Why Do Humans Grieve?

My guest is Mary-Frances O'Connor.

Mary-Francis is a professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Arizona and is the Director of the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab, where she and her colleagues are creating new frameworks for understanding grief and the grieving process; and her book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss is the topic of this episode.

On the show, we discuss...

• Her work at the lab and what she is learning about grief
• What happens to the brain when someone is experiencing grief
• Defining complicated grief
• An update on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief model
• How grief is prolonged
• We discuss the mortality rates for those who fail to adapt to loss
• General loss, death isn't the only loss type we grieve; it can be a job, an identity, or anything we are attached to
• How lost loved ones really stay with us, outside of any mystical experience

For show notes and more, visit www.larryweeks.com