The Science of Grief And How to Actually Heal | Dr Chloe Paidoussis-Mitchell

0:00Our brain is predictive. So everything that you have incorporated into the fabric of your life, people, routines, locations, even celebrities, you know, they exist neurologically in the neural network of your brain. and that collect that collection of neurons represents them and their position in your life so if I ask you to think of your best friend you'll be able to pretty much guess where they are on the planet how long it'll take you to make direct contact with them and how to make direct contact with them so the map is a 3d map and that is the predictive world we're in so we don't use reality to anchor ourselves we use what we've designed what we've created of reality in our mind to predict it it's it's it's literally a memory map so I'll give you an example if you um have a dining room and you've got a dining table I heard Mary Francois kind of talk about this the other day and I thought that's a really good example I'm gonna copy it um and for some reason you have to get rid of the table and then you get up in the middle of the night and you go to your kitchen but you have to go through your dining room and the table's not there but you're kind of half asleep your body your mind will notice the absence of the table because it's mapped it it's expecting to find the table there so even as you walk through an empty room you'll feel on a on a visceral level oh the table should be here it sounds silly doesn't it but that's the world we're in so you map your people and yourself into that 3d world wow and you use that i use that with us what we all do to predict reality and we wake up every day thinking it's going to be a normal day the reality i meet is going to be the reality i've already encoded in my mind and when that is mismatched and suddenly it's not what you expect it to be that's when trauma happens so I agree with that I agree with that paper I don't think I don't think Basel-Wander-Kog ever meant it as in it literally you know materially exists in the cells yeah um so how do we then okay so we can't work our way through logic so how do we then rewrite that map in our brain yeah so the brain will rewire itself naturally anyway way okay so it will take time so um you remember when the queen died what a mass grief reaction that was and she was incorporated into everyone's fabric and people reacted to it yeah but the closer the bond the closer the attachment the more significant and profound the connection is the longer it takes for the brain to assimilate it so when you lose a loved one and you even maybe you knew it was coming your mind will still try and locate them into physical time and space because at their absence they're suddenly missing from your 3d map is alarming and we have what are known as trace neurons and they activate they literally go like that and causing you to want to go and fix that problem to go and find them and bring them back right so you might find that you know if you're going through a really difficult breakup even if you've decided that that's what you want to do they will be a part of your brain that will be thinking well I just want to I just want to see what they're doing or I want to I want to have another chat with them or I really I really want to go back and talk to them again or I really miss them or you know they'll be your mind will be trying to bring them back does that make sense yeah it's trying to find solutions and it you can't stop that from happening you can't stop that from happening so it will take time and what I advise people who are going through a difficult grief is to sit is to find the courage and the headspace to sit with it and that's why it helps when we sit by the graveside of loved ones and we literally see their name and their birth date and their death date it actually helps the brain assimilate that information wow I think that's the opposite of what I feel like we're taught to do oh yeah yeah you know the opposite I think is like you know come on yeah cheer up yeah put a smile on your face it's sunny today I mean I think when I was going through bad grief at one stage everyone around me tried to you know I remember people being like but look it's so sunny today outside like isn't this great and it would really anger me and I wouldn't say that to them because I know it's coming from a good place but it's this really distinctive language I think when you're grieving that those things are really difficult to find you can't find them you can't You can't leap into that because when you're grieving, the void feels huge.

5:10Your hormones drop. So you're not going to have serotonin. You're not going to have your usual dopamine. Everything is in a time of disequilibrium. Yeah. So you can't leap into optimism and enjoy the sunshine. It's really difficult. and there is a misconception that you know once you've done the first year of a significant grief that you should you should be better you should be over it. So what's the time span around grief then? Well I wish I knew I don't know I mean it depends it depends on what you're grieving who you're grieving how many other losses you're dealing with what your own relationship is with your internal world and your emotions um what you were modeled when you were a child i mean there's so many factors that will shape your own grieving uh journey and there's no predicting but really the first year almost doesn't count it's a first of everything and it's for most people just going through the motions just learning to tolerate if it's an unbearable loss you know to tolerate the pain to try and survive it to try and be as functional as you can be and human second year I hate to say it but it's really tough second year can be harder because you feel like well I got through the first year and I'm not feeling any better now what am I going to feel like this forever and the good news is you don't feel like that forever but the first two years are early days especially if you're grieving you know a child or a partner or a really really treasured loved one and you're just not okay with what happened you can't logic your way through that I think that's a really important thing for people to understand so I guess I mean we do have a lot of American listeners on this show as well but I think in the British culture we don't speak very much about grief you don't get days off for grief really potentially if you've lost somebody and there's a death you might do but for a breakup you don't for a loss of the child I don't know if you do make I think some people are still ashamed to talk about those things especially with miscarriages people think I just get up and get on with it the loss of a friendship I find that very complicated and of using one to talk about like losing a friend and a friendship breakup you know how can we like what tools and how can we use this podcast to get people to support themselves when they're going through grief so apart from sitting with the feeling which can be the hardest thing in the world um but you said one of my most favorite lines which is courageous what else can someone do?

8:07I think it's really important to remember that loss is part of life and even if you yourself haven't been impacted by a devastating loss I guarantee that somebody that you work with or that you live with or who's in your network is going through a loss they won't it's just everywhere and some of it is just about recognizing that the loneliness of invisible loss does harm to people and the the anxiety that people have is that I don't want to be a Debbie Downer I don't want to be a burden on people the burden is a big one I don't want to be all doom and gloom I don't want to be the miserable one so people silence themselves because they feel like that It won't be okay for them to be sad or to be in grief.

9:04So what we can do is normalize it, humanize it, and check in. Literally, like, how are you doing? Tell me what's happening. Are you okay? Shall we go for a walk? Tell me. And listen, people want to fix grief and you can't fix it. this compulsion to cheer everybody up doesn't help the fixer mode is a big one it's a big one but i can even get angry at myself when i was going through it why am i not better you get very frustrated i think that's a universal feeling that many of us have like you know like just get on with it like come on like why am i still there and i think that's what many of us can say to ourselves when we're going through it yeah yeah which just isn't helpful Not at all.

9:51No, it's not helpful at all. I think the challenge is to just recognize it and to say, okay, here you are.