Post 5- The Anything Blog

Brain Changes after Losing A Loved One

Losing a loved one brings upon many new and difficult emotions that many struggle to navigate. Many people say grief gets easier over time, and the brain has a lot to do with this! As people form new relationships, the brain adapts and sends new signals to encode these bonds. So, if an individuals mother recently passed, they may struggle to connect with new people since she was "loving and raised" her.

Facing reality may be very difficult, as shown in the stages of grief, and denial is a common way to ignore life's problems. It is hard for humans to cope with death since we have such little understanding of it, so a lot of people pretend deceased loves ones are on vacation, not actually dead. They try to logically reason solutions because the idea of someone they spent so much time with now being completely gone is not easy to wrap their head around. There may also be regrets and many questions as you are experiencing, which is all apart of your brain trying to figure out the truth.

 

Now, the mind and body follow a general pattern in daily life, but death will disrupt this. Obviously it will create new experiences, but it also must forget the old routines you had. This may mean you have to start doing the laundry in your house, cooking your own meals, and paying house bills. Although it may seem like small chores, these tasks can stack up and cause a large buildup of stress when routines are thrown off.

The brain follows a routine and predicts following events based on typically-exhibited behaviors. Death is a significant disrupter of this process because you spent years getting to know someone's personality and behaviors, and they suddenly don't exist anymore. All valuable life information has been stored deep in her memories, including this strong relationship, but now the brain connections remain incomplete with the absence of this essential figure. This means she must learn how to do tasks on her own and establish a new routine, excluding the deceased loved one. This process will take a long time as you form new connections and memories, as well as gain comfortability in the changing environment, because the body works to sustain homeostasis through encoded knowledge.

If you wish to read more about this, click or click here for information about how having negative views changes your perception and how others perceive you!

AP