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Quick takeaways
- Grief involves re-mapping our understanding of the relationship with our lost loved ones while maintaining a strong emotional connection.
- Navigating grief requires setting aside dedicated time to deeply feel the intensity of our attachment without engaging in counterfactual thinking.
- Adapting to grief involves maintaining the emotional bond while uncoupling it from the spatial and temporal representation of the loss.
- Visualizing the attachment without its spatial and temporal representation can help in moving through grief, similar to how visual perception alleviates phantom limb pain.
- Understanding the neurochemical differences, such as heightened levels of oxytocin receptors, can promote compassion and understanding for individuals navigating grief with varying intensities of attachment.
Deep dives
Understanding the Complexity of Grief
Grief is a natural and often mystifying emotion that most people experience at some point in their lives. It is a process that involves deep emotional attachment to someone or something that is no longer with us. Grief is not simply about sadness but also a longing and desire for what is no longer accessible. The brain maps our relationships with people, animals, and things in three dimensions: space, time, and closeness. These dimensions form the basis of our deep bonds and attachment, and when we lose someone, we need to re-map our understanding of our relationship with them. Navigating grief requires acknowledging and maintaining the intensity of our attachment while simultaneously reorienting our thoughts and feelings about the person or thing in terms of space and time.
Tools for Navigating Grief
Moving through grief involves understanding and accepting the intensity of our attachment to the person or thing we have lost. It is important to recognize that our attachment is real and valuable. We must also acknowledge that our memories and expectations of that person or thing are based on past experiences and may not apply to our current reality. One tool for navigating grief is to set aside dedicated time to feel deeply into our attachment without engaging in counterfactual thinking. Counterfactual thinking involves dwelling on 'what if' scenarios and can lead to guilt. During this dedicated time, we should focus on the intensity of our attachment while remaining grounded in the present moment and our immediate physical environment.
The Complexity of Grief and Attachment
Grief and attachment are closely intertwined in our brain and body. Uncoupling our attachment from the dimensions of space and time is a challenging but necessary part of the grieving process. It is normal for our minds to generate expectations and illusions of our lost loved ones being present, even when we logically know they are not. This confusion arises due to the deep attachment and catalog of memories we have with them. By actively engaging in the process of reorienting our thoughts and feelings about our attachment, while maintaining its intensity, we can move through grief in a healthier way.
Finding Balance in Grief
Moving through grief requires finding a balance between acknowledging the depth of our attachment and reordering our understanding of that attachment. It is normal for our minds to generate expectations and illusions of our lost loved ones being present, even when we logically know they are not. The process of grief involves reorienting our thoughts and feelings about our attachment, focusing on the present moment, and maintaining a connection to our immediate physical environment. It is a process that takes time, effort, and self-compassion.
Phantom Limb Analogy: Grief and Phantom Limb
Grief is compared to phantom limb sensation where amputees still feel the presence of the limb that is no longer there. Just as amputees can have pain and sensations in the phantom limb, grieving individuals can experience intrusive emotions and thoughts about the deceased person. Experiments with mirror boxes have shown that visual perception can alleviate phantom limb pain, suggesting that visualizing the attachment without the spatial and temporal representation can help in moving through grief.
Uncoupling Attachment from Space and Time
The process of adapting to grief involves maintaining the emotional bond while uncoupling it from the space and time representation of the person or thing that is lost. Beliefs about where the person or thing is currently located vary among individuals, and it depends on personal beliefs and religious views. Placing expectations in the new configuration of the person or thing within the three-dimensional map of space, time, and attachment is crucial in navigating grief adaptively.
Oxytocin and Intense Grief
The hormone oxytocin plays a role in bonding and attachment. Studies with prairie voles, both monogamous and non-monogamous, suggest that oxytocin receptors are more prominent in monogamous voles, reflecting higher levels of attachment. Similarly, individuals experiencing intense grief and yearning for the lost person or thing often have heightened levels of oxytocin receptors in brain regions associated with motivational and emotional processing. Understanding these neurochemical differences can help promote compassion and understanding for individuals navigating grief with different intensities of attachment.
Embracing the attachment accelerates the transition through grief
Some individuals who have a high degree of vagal tone, which reflects the ability to modulate one's state using their breathing and body, seem to benefit more from writing exercises that involve accessing and experiencing the deep emotional attachment to a lost loved one. This suggests that allowing ourselves to truly feel the attachment can support adaptive transition through grief. Accessing emotional states through writing or thinking about the attachment is powerful in engaging the bodily and mind states associated with the attachment. People with higher vagal tone can more effectively use this practice to distance themselves from the episodic memories and expectations associated with the attachment.
Tools for healthy grieving and moving through grief
When experiencing grief, it is valuable to dedicate time for rational grieving, which involves clear acceptance of the new reality and anchoring to the depth and intensity of the attachment. Additionally, quality sleep and tools to regulate stress, such as mindful breathing exercises to build vagal tone, can be beneficial. Neuroplasticity, the rewiring of connections, occurs during deep sleep and non-sleep deep rest (NSDR). Engaging in practices like writing exercises can trigger neuroplasticity and support adaptive grieving. It is important to seek support from trained professionals to navigate grief effectively.
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This episode, I discuss grief and the challenges of processing losses of different kinds. I explain the biological mechanisms of grief, including how neural circuits for emotional and factual memory combine with those for love and attachment, to create feelings of absence and yearning. I discuss how grief is distinct from depression, yet why they can feel so similar. I also provide science-based tools to assist with the grieving process, including how to reframe and remap the relationship with those we have lost while still maintaining a strong emotional connection to them. I also explain the importance of having and building strong foundational psychological and biological states so that we can better cope with grief when it happens. Finally, I describe tools to adjust those states, including those for accessing sleep, managing stress and emotional swings. This episode is for those suffering from grief but also for everyone, given that we all experience grief at some point in our lives.
We recorded this episode before the recent mass shooting tragedies in the United States. While we hope the information in this episode will be of use to anyone suffering from grief of any kind and at any time, we are also careful to acknowledge that many people require additional support and resources. For that reason, we include mention of such resources and we generally hope people will access them if needed.
For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com.
Thank you to our sponsors
AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman
LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman
Supplements from Momentous
https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman
Timestamps
(00:00:00) Grief & Bereavement
(00:04:02) Sponsors: AG1, LMNT
(00:08:35) Grief vs. Depression, Complicated Grief
(00:12:20) Stages of Grief, Individual Variation for Grieving
(00:16:05) Grief: Lack & Motivation, Dopamine
(00:23:15) Three Dimensions of Relationships
(00:29:52) Tool: Remapping Relationships
(00:37:15) Grief, Maintaining Emotional Closeness & Remapping
(00:44:40) Memories of Loved Ones & Remapping Attachments
(00:48:04) Yearning for Loved Ones: Memories vs. Reality, Episodic Memory
(00:51:40) Tools: Adaptively Processing Grief, Counterfactual Thinking, Phantom Limbs
(01:00:32) Tool: Remembering Emotional Connection & Processing Grief
(01:04:03) Memories, Hippocampal Trace Cells & Feeling An Absence
(01:10:14) Yearning & Oxytocin, Individualized Grief Cycles
(01:18:24) Tool: Complicated Grief & Adrenaline (Epinephrine)
(01:24:37) Sentimental Attachment to Objects
(01:26:13) Why do Some People Grieve More Quickly? Individual Attachment Capacity
(01:29:42) “Vagal Tone,” Heart Rate, Breathwork & Grief Recovery
(01:42:32) Complicated Grief & Cortisol Patterns
(01:48:50) Tool: Improving Sleep & Grieving
(01:54:28) Tools: Grief Processing & Adaptive Recovery
(02:03:36) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube Feedback, Spotify & Apple Reviews, Sponsors, Momentous Supplements, Instagram, Twitter, Neural Network Newsletter
Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac
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