The Behavioural Science of Grief
Exploring grief from the lens of the COM-B model
As an applied behavioural scientist, I think a lot about how I can combine my interest in untangling the complexities of grief with my fascination with the field of behavioural science. Not only is it easier than I once thought, it has provided an insight into aspects of my grief that I had never known existed.
The field of behavioural science tries to make sense of human behaviour. And human behaviour is messy, multifaceted, and complicated. Grief is also messy. It is this swirling, dynamic and chaotic mass of feeling and emotion that colours your days, weeks, and months to different degrees. Sometimes it is predictable, and other times it is entirely unpredictable. It also pushes you to the limits of human understanding. How can you make sense of the fact that one minute someone you love can be alive and breathing, and the next minute they are not? That is too much for the brain to comprehend. And that’s a bit like human behaviour in general. We can’t (and won’t ever) make complete sense of it.
What happens when we use the tools we have to understand the complexities of behaviour to help us understand the complexities of grief?
That’s not to say that we don’t try. The fields of behavioural science (and its closely related disciplines) have adopted and developed several tools to help us understand human behaviour. These tools all help us in our attempts to change behaviour and design things that work better for people.
So, what happens when we put the two together? What happens when we use the tools we have to understand the complexities of behaviour to help us understand the complexities of grief?
I have chosen the COM-B model to begin this foray into the behavioural science and grief combo.
The COM-B model helps us ‘diagnose’ why a specific behaviour is or isn’t occurring. You can use it to categorise behavioural barriers (and facilitators) into whether they relate to our Capability, Opportunity, or Motivation. Determining these features allows us to create specific targets for change.
While I am not looking for specific targets for change (and nor is grief a simple ‘behaviour’), a ‘framework’ like COM-B provides a common language from which I can structure an exploration into the black box that is grief.
The COM-B ‘diagnosis’
The behaviour: To grieve/ to express grief
Step 1: Specifying a behaviour:
If I were conducting a behavioural diagnosis on myself, I would need to define what ‘grief’ means in behavioural terms. But grief can — and does- mean many things. For me (having lost my mum when I was 20), it means crying, wearing Mum’s perfume before important meetings, or eating croissants with butter and marmite (one of Mum’s favourite treats). It also can translate to feeling oversensitive, waking up with an anxious feeling in my tummy, or wanting to hibernate in my room and conserve my energy.
Let’s be quite high level with it and imagine ‘to grieve’ is a singular behaviour.
There are multiple ways in which I manifest my grief. And these ways are temporal and unique. It’s hard to capture completely. And it also can’t be narrowed down into a simple behaviour. Perhaps these are better termed as ‘expressions’ of grief, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s be quite high level with it and imagine ‘to grieve’ is a singular behaviour.
Once we have defined the behaviour (and in this instance, I am being very high level with it and non-specific), we can try and unpick grief. I want to flag that I have used the COM-B model very flexibly. At some points, I use it to ‘diagnose’ my grief and the wider impact it has had, and other times I use it to provide ‘interventions’ to my grief. Also, as with any ‘behavioural diagnosis,’ it will be different for everyone, but part of having more open conversations about grief is learning about its various manifestations. This is just a mini guide to my grief to try and take away some of the mystery surrounding it.
Step 2: Evaluating Capability
Capability refers to your physical and psychological capability to carry out a behaviour. Physical capability refers to physical skill, strength or stamina. Psychological capability refers to knowledge or psychological skills.
Physical capability
Tiredness:
- Grief is exhausting. It’s tiring having to miss someone all the time. It’s tiring having to self-soothe and try and feel better. It’s also tiring having to navigate life without that important person to help.
- If I am tired, I am more prone to crying, and everything feels worse. I have no energy to rationalise my emotions. I focus on small things and overthink them (a classic symptom for me of grief). And also, I just miss Mum more. Which makes me sadder and more tired.
Crying:
- I see crying as ‘classic grief. The grief you see on TV. The thing you think of when you hear the word grief. When I cry, I feel so connected with my feelings because what I am feeling inside is manifested on the outside.
- At the beginning, I found it really hard to connect with my emotions. I would go running nearly every day to trick my body into crying. The rapid breaths after a sprint mimic those accompanying a huge cry.
- There are different types of crying (little eye water, huge sob, momentary burst etc.). But it is a release of emotion that makes me feel calm afterwards (if a little tired).
Psychological capability
For me, the knowledge aspect of psychological capability relates to the specific knowledge of your own grief that gives control and some certainty (in very uncertain conditions). When Mum first died, I had absolutely no idea what grief meant. After five and a bit years, I have a slightly better idea of the ‘facts’ of my grief and where I have benefited from learning more about myself (and increasing that psychological capability…).
Here are some of the ‘facts’ of my grief:
- It’s up and down. When I am down, I know I am due an up. Overthinking the down just intensifies it.
- It would be impossible to forget Mum — so I don’t need to worry about that
- Being sad and crying isn’t a bad thing (it’s a really necessary and important thing)
- Grief isn’t something to solve… it’s something to make space for
- Grief (and expressions of sadness) come in many different shapes and sizes (sometimes it’s a huge cry, or it’s wearing Mum’s dressing gown, or writing a blog, or having a coffee and a croissant…these are all ways of feeling close to Mum).
- Everything feels better after a cry
- There is no such thing as ‘grieving well’
Here are some of the areas that have benefited from an increase in ‘psychological capability’:
Emotions:
- Grief changes the contours of your emotions. You almost have to re-learn how you feel after someone you love dies. Happy feelings become a bit more complicated, sad feelings become vaster… and all the feelings in between become more nuanced. Learning about my emotions — and finding the words to describe them — gives me a sense of control over what I am feeling.
How to feel close to my Mum:
- It’s been helpful to find ways I feel connected to Mum. Be it through food (for me, croissants with marmite and butter), perfume, books, photos, quiet moments or TV shows (my Mum LOVED ‘The Good Wife’ and it’s been comforting watching it knowing Mum’s watched it too).
- Trying to find little ways to feel close to Mum and acknowledging her presence in my day-to-day life gives me somewhere to put a little of the love I feel for her and the time I want to give her. It’s disconcerting to go around as if I never had a Mum.
How grief manifests in my body:
Another quirk of grief is it manifests in ways less obvious than ‘crying’. Here are some of the ways it does (and has done) this for me:
- Waking up with an anxious feeling in my tummy is a sign that something is amiss (sometimes it’s the result of a dream about Mum or because I have been pushing my feelings aside for too many days, and other times I have no idea where it came from but it’s there and waiting for me).
- Feeling oversensitive about something someone said
- Overthinking something I or someone else did
- Feeling tired (a nice link to physical capability)
- Feeling run down
- A few months before Mum died and in the months afterwards, I had this weird red, dry skin rash around my eye. I think it came from severe stress.
Everything feels a bit out of control after someone you love dies, so you need to find some certainties (even if those certainties are all an illusion).
Overall, an exploration of capability has prompted a lot of reflection on what I know to be true about my grief. These ‘truths’ are constantly evolving (and you could argue they are ‘beliefs’ rather than objective facts). However, ‘truths’ and ‘facts’ feels a more robust way to conceptualise these understandings. Everything feels a bit out of control after someone you love dies, so you need to find some certainties (even if those certainties are all an illusion).
Step 3: Understanding Opportunity
Opportunity refers to the environment with which people interact, whether it be the physical environment or the social environment. Physical opportunity refers to the opportunities the environment provides, like time, location, and resources. Social opportunity refers to opportunities as a result of social factors such as cultural norms and social cues.
Physical opportunity
Time:
- If I am busy and distracted, the feelings build and need a release. I always try to keep an evening free in my week for quiet time because too many evening plans mean less time to check in with myself and hold a space for any funny feelings lurking.
- My understanding of grief has evolved with time. At first, I saw it as something to avoid (like a battle of good versus evil), but now I see it as something that I need to make space for (and it is a link to Mum, so I don’t want to ignore it).
Location:
Different locations are filled with different Mum memories. Sometimes they can be a source of sadness, and other times a source of comfort.
- For the gut-wrenching cries I have come to crave, I need to know no one else can hear me. It’s such a private moment. It’s me sitting with my grief for Mum. I need everyone else in the flat to be out so I can wail and cry to my heart’s content.
- Different locations are filled with different Mum memories. Sometimes they can be a source of sadness, and other times a source of comfort.
Social opportunity
There are opportunities to express and manifest grief in different social settings. Using the words ‘feeling griefy’ has been a helpful way to describe how I feel in a more ‘socially appropriate manner. It lets me feel more authentic about the feelings I am having.
Work:
- Grief doesn’t get left at home. When is it socially acceptable to express and talk about grief at work? Is staying in bed all day, feeling sick with longing for my Mum, a legitimate excuse to miss work?
Family:
- It is hard to grieve as a family because when you see the people you love expressing emotion, it reflects an uncomfortable reality.
- If I haven’t found the time (e.g. physical opportunity) to check in with my emotions and restore my energy levels, I find it hard to give energy to my Dad and my brothers.
Friends:
- Friends can be the most wonderful distraction from the heaviness of grief.
- My Mum died when I was 20 — when few (if any) other friends had experienced such intense grief. It was hard for my friends to know what to do. We don’t have enough language around grief (and it can be awkward). I appreciated messages that didn’t ask much from me. Like ‘sending love’ and ‘thinking of you.’ I also appreciated being able to engage in normal 20-year-old conversation. Some friends thought talking about boyfriend troubles insulted the gravity of what had just happened to me. But I craved normal chat. I wanted to be the ‘me’ that could give advice and still have moments of normality.
Grief can feel so raw and untameable. It’s hard to believe that certain environments and people can temper it. But they do.
As a result of exploring the influence ‘opportunity’ has on my grief, I was struck by how impacted it is by the people and places around me (which as a behavioural scientist shouldn’t be a surprise!). At times, grief can feel so raw and untameable, so it is hard to believe that certain environments and people can temper it. But they do. In some environments, with certain people and at certain times, the grief is free flowing. In other environments, it can be much harder to access. I suppose it is further proof of the power of the forces around us.
Step 4. Exploring Motivation
Motivation refers to the internal processes which influence our decision-making and behaviours. The two components of motivation are automatic motivation and reflective motivation. Automatic motivation relates to things such as our desires, impulses, and inhibitions. Reflective motivation relates to our self-identity, planning and beliefs about change.
Grief interferes with every emotion you’ve ever known to output something you aren’t always expecting.
Automatic motivation
Emotions:
- Grief interferes with every emotion you’ve ever known to output something you aren’t always expecting. It changes the contours of your emotional landscape. Happiness becomes tinged with an ache of longing. Sadness sits slightly differently than it did before. My stress tolerance has increased (until the point it spills over more suddenly than I expected).
- Grief is a ‘new’ emotion to feel. It is less familiar to me than the well-experienced variations of happiness I can identify and make sense of.
Desires:
- Grief can change our desire for love, life, exercise, food, sleep, books…for everything. This change can be a bit distorting. In the months after Mum died, it wasn’t always reflective of whether I desired something (it was more that I wanted a distraction).
Impulses:
- I was more argumentative with my Dad after Mum died. I would react quickly and unthinkingly to small interactions. I would view everything he said with a romanticised lens of ‘mum would have understood this more’ or ‘mum would have known what I needed without me even having to say anything.’ I am much better now at understanding the root of my reactions.
Reflective Motivation
Grief threatened [my identity as a happy person], and it took some time to accept that I could be both happy and sad.
Self-identity:
- After Mum died, I resisted sadness because I didn’t want it to mean I was a ‘sad person.’ I would have described myself as generally happy and optimistic. Grief threatened this identity, and it took some time to accept that I could be both happy and sad. Each doesn’t cancel out the other (this also taps into a growing understanding of how multifaceted we are and how we contain multiple identities).
Planning:
- I like to anticipate when I might feel griefy. It gives me a sense of control. It lets me do the equivalent of bringing an umbrella outside if I know it’s going to rain. For example, I know Christmas is a very emotionally draining time. In the days before going back home, I’ll try to avoid late nights and alcohol or anything that will leave me feeling more vulnerable than I already am.
- Knowing when I might ‘feel griefy’ (and planning for it) also means I overthink the feelings less when they happen.
Exploring the impact of grief on ‘motivation’ has emphasised the far reaching consequences it has had on me as a person. It has changed my emotional landscape and altered my understanding of who I am and how I work. But in some ways this understanding makes me more sympathetic toward myself. I can more clearly see that if one thing is not feeling quite right (e.g. my mood) the effects can trickle into a whole range of my other motivational drives (for example my desires, and impulses). No wonder I sometimes just want to lie in bed and watch trashy TV, with some tea and chocolate when I’m feeling a bit griefy.
Conclusion
Typically, after a COM-B diagnosis, you might plan an intervention to target some of the ‘key’ behavioural influences identified. However, this isn’t a typical COM-B diagnosis (and also isn’t how grief works). Instead, the value of this process has been in structuring exploration into what can be a very mysterious ‘black box’ experience. The COM-B model has prompted thinking on different aspects of my grief that I might not have considered otherwise. Like the influence time and location have on me, or the distorting effect grief can have on my desires and impulses. I hope that in using the COM-B model, I have provided an insight into my experience of grief in a digestible and translatable way. Perhaps reading this has also prompted thinking about how you could apply COM-B in your own life.
What I have learnt about grief is that… my power comes from understanding the experience.
What I have learnt about grief is that while I can’t avoid the deep feelings of loss and the huge ache of longing I have for my Mum, my power comes from understanding the experience. Finding words for emotions and ways to understand the moments where I lose control. Who knew that COM-B could help do this?
I have a podcast on ‘Feeling Griefy’ where I explore the minutiae of grief further. You can listen to it here: https://linktr.ee/feelinggriefy
I would also love to hear any thoughts, reflections (and potential additions!) you have. Please connect with me on LinkedIn or email me here.
