The Science of Sorrow: Exploring the Neuroscience of Grief
This week I got a call from home that I had been dreading — my sweet Grandma Kay, whose health had been failing, took a rapid turn for the worse. She was not expected to pull through this time. As quickly as I could, I cancelled my business trip I was supposed to start that day, and instead booked the next flight home. I rented a car and fought traffic to get to the hospital as quickly as possible, having a few emotional meltdowns as I sat stalled on the freeway. Thankfully, I got there in time to say goodbye and send my grandma off alongside the rest of my cousins. She passed away peacefully while I held her hand, surrounded by those who loved her.
In the days that followed, I stayed with my family to help with arrangements and to just grieve with them. During this time, I noticed how differently each member of my immediate family handled the loss. It opened my eyes to the complexity of grief and mourning, and (probably a manifestation of my own coping strategies) got me wondering about the neuroscience of how we heal after losing someone we love dearly.
Understanding What Grief Even Is (and Why We Experience It the Way We Do)
As you likely already know, grief is a complex emotional response that arises from the loss of someone or something significant to us. It encompasses a wide range of feelings, from deep sadness to extreme anger, and the process of grieving is very different from person to person (and experience to experience). In essence, grief is not all that different from our other emotions — each instance is totally unique, yet our brain focuses on similarities to help establish a pattern that allows us to predict and respond to (or avoid) similar future situations more accurately. But why does grief hit us so much harder?
Evolutionarily speaking, the intensity of grief is thought to play an important role in embedding stronger social and emotional bonds between individuals and their surrounding community. The intense emotional experiences we go through during mourning serve to reinforce the significance of our surviving social connections, enhancing group cohesion and mutual support during our vulnerable period of loss. This can be seen as an evolutionary advantage, driving us to maintain strong social connectivity that improves survival rates of individuals within a community.
So even though the pain of grief is deeply unpleasant, it encourages behaviors that foster collective security and empathy, increasing the long-term well-being of people as a group.
Grief Has a Thousand Faces (Actually, It’s Probably a Lot More Than That)
Although I have limited experience in other people’s family dynamics, I’d say that my family is pretty close-knit. Despite living halfway across the country, I still chat with family regularly across a bunch of different group texts and social apps, and I talk to my mom on the phone at least once a week. We usually get together for a few extended in-person visits every year, celebrate holidays together, and share dozens of inside jokes that make all of us crack up no matter how far apart we might be when we tell them (usually for the three-hundredth time). Despite our closeness and our similarities, over this past week I recognized that we all express our grief very differently.
My mom, ever the logistics expert, ensured that everyone was kept informed of the latest news and that necessary arrangements were handled smoothly and efficiently. My dad kept calm and collected, distracting himself with work and household chores. My brother and I also tended to distract ourselves in various ways, taking breaks to share stories or express emotions to each other here and there. But on the phone with my mom on the chaotic journey to the hospital, I went through just about every stage of grief Elisabeth Kübler-Ross ever thought of and more (for my non-psychology major readers, she coined the famous stages of grief — Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Despair, and Acceptance, often somewhat unpoetically referred to as DABDA). And yesterday, when I’d completed all my work tasks and found myself with nothing to do for the first time since my grandma died, I went for a “quick walk” that turned out to be a 6-mile hike across town and back.
How can a family that shares so many similarities express the same emotion in so many different ways? For that matter, how could I — just a single person — have so many twists and turns in my own grief experiences?
Grief is shaped by a lot of different contributing factors that make each instance unique from other reactions we have after a loss. As an emotion, it is affected by physiological elements — things like genetics, neurotransmitter activity, and neurodevelopment — as well as perceptual elements, like our past experiences, personality traits, and social/environmental context. There are layers of subjectivity, from our personal connection to the person we lost to how stressed we have felt in the days or weeks leading up to the loss. Just as with any other emotional expression, our prefrontal cortex is responsible for regulating our behaviors and responses, but if it is depleted (through sleep deprivation, sensory overwhelm, or high cognitive load), it might not be a match for our strong feelings, and all our emotions may run much hotter than they normally would. And cultural norms around death and loss may further cloud the waters, influencing our perceptions and beliefs about how we should be grieving.
Social Support and Coping Mechanisms
I mentioned earlier that many evolutionary psychologists believe that grief serves as a device that makes us seek out and strengthen social bonds. This helps us to more effectively address the losses faced by the group when it loses a member, leading to long-term adaptation. So it probably comes as no surprise that one of the most common ways that humans cope with grief is to lean on the social support of their surrounding community. We are compelled to share our memories of our lost loved ones with others (or write articles about them). And even those of us who aren’t experiencing grief often have a strong drive to offer support to those we know are mourning a loss; I can attest to the calls, texts, emails, flowers, and homemade dinners that our family received this week from each of our respective social circles.
Although we are potentially hard-wired to rely on social connection as a way to process grief, it is by no means the only coping mechanism that we use to lessen the intensity of mourning. A basic and near universal response to grief is crying, which is our body’s automatic means of reducing emotional intensity and activating our parasympathetic response (the “rest and digest” counterpart to our sympathetic “fight or flight” response). Crying also releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, which naturally soothes pain and promotes a sense of well-being. Physical exercise (which doesn’t have to be as intense as an impromptu six-mile walk across your hometown) is a common coping response that helps process feelings of sadness by releasing endorphins and regulating neurotransmitter activity that results in improved mood. Spiritual comforts, like attending a church service or consulting with a faith leader, often provide a sense of calm aligned with our cultural beliefs about death.
Unfortunately, not all coping strategies are adaptive in the long term. In exhausted and overwhelmed states, it is common for our brains to engage in short term behaviors that offer temporary but immediate relief. These might include things like distraction through work (guilty) and other chores or tasks that take our minds off our grief (bonus points if you don’t just start, but actually complete these distracting tasks, because that helps release dopamine that boosts feelings of pleasure and reward). Unfortunately, we also seek that dopamine boost through less healthy means, like escaping into video games, binge watching our favorite shows, or overindulging in comfort food or alcohol. While things like distraction and avoidance can offer quick, temporary relief from negative emotions, they are less ideal to rely upon as primary coping strategies because they don’t address the underlying losses that are driving the grief, and investing too much time in these short-term relief strategies can delay the emotional processing necessary for long-term adaptation to the loss.
Bringing It All Together
By sharing my journey through grief this past week, I hope I have helped you all uncover some of the deeply intricate ways in which our brains manage the heartache of loss. Grief, with its myriad expressions, mirrors the vast complexity of human emotions and the profound impact of our social connections. Each story of grief, whether it’s filled with tears, laughter, silence, or distraction, underscores a universal truth: grief molds our emotional and social resilience, strengthening bonds and fostering collective recovery.
Digging Deeper
For those looking to explore the neuroscience of grief further, I highly recommend diving into works that discuss the psychological and physiological underpinnings of emotional responses. “The Other Side of Sadness” by George Bonanno provides a deep dive into what happens inside our brains when we grieve and how we recover. For a scientific angle, exploring research articles about grief in journals like ‘Psychoneuroendocrinology’ can provide insights into how our bodies chemically respond to the psychological stress of losing someone close.
Call to Action
As my family and I continue to navigate our paths through loss and recovery, I encourage you to share your own experiences and strategies for coping with grief. Whether it’s through writing, community support, or personal reflection, finding ways to process our grief is crucial. Let’s use this space to exchange ideas and support each other in these challenging times. Join the conversation by sharing this article, commenting with your thoughts, or reaching out for support. Together, we can redefine the journey through grief with compassion and understanding.
This article is dedicated to my Grandma Kay, who was always so supportive and proud of my journey to become your friendly neighborhood neuroscientist. She came to every single graduation I had (there were a lot of them), and even though graduation ceremonies might be the most boring events known to man, she was always a bright beacon of joy and enthusiasm — I could always hear her cheers and her laughter above the crowd. She taught me how to fry chicken and make homemade fudge; I taught her how to text and post on Facebook. She was a beautiful human being and she will be deeply missed, not just by me, but by the countless people who knew and loved her.
