"The
death of a spouse or partner is different than other losses,
in the sense that it literally changes every single thing
in your world going forward. When your spouse dies, the
way you eat changes. The way you watch TV changes. Your
friends circle changes (or disappears entirely). Your
financial status changes, your job situation changes.
It affects your self worth, your self-esteem. Your confidence,
your rhythms. The way you breathe, your mentality, your
brain function.
"Ever
heard the term ‘Widow Brain’ ? If you don’t
know what that is count yourself lucky. This feeling is
thought to be a coping mechanism, where the brain attempts
to shield itself from the pain of a significant trauma
or loss. Your physical body changes, your hobbies and
interests change. Your sense of security, sense of humour
changes. Your sense of womanhood or manhood changes. Every
single thing changes.
"You
are now handed a new life that you never asked for and
that you don’t want. It is the hardest, most gut-wrenching,
horrific, life-altering of things to live with."
Unknown author.
WIDOW
BRAIN
It was a crisp night in June, the sky bright from the light
of the full moon. I stopped at a gas station to fuel up before
heading to the hospital to see my father. Three months after
heart surgery, his newly replaced valve had begun driving
bacteria into his brain, causing multiple strokes. He was
dying.
Standing
at the pump, I thought about how he would never visit our
new home. How we would never dance together again. I paid
for my gas, got back in the car and drove out of the gas station
— with the nozzle still lodged in my tank.
When
I stopped the car, an onlooker who had watched the nozzle
fly out of my car’s gas tank said smugly, “You’re
lucky it snapped off.”
I
was embarrassed, ashamed and, most of all, in despair —
not just because my dad was dying, but also because I was
losing my mind. But I know now I was not alone: Frequently,
humans who have experienced grief can recall incidents in
which their brains seemed to stop functioning.
“The
problem isn’t sorrow; it’s a fog of confusion,
disorientation and delusions of magical thinking,” writes
Lisa Shulman, a neurologist at the University of Maryland
School of Medicine, in a blog post for Johns Hopkins University
Press about her book Before and After Loss: A Neurologist’s
Perspective on Loss, Grief and Our Brain. “The
emotional trauma of loss results in serious changes in brain
function that endure.”
Scientists
are increasingly viewing the experience of traumatic loss
as a type of brain injury. The brain rewires itself —
a process called neuroplasticity — in response to emotional
trauma, which has profound effects on the brain, mind and
body. In her book, Shulman, whose husband died of an aggressive
cancer, describes feeling like she was waking up in an unfamiliar
world where all the rules were scrambled. On several occasions
in the months after her husband’s death, she lost track
of time. Once, after running an errand, she drove to an unfamiliar
place and ended up unsure of where she was or how she got
there. She pulled off the highway and had to use her GPS to
navigate back home.
If
these things can happen to a neurologist who understands brain
biochemistry, what hope was there for me?
THE
GRIEVING BRAIN
After
a loss, the body releases hormones and chemicals reminiscent
of a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. Each
day, reminders of the loss trigger this stress response and
ultimately remodel the brain’s circuitry. The pathways
you relied on for most of your life take some massive, but
mostly temporary, detours and the brain shifts upside down,
prioritizing the most primitive functions. The prefrontal
cortex, the locus of decision-making and control, takes a
backseat, and the limbic system, where our survival instincts
operate, drives the car.
In
an attempt to manage overwhelming thoughts and emotions while
maintaining function, the brain acts as a super-filter to
keep memories and emotions in a tolerable zone or obliterate
them altogether. According to a 2019 study published in Social
Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, grievers minimize
awareness of thoughts related to their loss. The result: heightened
anxiety and an inability to think straight.
As
I watched my dad transform from a brilliant mathematician
who could calculate complex algorithms in his head into a
childlike dependent searching for words he couldn’t
find, I began to feel like I was the one recovering from a
stroke. I fumbled to find words for common objects like lemon
or cantaloupe. There were times when I blanked on my husband’s
phone number and even my own.
According
to Helen Marlo, professor of clinical psychology at Notre
Dame de Namur University in California, that’s not unusual.
People who are grieving may lose their keys several times
a day, forget who they’re calling mid-dial and struggle
to remember good friends’ names.
Research
shows these cognitive effects are more pronounced among people
who have complicated grief, a condition that strikes about
10 percent of bereaved people and is marked by an intense
yearning for the deceased. People with complicated grief experienced
greater cognitive decline over a seven-year study period compared
with those with a less complicated grief response, according
to a 2018 study published in The American Journal of Geriatric
Psychiatry.
As
Marlo explains it, our brains have trouble processing the
reasons for the death of a loved one, even making up explanations
for it. This can lead us down a rabbit hole of ‘what
ifs’ and ‘if onlys,’ particularly if we’re
stuck in our grief. Only over time, and with intention, can
grief provide fertile soil for growth and transformation.
THE
GRIEVING MIND
My
dad always seemed to me almost superhuman — all go,
no quit — and was at his best when he was making people
laugh. He loved pulling a good prank, even dressing up as
a waiter at my wedding rehearsal dinner. Nearly 20 minutes
passed before it dawned on me that the odd server delivering
wine and appetizers was actually my father. He lavished his
grandchildren with tickles, belly kisses and really bad renditions
of Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”
Research
suggests our experience of loss — whether muted or traumatic
— is mediated by relationships, and the life of those
relationships resides in the mind. “Each of us responds
to grief differently, and that response is driven by the relational
patterns that we lay down early in life, as well as the intensity
of the grief,” says Marlo. “So even though regions
of the brain might be firing and wiring the same way after
loss, the way the mind reacts — the ‘feeling’
experience of grief — is unique to the individual.”
What
I hadn’t fully grasped in the early days of my grieving
is that the brain and the mind, while inextricably linked,
are completely separate entities. Like the parts of a car
engine, the two feed off of each other. That’s why my
amygdala (part of the primitive limbic system) sounds an alarm
when I see a grandfather playing with his grandchildren at
the park. It’s because the brain triggers a stress response
attached to my feelings of loss.
“Grieving
is a protective process. It’s an evolutionary adaptation
to help us survive in the face of emotional trauma,”
Shulman writes in her book. The way grief manifests —
from depression to hopelessness, from dissociative symptoms
to emotional pain — is just evidence of altered brain
function. So how do you heal an emotionally traumatized brain?
“You have to embrace the changes that are happening
in the brain instead of thinking you’re losing your
mind,” says Marlo.
FINDING
A WAY FORWARD
As
with any injury, an emotionally traumatized mind requires
a period of recovery and rehabilitation. We don’t return
to our usual activities immediately after heart surgery, yet
somehow we expect to bounce back after the mind scramble of
losing a loved one. “With grief, the mediator between
the right and left hemispheres of the brain — the thinking
and feeling parts — is impaired,” explains Marlo.
“The task is to integrate both, so you’re not
drowning in the feelings without thought as a mediator or
silencing feelings in favour of rational thinking.”
Research
suggests that you can encourage the integration of the right
and left hemispheres with activities from medication to psychotherapy
to massage. A 2019 study of 23 bereaved people published in
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that participating
in an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy improved
the ability to execute complex mental processes, such as working
memory and the ability to curb impulses. Other studies suggest
that traditional cognitive behavioural therapy — which
trains the brain to change thought patterns — helps
foster personal growth among people who are grieving.
“Neuroplasticity
moves in both directions, changing in response to traumatic
loss, and then changing again in response to restorative experience,”
Shulman writes in her book. One way to heal is to reflect
on the relationship with the deceased and work to hold both
the love and the pain.
For
some, that means wrapping themselves in a beloved T-shirt
or quilt, visiting the cemetery, journaling about positive
memories or creating a photo book or video of life with their
loved one. For me, it meant stalking hummingbirds in my backyard;
my dad loved to watch their tireless pursuit of happiness.
In that respect, the birds were just like my dad. When they
flutter around me, I can almost sense his presence.
“Connecting
the loss with behaviours and activities helps the grieving
brain integrate thoughts and feelings,” says Marlo.
“So if your hummingbird-seeking behaviours elicit feel-good
emotions, that can put your grieving mind on a path toward
healing.”
