How the Brain Rewires as We Grieve

In recent decades, neuroscience has revealed fascinating information about our relationships and what happens in our brains when we grieve for a loved one who is dead or gone. Particularly if this loss is devastating and “changes everything,” such as when a devoted spouse dies or a beloved partner unilaterally ends a relationship, our grieving brain has an enormous rewiring job to do.

How the Brain Encodes Our Bonds to Loved Ones

The human brain is hardwired to form attachments. It keeps track of our most important relationships along three dimensions: space, time, and depth of the connection. When we are apart, our brain keeps our bond intact by predicting when, where, and whether a reunion is likely to happen. These dimensions are also described as here, now, and close, referring to our ability, learned during early childhood, to soothe ourselves when separated by calling up a mental representation of our loved one and counting on our reunion.

Our most important bonds are also permanently and deeply encoded in the brain, which develops the implicit knowledge that certain people are special to us and will always be with us. This encoding happens during intimate, intense, loving moments.

Of course, we consciously understand that death and unforeseen events can permanently tear us apart, but as far as the non-conscious brain is concerned, whenever we are separated—for a minute, a few hours, a week, or more—it “knows” we will be reunited. Without this implicit knowledge, life would be unbearable, as we’d be thrown into panic, grief, and seeking every time we were apart. Instead, with this implicit knowledge that our loved one is “everlasting,” we rest assured.

The Brain’s Neural Maps

To keep track of your relationships, your brain creates a neural map. The neural map for a marriage or long-term partnership contains detailed information about your beloved, your relationship, and life together. Your brain acquires this information through lived experience.

Especially if you and your partner have been closely connected for a long time, your brain has acquired a lot of lived experience and maintains a comprehensive neural map, which it uses to predict and make sense of what’s going on in each moment.

For example, in the morning your brain hears someone breathing, feels a body, or sees a lump in the bed, and instantly knows it’s your partner lying next to you. Your brain knows when your partner will return home each day. Perhaps your brain predicts they’ll complain about hot weather, fix the car and the plumbing, buy groceries on Tuesday after pickle ball, hike with you on weekends, celebrate your birthday, annoy you with bad puns, leave dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, and give you a cute card on Valentine’s Day.

Thanks to this neural map, your brain requires very little computing power to navigate life with this person. Instead of each moment being a shock or unexpected surprise, with loads of new negotiations and decisions to make every day, life flows more easily with a rich, filled-in neural map of predictable routines, customary habits, realistic expectations, a recognizable presence, and a familiar feel.

When your partner dies or ends your relationship, your grieving brain must learn to make sense of their absence and redraw its neural map to reflect this new reality. Particularly if their absence happens suddenly or with little warning, or you expected and counted on spending many more years together, this learning process is a huge and complicated undertaking.

Making Sense of It

In addition to redrawing the neural map of your relationship, your brain is also trying to make sense of your beloved's absence. Specifically, your brain struggles to reconcile two opposing pieces of knowledge—the conscious knowledge that they are gone, and the powerful, implicit knowledge that they are everlasting. This struggle explains some of the more bewildering and crazy-making aspects of grieving. For example:

• You can’t seem to absorb the news that they are gone. How can they be gone? They are everlasting!
• You may feel, see, or hear your loved one, because your brain is still holding onto here, now, and close, and interprets common sensations, sights, and sounds as signs of their presence.
• You may feel disorientated and wonder if you’ll wake up from this bad dream, because surely, they are everlasting and you will be reunited.

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Each time you confront these two opposing pieces of knowledge, it triggers painful grief and you yearn deeply.

Your Continuing Bond

To settle the dispute between gone and everlasting, many cultures support widows and widowers in expressing their continuing bond. You can do this by finding ways to maintain a connection that you find meaningful and comforting. For example, you could continue to enjoy the interests you shared, spend quality time with the children, write about your life together, channel their strengths or wisdom, or feel their presence when you hear certain music or spot a certain wild creature.

If your partner abandoned you, maintaining a connection is more fraught but still a normal part of the grieving process. As your brain laboriously redraws the neural map of this relationship and you ease into reinventing your life, you’ll gradually and naturally ease away from resisting the reality of their departure and wishing for their return.

Redrawing the Neural Map

For many months, even though you know your relationship has changed, your brain’s neural map will often lag behind. That's because your brain favors the implicit knowledge that your partner is everlasting and it won’t update the map just because they haven't been around for a day, or even several months. Your brain requires ample time and a ton of rumination and lived experience to absorb the absence, update the predictions, and complete this enormous redraw.

In the meantime, the still-outdated areas of your neural map make you think, feel, and act as if your loved one is here, now, and close. You grieve every time you confront an outdated prediction and update the neural map accordingly. You ruminate endlessly on what happened and what will become of you. You feel distracted and exhausted.

This monumental rewiring job explains a lot of what you’re experiencing as you mourn. You’re not crazy; your brain is rewiring itself, and you need time to feel whole again, reinvent your life, and ease into a different future without your beloved. Knowing your brain is working so hard can grant you more patience and self-compassion.

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