Grief and the Whole Self: Brain, Beliefs & Beyond

Grief is not simply sadness. It can change the way you think, the way your body feels, the way you relate to other people, and even the way you understand yourself and the world around you.

Although grief is most often associated with the death of someone we love, loss takes many forms. Divorce, estrangement, infertility, miscarriage, serious illness, retirement, the loss of independence, a major life transition, and other significant changes can all bring a genuine sense of grief. The experience may look different from person to person, but the underlying reality is similar: something that mattered has changed, and you are trying to find your way in a world that no longer feels quite the same.

At Authentic Living London, we believe grief deserves to be acknowledged rather than rushed, minimized, or silenced. There is no single way to grieve and no universal timeline for feeling better. Understanding how grief can affect different parts of your life can make some of the changes feel less frightening and help you recognize when additional support might be useful.

Grief and the Brain: Why You Might Feel Foggy, Forgetful, or Stuck

One of the most frustrating parts of grief can be the feeling that your mind is no longer working the way it used to. You might lose your train of thought, struggle to concentrate, forget things you would normally remember, or find ordinary decisions surprisingly difficult.

These experiences are real. Research suggests that grief involves changes in stress regulation, emotional processing, attention, and other neurobiological systems. Studies examining the neuroendocrine processes associated with bereavement have found changes in systems involved in stress and physiological regulation, although the picture is complex and varies considerably between individuals (Hopf et al., 2020).

More recent neuroimaging research also suggests that grief, particularly when it becomes prolonged or highly distressing, is associated with differences in neural activity and connectivity involving networks related to emotion regulation, reward, and cognitive control. Importantly, this does not mean that ordinary grief “rewires” the brain in a simple or predictable way. Neuroscience is still developing, and much of the research involves people experiencing more severe or prolonged grief rather than everyone who experiences a loss.

In everyday life, the result can still feel very noticeable. When so much mental energy is being devoted to adjusting to a changed reality, focusing on work, remembering appointments, following conversations, or making decisions can take more effort than usual.

That does not mean you are becoming less capable. It may simply mean that your mind is carrying something very heavy.

Grief and the Body: When Emotional Pain Becomes Physical

Grief can be profoundly physical. Sleep may change. Appetite can increase or disappear. Your energy may drop, your muscles may feel tense, or you may experience headaches, stomach discomfort, chest sensations, or a general feeling of heaviness.

Research on bereavement has found associations between significant loss and a range of physical and physiological outcomes, including cardiovascular risk, inflammation, chronic pain, and other health concerns. These findings are particularly evident in research involving spousal bereavement, although they do not mean that every grieving person will experience physical illness (Ennis & Majid, 2021).

Sleep is another important piece of the picture. A systematic review of bereavement research found that sleep disturbances are common after loss and can include difficulties falling asleep, staying asleep, changes in sleep duration, and other disruptions (Lancel et al., 2020). When you are already emotionally exhausted, poor sleep can make concentration, mood, and physical energy even more difficult to manage.

This is one reason grief deserves to be taken seriously as a whole-person experience. Looking after your physical needs does not mean you are avoiding your emotions. Eating when you can, getting some movement, resting, maintaining a basic routine, and seeking medical attention when physical symptoms are concerning can all be part of caring for yourself while you grieve.

There is also some evidence that physical activity can support psychological wellbeing following bereavement. Research has explored activities such as walking, yoga, running, and other forms of movement, although the evidence is still developing and exercise should be viewed as one possible source of support rather than a treatment for grief itself (Williams et al., 2021).

And if you experience new, severe, or persistent physical symptoms, it is important not to assume they are “just grief.” Grief can affect the body, but medical concerns still deserve appropriate medical attention.

Grief and Meaning: When Loss Changes What You Believe

A major loss can raise questions that do not have easy answers.

You may find yourself wondering why this happened, whether life is fair, what you believe about death, or what your future is supposed to look like now. A person who once felt certain about their faith may experience doubt. Someone who never thought much about spirituality may suddenly have profound questions about meaning, mortality, or what comes next.

Psychological research on bereavement has identified meaning-making as an important part of how some people adapt to loss. Loss can disrupt a person's assumptions about the world and their place within it, while the gradual development of a new understanding can help integrate what happened into their life story (Smid, 2020).

That does not mean you need to find a lesson in your loss.

There is no requirement to decide that everything happens for a reason, to become more spiritual, or to find something positive in what happened. For some people, making meaning may involve reconnecting with faith. For others, it may involve changing long-held beliefs, accepting uncertainty, or deciding what values they want to carry forward.

Grief counselling can provide room for those questions without trying to answer them for you.

Grief and Identity: Who Am I Now?

Loss can also disrupt your sense of who you are.

When someone dies, you may no longer occupy a role that was central to your identity. You may have been a spouse, parent, child, caregiver, or companion, and suddenly the way you understood that role has changed. Other losses can create similar disruptions. Divorce can change your understanding of yourself as a partner. Infertility can affect hopes for parenthood. Serious illness can change your relationship with your body and independence. Retirement can alter a sense of purpose that was closely connected to work.

Research on bereavement and meaning-making suggests that adapting to loss can involve changes in identity and the way people imagine their future (Smid, 2020). This can be disorienting because the people around you may expect you to return to your “old self” when, in reality, the loss has changed your circumstances.

Part of healing may therefore involve discovering who you are now rather than trying to become exactly who you were before.

That process does not require leaving the person or life you lost behind. Continuing bonds research suggests that maintaining an ongoing connection with someone who has died can be part of healthy adaptation. People may continue relationships through memories, traditions, conversations, rituals, objects, stories, or the values they carry forward from the relationship (Hewson et al., 2024).

The goal is not necessarily to stop missing someone. Over time, the relationship may simply take a different form.

Grief That Other People Do Not Always Understand

Some losses receive immediate recognition and support. Others can leave people grieving largely on their own.

A miscarriage may be deeply painful even when few people knew about the pregnancy. Estrangement can involve profound grief without the rituals or social recognition that typically accompany death. The end of a friendship can leave a significant absence in someone's life. Losing a pet can be devastating while still being minimized by people who do not understand the depth of the relationship. A person caring for someone with dementia may experience repeated losses while the person they love is still physically present.

Research into grief before an anticipated death, for example, shows that people can experience grief in response to changes that are already happening during serious illness, not only after death occurs (Singer et al., 2022).

These experiences remind us that grief is not defined solely by whether society considers a particular loss “important enough.” The significance of a loss is also personal.

When other people do not recognize what has been lost, grief can become especially lonely. Counselling can offer a place where the loss does not have to be explained away or compared with someone else's experience.

Grief Can Affect Relationships, Too

Loss rarely happens in isolation. It changes families, friendships, partnerships, routines, and expectations.

People within the same family may grieve very differently. One person may want to talk constantly while another needs quiet. Someone may become more emotionally expressive, while someone else focuses on practical tasks. These differences can sometimes be mistaken for a lack of caring when they are actually different ways of responding to the same loss.

Grief can also change how connected you feel to other people. You may have less energy for socializing, feel misunderstood by people who have not experienced a similar loss, or find yourself uncomfortable when others seem to have moved on.

At the same time, supportive relationships can be an important part of adjustment. Research on bereavement has repeatedly highlighted the role of social support, relationships, and meaning in psychological adaptation following loss (Lundorff et al., 2021).

It is okay if your needs change while you grieve. Some relationships may become sources of comfort, while others may require new boundaries or honest conversations.

When Grief Needs More Support

Grief itself is not a disorder. Intense sadness, anger, yearning, numbness, confusion, sleep changes, and difficulty concentrating can all occur as part of bereavement.

For some people, however, grief remains intensely distressing and interferes significantly with daily life over time. Prolonged grief disorder is now recognized as a clinical condition, with symptoms that can include persistent yearning or preoccupation with the person who died, difficulty accepting the death, identity disruption, loneliness, and a profound sense that life has lost its meaning (Prigerson et al., 2021).

Recognizing prolonged grief does not mean that there is a deadline for mourning. It means that sometimes grief becomes so persistent and disabling that additional professional support may be helpful.

Grief therapy can also be appropriate without a diagnosis. You do not have to prove that your grief is severe enough to deserve support.

How Grief Counselling Can Help

Grief counselling is not about fixing you or making the loss disappear. There is no therapeutic technique that can erase someone you loved, restore the life you had, or make a painful loss suddenly feel okay.

Instead, counselling can provide a place to understand what has happened and how it is affecting you now.

That might involve talking about the relationship you lost, making sense of difficult emotions, exploring changes in identity, finding ways to live with unanswered questions, working through guilt or anger, or learning how to move between remembering the person and participating in everyday life.

Therapy may also provide space to explore continuing bonds and the ways a relationship can remain meaningful after death. For some people, that might mean creating rituals or traditions. For others, it may involve carrying forward a loved one's values, talking about memories, keeping meaningful objects, or simply allowing the relationship to remain part of their story (Hewson et al., 2024).

Evidence suggests that psychological interventions can be helpful for people experiencing significant grief, particularly when grief has become prolonged or impairing, although not everyone who is grieving needs formal treatment (Johannsen et al., 2019; Komischke-Konnerup et al., 2024).

The purpose is not to teach you how to stop grieving. It is to help you find a way to live with what has happened while making room for the rest of your life.

You Don't Have to Carry Your Grief Alone

Grief can reach places you never expected. It can affect your concentration during the workday, your sleep at night, your relationships, your body, your beliefs, and your understanding of who you are.

None of that means you are grieving incorrectly.

There may be days when you feel capable of moving forward and others when a memory, anniversary, conversation, photograph, or ordinary moment brings the loss sharply back into focus. That kind of fluctuation can be part of grieving. Adaptation does not necessarily mean that the pain disappears. It can mean that, gradually, the loss becomes part of a life that continues to have room for connection, meaning, and new experiences.

At Authentic Living London, we offer compassionate grief counselling for people navigating many different forms of loss. Our therapists can provide a supportive space to talk about what has happened, make sense of what you are experiencing, and find a way forward that respects both your loss and the person you are becoming.

If you are looking for grief counselling in London, Ontario, we offer in-person counselling at our London clinic as well as virtual therapy for clients across Ontario.

Jeanette Leroux, MSW is a psychotherapist at Authentic Living London who specializes in grief, end of life issues, and EMDR. She provies virtual psychotherapy for individuals 18+.

CLICK HERE to book with Jeanette.

References

Ennis, J., & Majid, U. (2021). “Death from a broken heart”: A systematic review of the relationship between spousal bereavement and physical and physiological health outcomes. Death Studies, 45(7), 538–551. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2019.1661884

Hewson, H., Galbraith, N., Jones, C., & Heath, G. (2024). Continuing bonds after bereavement: A systematic review. Death Studies, 48(10), 1001–1014. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2023.2223593

Hopf, D., Eckstein, M., Aguilar-Raab, C., Warth, M., & Ditzen, B. (2020). Neuroendocrine mechanisms of grief and bereavement: A systematic review and implications for future interventions. Journal of Neuroendocrinology, 32(8), e12887. https://doi.org/10.1111/jne.12887

Johannsen, M., Damholdt, M. F., Zachariae, R., Lundorff, M., Farver-Vestergaard, I., & O’Connor, M. (2019). Psychological interventions for grief in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Affective Disorders, 253, 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.04.065

Komischke-Konnerup, K. B., Zachariae, R., Boelen, P. A., Marello, M. M., & O’Connor, M. (2024). Grief-focused cognitive behavioral therapies for prolonged grief symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 92(4), 236–248. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000884

Lancel, M., Stroebe, M., & Eisma, M. C. (2020). Sleep disturbances in bereavement: A systematic review. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 53, 101331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2020.101331

Lundorff, M., Holmgren, H., Zachariae, R., Farver-Vestergaard, I., & O’Connor, M. (2021). Prevalence and predictors of prolonged grief disorder in adult bereavement: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 279, 160–169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.09.091

Prigerson, H. G., Boelen, P. A., Xu, J., Smith, K. V., & Maciejewski, P. K. (2021). Validation of the new DSM-5-TR criteria for prolonged grief disorder and the PG-13-Revised (PG-13-R) scale. World Psychiatry, 20(1), 96–106. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20854

Smid, G. E. (2020). A framework of meaning attribution following loss. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1776563. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2020.1776563

Singer, J., Roberts, K. E., McLean, E., Fadalla, C., Coats, T., Rogers, M., Wilson, M. K., Godwin, K., & Lichtenthal, W. G. (2022). An examination and proposed definitions of family members’ grief prior to the death of individuals with a life-limiting illness: A systematic review. Palliative Medicine, 36(4), 581–608. https://doi.org/10.1177/02692163221074540

Williams, J., Shorter, G. W., Howlett, N., Zakrzewski-Fruer, J., & Chater, A. M. (2021). Can physical activity support grief outcomes in individuals who have been bereaved? A systematic review. Sports Medicine - Open, 7, Article 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-021-00311-z