When Someone We Love Dies, What Happens to Our Brain?

 COVID-19 has killed over 167,000 Americans. They are all Fathers, Mothers, Grand Parents, Sisters Brothers, Children, and just people’s good friends. When someone close to you dies, it has a profound affect on your brain. Scientists are increasingly viewing this loss as a type of brain injury with the brain rewiring itself to respond to emotional trauma.

Each day that you are reminded of the person’s death, you may be triggering a stress response in your body. There are people who have a pronounced response to the death of a loved one which is called complicated grief. It strikes about 10% of mourners who are intensely grieving their loss. A study published in 2018 in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychology found over 7 years the people with complicated grief had a greater level of cognitive decline than those who had a lower grief response.

Grieving is considered a protective process. You might be asking yourself how is it protective? The answer is that it helps you survive this intense emotional trauma that is happening to your brain and body. 

When a Jewish person dies, the family mourns for 3 to 7 days in a process called sitting Shiva. Friends and relatives come to visit during the time and the talk tends to be about the good memories of the person. Afterwards, the mourner may wind up going to pray twice a day for a year for that person.

An Irish Wake is a time of celebration of the person’s life. A wake is a scene of both sadness and joy as the end of that person’s life is marked while the person’s life is remembered and treasured.

Both of these approaches are examples of how different cultures mourning processes are attempting to rewire the brain back to the positive side. Since the person’s death can be a brain injury to the survivors, it can take time for the person to heal.

There are ways you can speed up the healing process by using meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and even massage. A study published in 2019 of 23 bereaved people in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that participating in an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy improved the grieving person’s functioning.

So…if COVID-19 has taken a loved one, you need to remember to take care of yourself. You might want to do it for the person that you lost, as they might just be smiling down from the other side at your recovery. (Reported Discover, 2020)