cycle.
EMDR uses bilateral stimuli to tap into the biological mechanisms the brain uses during Rapid Eye Movement sleep. The theory is that using REM while recalling the disturbing thoughts or memories of the trauma helps the brain process it naturally, allowing the mind to heal.
The bilateral stimulation a therapist might use can include:
- Hand tapping or toe tapping
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You May Be Wondering When Will My Brain Fog Lift
The answer is, it varies. While it may come and go in 30 days for your neighbor, yours may hang around for long periods of time. The fog of grief is emotional, mental, and physical and can take time to unravel and release. In most cases, your memory loss and inability to concentrate should lift within a few months and arent permanent. In some cases, it may take longer. If your brain fog seems to be getting worse or the intensity is fairly consistent, your mental health may be affected but there is treatment. If you are not able to move past your grief after months or years, you may be suffering from complicated grief , or persistent complex bereavement disorder. This type of grief follows a tragic loss and is one marked by the survivor’s inability to move past their strong, negative emotions regarding their loss. It can look like depression but requires a different treatment. If you think that you have complicated grief, talk to your doctor. He or she can determine if what you have is CG or depression and help you to find the appropriate treatment and/or antidepressants).
Consider These Areas Of The Brain And How Scientists Believe Grief Symptoms Affect Them:
- The parasympathetic nervous system: This section of your autonomic nervous system is in the brain stem and lower part of your spinal cord. In this system, which handles rest, breathing, and digestion, you may find that your breath becomes short or shallow, appetite disappears or increases dramatically, and sleep disturbance or insomnia become an issue.
- The prefrontal cortex/frontal lobe: The functions of this area include the ability to find meaning, planning, self control, and self expression. Scientific brain scans show that loss, grief, and traumas can significantly impact your emotion and physical processes. Articulation and appropriate expression of feelings or desires may become difficult or exhausting.
- The limbic system: This emotion-related brain region, particularly the hippocampus portion, is in charge of personal recall, emotion and memory integration, attention, and your ability to take interest in others. During grief, it creates a sensory oriented, protective response to your loss. Perceiving loss and grief as a threat, the amygdala portions of this system instructs your body to resist grief. You may experience strong instinctual or physical responses to triggers that remind you of your losses.
Its important to give yourself a break as you mourn. Be patient through the loss and your grief symptoms. Seek support and comfort from your loved ones, a support group, or your therapist.
Grief is a process for your mind and body. Be kind to yourself.
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Grief May Impact You Or Loved Ones In The Following Ways:
- concentration is compromised
- memory and recall are less sharp
- ability to make even simple decisions is reduced
- organization and planning are unusually challenging
- a general sense of absent-mindedness sets in
Clearly, grieving takes an enormous toll. Your brain seems scrambled. Loss, mourning, and a myriad of mental grief symptoms take over for awhile.
Has Grief Made You Lose Your Mind
When Matt first died, I lost my mind but not in the ways you might think. Grief-related memory loss is a real thing.
I used to be a person who could keep everything straight without notes or a calendar. I never lost my car keys. I used to have a really great memory until grief and memory loss collided.
Suddenly, I was putting my keys in the freezer and forgetting my dogs name. There were days I couldnt remember what day it was or if Id eaten breakfast. This was much more than forgetfulness. It was full-on brain fog.
I used to love reading books, but even that eluded me. Now I couldnt read more than a few sentences at a time, and usually had to go back and reread those same lines many times. Grief and concentration are not a good match.
My mind simply stopped functioning. Has that happened for you?
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Moving Forward And Overcoming Trauma
Trauma is defined as a “distressing or disturbing experience.” Those who struggle with PTSD know that a simple definition barely scratches the surface of the pain and loss such an experience elicits. However, it’s also true that we don’t have to live in pain forever. While we can’t go back to who we used to be and we can’t reclaim the losses we go through, we can move forward towards becoming stronger, more creative, more resilient, and even more successful people who lead a purpose-filled life after trauma.
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My Experience With Ptsd
As quoted from my book Divine Healing :
When I first became bereaved, of the few books I read on parental grief, I noticed that everyone talked about this period of insanity that set in quickly and without warning, but other than describing the crazy mixed up feelings that seemed common to them all, nobody shared any real insight as to what was actually happening to them. I didnt understand what they meant when they talked about feeling like they were going insane and quite frankly, the thought of going crazy on top of what I was already feeling from my overwhelming pain, scared me even more. It wasnt until I started to research PTSD about two years after Janaya died, and began to connect the symptoms of this disorder to my own, that I gained insight into this very real and impacting part of the grieving process.
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Interaction Of Trauma And Grief
Traumatic grief, which may or may not involve bereavement, is not mentioned at all the DSM-5. Other sources, however, are not so silent. Obviously, a wide range of experiences can be traumatic, such that symptoms of PTSD will result. These range from a physical or sexual assault occurring at any point in adulthood to a severely impaired early childhood attachment to parents. Correspondingly, the resulting trauma memories can range from simple to complex. In all cases, I think we can safely make at least three assumptions:
Can Grief Change Your Mind Or Personality
When someone you love dies, it has the potential to affect you in all aspects. The resulting pain and sorrow can be overwhelming, making surviving and moving forward almost impossible.
Everyone’s grief experience will be different from the next person’s. Since there’s no timeline for grief, it’s possible to experience the effects of your loss for several years afterward. The way you move through your sorrow will be your unique experience, but you can expect some shared responses with others who’ve experienced a similar loss.
Recognizing the ways grief changes you is a vital part of the healing process. Experiencing grief reinforces a shift in the brain’s wiring. Your brain can rework itself into a locked stress response that’ll require you to work through these changes to reverse the adverse effects.
To promote healthy rewiring, you’ll need to work on strengthening your mind’s responses to grief. There’s a wide range of activities you can do to promote therapeutic healing, including reading books about grief. Some ways that you can start reversing the effects of grief-related changes to your mind and personality are:
These are all therapeutic exercises in grief healing known as grief work. In time, the cumulative effect of each activity you undertake will help you heal from grief.
Eirene: a modern approach to cremation
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How Treatments Affect The Brains Of People With Ptsd
Some studies show that psychotherapies which include repeated exposure to trauma cues can enhance the ability of the PFC to assign less threatening or more positive meanings to trauma-related events. Antidepressants seem to have a similar effect. Mindfulness interventions lasting 10 to 12 weeks have been shown to decrease amygdala volume and increase the connectivity between the amygdala and PFC. Mindfulness seems to make the amygdala less reactive and the PFC more able to calm down the threat response. But some people with PTSD may have difficulty tolerating being mindful or confronting their trauma actively. Avoidance is a hallmark of PTSD and some patients may need more support and relationship-building before they are ready to face their distressing feelings.
Unable To Carry On After Loss
When you’ve become so overcome with grief after a loss, and you’re unable to carry on, your bereavement can turn into a chronic grief condition. When members in a family are all mourning the same loss, you may be unable to turn to them for support as you might expect.
Not having an outlet for the expression of your grief can make moving forward may seem impossible. Many people experience this adverse reaction to distress and may need to seek outside professional help. An experienced grief counselor or therapist may help you figure out how to manage and heal from your grief in a healthy way.
» Did you know?
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Prolonged Or Complicated Grief
Approximately 10% of the population experiences a prolonged, impairing reaction when they are grieving. This is called prolonged or complicated grief. This type of grief reaction is sometimes a combination of posttraumatic stress reactions and separation distress. It can include:
- Yearning or longing for the deceased
- A feeling that life is unbearable
- Preoccupation with or difficulty accepting the death
- Intrusive, disturbing images, a sense of hopelessness
- A wish to die to join the deceased
- Avoidance of reminders of the death
The person may feel guilty about their behavior toward the deceased in life, or for living when the deceased person is not. They may feel that they caused or contributed to the death, that they should have prevented the death or that they should have been the one who died.
Complicated grief can be accompanied by:
- Emotional numbness
- Feeling the future is cut short
- Retreat from others
- Anger and guilt over not having more typical grief reactions
If these reactions linger for months, cause significant distress or interfere with functioning, mental health treatment can help.
Writing Through Grief Brain
Having your experience validated is freeing, isnt it? Its why I speak about my own early grief so often its important to hear these stories. When I talk with people, one of the things that brings the most relief is letting them know theyre normal.
One of the most powerful parts of the Writing Your Grief e-course is seeing how many people are experiencing the same things you are. Being able to say whats true for you, and have other people say, me too! somehow makes grief easier to bear.
If youd like to be part of a community like that, please join the next session of the Writing Your Grief course. Theres always room for you.
How about you? Have you felt like youve lost your mind? How has grief changed the way your mind works? Let us know in the comments. I love to hear from you.
Its OK That Youre Not Ok isnt your typical book on loss. Its a whole new way to look at grief and love. And its available to order now.
You can download a free sample chapter now by subscribing here.
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Effects Of Grief On The Brain
While many people associate grief with a loss or death, thats not always the case. People can also grieve when adjusting to any sort of new normal. Maybe youre becoming an empty nester, or youre newly retired, says , a neuropsychologist at Henry Ford Health. The emotions you experience look similar to grief and underneath that grief are neurological changes that take place in the brain.
In fact, several regions of the brain play a role in emotion, including areas within the limbic system and pre-frontal cortex. These involve emotional regulation, memory, multi-tasking, organization and learning. When youre grieving, a flood of neurochemicals and hormones dance around in your head. There can be a disruption in hormones that results in specific symptoms, such as disturbed sleep, loss of appetite, fatigue and anxiety, says Dr. Phillips.
When those symptoms converge, your brain function takes a hit. After all, if youre overwhelmed with grief, it stands to reason that you wont absorb your environment the same way you would when youre content.