Post 15: Finding Hope in the Research

My road to studying the neuroscience of grief did not begin as an academic journey. Rex's passing left a crater in my life. As a naturally optimistic, find-the silver-lining gal, I felt like I had no resources to deal with this unending sadness. I put everything on the Lord's side— I surrounded myself with prayer, scripture study, devotionals, LDS conference talks, etc. I felt literally carried like the image in Footsteps in the Sand. Over time, I had evidence to show I could survive this rupture and feel joy in some parts of every day. One year after his death, I enrolled in a BioPsychology class and began to understand how the brain works. It was fascinating to learn about the structure and functions of the brain. Even at that introductory level, neuroscience fascinated me, and I became keenly interested in research and discovery.

I was continually searching for books on grief; I desperately wanted to know how people lived with this deep sorrow. I found an intriguing book called, The Other Side of Sadness, by George Bonanno. I was nervous to read it, fearing he would say that grieving for a year and a half was too long and I should be on the other side by now. I cautiously opened it and started reading. He didn’t intend to specialize in grief but when he was offered a job to do research on widows after earning his Ph.D., he moved to San Francisco to start doing the work. To his surprise, the work was not depressing and there was surprisingly little previous research to build on. More striking was his finding that the majority of widows were resilient and continued to function without becoming incapacitated by their grief.

This brought me tremendous hope. Bonanno’s words, “We were made to be resilient,” stayed with me.  I combined the hope I found in his research with my faith in God, and together they buoyed me up. I had opened the book  afraid it would tell me I was grieving too long or doing it wrong. Instead, it gave me hope.

I was made to be resilient. 

And there’s research to back that up.

Later, I saw a reference to Mary O’Connor’s book, The Grieving Brain, and thought it would be a perfect addition to what I had been studying. She draws from her research as well as the work of other neuroscientists, and makes it accessible to non-scientists—in other words, to people who are grieving.

O’Connor’s book gave me language to explain my experience. It was such a relief to find scientific reasons for emotions that had made me think I was going crazy. I worried that I was stuck in the denial stage when I would have a fleeting thought that Rex would be coming home at 5:15. I worried that I wasn’t adapting to my new reality and maybe this said something about my state of mind. What a reassurance to learn that the brain works through predictions and that it simply takes time to replace patterns built over more than thirty years.

I loved learning that there are neurons in the brain that code for time, space and closeness. This was exciting to me. I knew that neurons in different brain regions processed things like sight and sound— but closeness? I was already familiar with attachment theory, but now it made more sense. O’Connor explains that when you have slept next to someone for thirty years, the brain is not going to assume that the person has suddenly disappeared from the universe simply because he has been missing for a few days.
O’Connor explains that the brain has encoded you together, creating an expectation: I will go looking for you and you will go looking for me if we get separated. The brain is trying to find your spouse. After years of patterns built around that person, it has not yet rewired itself to recognize your spouse can no longer be found. Time itself has no power. Rather, it takes time to learn new experiences and patterns before the brain updates its internal map. 

This book was incredible for me to read. She described the longing and searching perfectly. I felt like someone really understood, but this book went beyond just “I hear you.” She draws on neuroimaging and other neuroscience research showing how the brain responds to attachment and loss. 

I was living the experience and was thrilled to understand why grief could feel so intense. It wasn’t simply my emotions getting out of control. There were biological processes underneath what I was feeling. 

It’s more than a psychological event. Grief changes the brain at the cellular level.

Admittedly, ‘at the cellular level’ sounds a little like scientific mood lighting—impressive, but vague. And as a budding one-semester-course neurobiologist, I can’t claim to know more than I do. What it really means is neuroplasticity: our brains are built to change with experience.

That was the reassurance I needed. We really were made to be resilient. Our brains have the ability to change, to form new pathways, and to update the maps that no longer match our lives. What feels like a sorrow that will never end does not have to remain exactly as it is forever. The brain is built to adapt.

What a glorious promise: despair is not a permanent state.