When you go through an event that results in grief, the experience can trigger your fight or flight response. The brain perceives this type of experience as a threat to your survival. Your blood pressure increases, your heart rate becomes elevated, your breathing gets more rapid.
Hormones are released that alter your immune response, sleep, heart functioning, memory, and cognition. You may feel a brain fog that is sometimes called grief brain.
Grief and the Grieving Process
When you’re connected to something or someone of significance, a part of your identity intertwines with them. Losing them creates this void and pushes you to re-assess your sense of who you are.
The reason your identity is linked in that manner is because your brain makes the two parts into one. When a loss occurs, your brain also goes through the separation. It fuels the grieving process until healed on its own.
With that said, grieving is considered to be the process of adapting to this thing or person missing from your life. Grief, on the other hand, is the emotional part that becomes disruptive. It’s typically temporary and comes in waves, causing symptoms in its wake.
Emotions Involved with Grief
The waves that come with grief can include intense emotions that many people are simply not prepared to deal with. The loss can invoke sadness, anger, fear, panic, longing, and a journey through the what-ifs.
As you move through the stages, you may find yourself confused about what your reality is and how to move forward. What you may not realize is the impact it can have on your concentration and cognition.
How Grief Affects the Brain
When a wave of grief hits you, there are multiple brain functions that can be affected. Your ability to reason with peers, recall memories, regulate breathing or heart rate, and experience pain may all be impacted.
The chronic stress that’s placed on your brain from the grief can cause stress hormone release and reduced blood flow to the areas of your brain that are in charge of executive functioning. As your limbic system (which controls survival mode) takes charge, your prefrontal cortex becomes less active. This can affect your decision making abilities.
As you move through the grief process, you may find difficulty with attention, memory, language skills, and information processing. You may also experience difficulty or a change in cognitive processes that control physical movement and depth perception.
Prolonged Grief and Mental Health
The more intense your grief is and the more you struggle to cope or heal, the more of an impact it can have on the brain. When you struggle with the burden of grief you are less resilient at adapting to the after-effect of the loss, you have a higher chance of developing depression and emotional instability.
Chronic grief can also lead to developing PTSD or panic disorders. Each of these additional mental health conditions can compound the cognitive processes that you may experience.
Are These Symptoms Permanent?
For most people who are struggling with grief, whether typical or complicated/chronic, the changes that go on in the brain are temporary. The human brain is a complex and resilient thing. Rewiring your brain over time can help it heal and rebalance itself.
Coping mechanisms can help give the brain some solace during this process. Exercise, meditation, journaling, and creative outlets can help you heal. Attending support groups or therapeutic services for cognitive behavioral therapy are also helpful options.
Are you currently struggling with grief of your own? You’re not alone. Grief doesn’t have to remain stagnant. Contact us to help you along your journey of healing through group therapy for grief.
