Mary-Frances O'Connor, THE GRIEVING BRAIN: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss
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[0:54]Mary Francis O'Connor is the author of the grieving brain the surprising science of how we learn from
[1:03]Love and loss. This is one of our guest hosted episodes by Allison Petaki
[1:08]Mary Francis is an associate professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Arizona
[1:13]Her research focuses on the physiological correlates of emotion in particular the wide range of physical and emotional responses during
[1:20]bereavement including yearning and isolation
[1:23]She believes that a clinical science approach toward the experience and mechanisms of grieving can improve
[1:29]interventions for prolonged grief disorder newly included in the revised DSM
[1:33]5 Mary Francis O'Connor author of the grieving brain the surprising science of how we learn from love and loss
[1:43]Thank you so much for being here this morning. I am so excited to speak with you about this incredible important book. Welcome
[1:50]Thank you. It's so lovely to be here
[1:54]Absolutely. So Mary Francis you are a writer a researcher a professor a mentor you wear many
[2:01]incredible hats and that makes you the perfect person to write this book
[2:06]So can you tell us a little bit about the how and the why the story behind the story of how you came to write the grieving brain?
[2:14]This has been a passion of mine for gosh over two decades now which kind of boggles my mind
[2:22]So I've been studying grief as you say grief and grieving as a clinical psychologist as a neuroscientist
[2:29]So I'm a professor at the University of Arizona and my lab which is called the grief loss and social stress lab the glass lab
[2:37]We call it is really devoted to understanding just as you said sort of the
[2:41]Why is grieving so hard and why does it take so long and how might it be working in the brain?
[2:49]Are there things about the brain that are making it easier or harder?
[2:52]But there's another piece of it too, which is that
[2:56]You know, I feel really comfortable with people who are grieving and I think largely that's because
[3:03]When I was 13 my mom was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer and so we had you know grief at home
[3:11]so to speak and
[3:13]she
[3:14]amazingly did not die until I was 26 which
[3:18]Her on college is called his first miracle
[3:21]But it means that I just feel comfortable with people who are going through this and so maybe that made it
[3:29]Easier for me to do the you know by now
[3:32]Hundreds of interviews that I've done with grieving people and try to map that onto what their physiology is telling us
[3:39]Yeah, yeah
[3:40]So you talk about in your book
[3:42]How when you share with people that you work with grief and grieving or when you're telling people that you're writing this book a
[3:49]Lot of us who are not as well versed as you are
[3:51]particularly in in sort of Western culture. You say we have this
[3:55]Idea of the five stages of grief and it you say that it's presented to us as sort of this linear narrative
[4:02]With the forward marching heroic story where we end with acceptance
[4:07]And you say that's not at all how grief works the science and the brain and
[4:12]Human behavior and experience. Can you talk a little bit about that because that was so fascinating?
[4:17]it's well so
[4:19]Many of your listeners may have heard of the five stages of grieving and or the five stages of grief as it was called and
[4:26]Dr. Elizabeth who bluross I have hold or respect for she was a
[4:32]Female psychiatrist when there were not a lot of female psychiatrists
[4:35]She actually was prevented from taking a faculty position twice because she was pregnant and she wrote she raised
[4:41]Children and so forth so an amazing woman and she really you know her contribution was she gave us this revolutionary idea
[4:49]You could interview people who were terminally ill
[4:52]You know, which at the time in the 1960s was unheard of
[4:56]To ask them what they were feeling and how they were coping and so
[5:01]She did what all good scientists do initially was that she described what people were telling her right?
[5:07]She gave us a very accurate description that people do experience depression. They experience anger
[5:14]They even experience denial and so the way I think about it now is we look back because science has come a long way since
[5:21]1969
[5:23]Is that she gave us a description of grief
[5:27]But that the idea that grieving you know that change over time that it you know
[5:32]You do all of denial and then all of anger and all of them
[5:35]And you never go back again to those natural human emotions
[5:39]It's just not accurate
[5:40]And I think when we use it as a prescription rather than a description then people get into trouble because they think well
[5:48]I haven't had a lot of anger. Maybe I'm not doing it right or
[5:52]You know, I felt a lot of acceptance and now I'm having a day where I feel really depressed
[5:58]You know, am I doing am I doing something wrong?
[6:01]Yeah, and so we don't think of it as doing something wrong
[6:04]We have more updated models that we often use now as looking at sort of the trajectory
[6:10]rather than these five stages which are really five experiences people have
[6:16]Yeah, and it there's no set order. There's no checking one off and then you've graduated to the next level, right?
[6:22]Can you talk about the difference between grief and depression?
[6:27]Yeah, sure. I mean I think part of it is helpful maybe to start
[6:32]With distinguishing I you know
[6:34]I've been using the word grief and the word grieving as though they're different and most of us
[6:38]You know
[6:38]We use those interchangeably
[6:40]This really came about from
[6:43]From studying
[6:44]You know, what is it I'm studying and I study in grief here
[6:47]I'm not getting the answers that I'm looking for about grieving
[6:50]And so making this distinction became useful to me and I think has become useful to other people so
[6:56]So grief is that natural response when you become aware
[7:01]That something so important to you is missing, right?
[7:06]It's that wave of feeling. It's those thoughts. It's that sort of unbearable
[7:12]awfulness
[7:14]Yeah, and it recedes right it comes in waves
[7:19]Grieving on the other hand is the way that that feeling of grief might change over time
[7:25]So think about it this way if I'm doing a scientific study of grief
[7:30]I can ask you how you're feeling right now for example, right?
[7:33]You're how much grief are you feeling but if I want to study grieving I have to ask you
[7:38]how has your feeling changed
[7:41]from before to now or
[7:44]from a long time before to
[7:46]You know this sort of change over time
[7:51]Means that grieving
[7:53]Is the way grief can become more familiar?
[7:56]It could become less intense or those waves could be less frequent
[8:01]But that doesn't mean that grief goes away because that's just the natural human response, right?
[8:07]When we're aware of missing someone. Yeah, so it's I think that's useful because people often feel like
[8:14]Gosh, you know, I'm having this
[8:16]Week where I'm just completely overwhelmed
[8:19]Yeah, and then they realize oh, you know
[8:22]This is the anniversary of when a loved one died and we know even in the research
[8:27]We can see and of firstries. We see this big increase in grief
[8:31]That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your grieving. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong
[8:35]It means this is a changed in this moment of your grief
[8:40]Yeah, and you talk about how we as humans can hold
[8:46]The knowledge both troops at the same time where we know
[8:49]That the loved one is gone. We know we miss them. We know we're grieving
[8:54]But then we have these moments where we expect them to walk back through the door or where we expect them to show up to dinner with us
[9:01]How does the brain do that? How do we as people hold both of those things? The brain is a uniquely
[9:08]fascinating
[9:10]Oregon that sort of is trying to help us
[9:14]But the brain also has some limitations and one of those strange limitations is
[9:19]It can be listening to two streams of information at the same time
[9:25]so
[9:26]When we think about this in terms of bereavement in order for us to have the feeling of grief the feeling of loss
[9:34]We first have to have the feeling of love of bonding, right?
[9:37]And that bond gets encoded in our brain literally
[9:42]Physically your brain is changed because you love this person and they loved you, you know
[9:47]And so part of what comes with that attachment is the belief right?
[9:52]I will always be there for you and you will always be there for me and the important piece of that is the always
[10:00]part, right? It is impossible to imagine just going off to work every day. If you didn't deeply
[10:08]believe that you would all come back together again at the end of the day, right? We have this
[10:13]deep belief. They're out there for me somewhere. You know, I'm thinking about them through the day.
[10:18]I know I would get a hold of them if I needed to. So with attachment comes this ever-lasting
[10:25]belief, so to speak. Well, when we have the death of a loved one, there is of course this
[10:30]other set of information that the brain encodes, which are the memories, right? You may have been there
[10:35]at the bedside when a loved one was dying or when they passed away or even you may have been at
[10:42]the funeral or memorial, right? So you have these memories. You know that the reality is that they're
[10:48]no longer on this earthly plane, but you can see then how these two streams of information
[10:55]on the one hand, because of this bond, you have this belief. They'll always be there. They're out there
[11:00]somewhere. And if they're not here, it just means I need to go get them. I need to find them and
[11:05]bring them back. And on the other hand, you also know they're not living. And so I think part of why
[11:12]grieving takes so long is that the brain takes a very long time to make sense of these two things.
[11:19]And maybe the most concrete way to think about it is the brain is always trying to make predictions
[11:26]for us, right? It's trying to predict what happens and it makes those predictions based on what's
[11:31]happened before. So say if you wake up next to your spouse or hundreds and maybe even thousands
[11:38]of days, right? You wake up there next to you. Then on the first morning that you wake up and they're
[11:43]not there in the bed with you, it's actually not a very good prediction that they've died,
[11:50]right? So for a while for your brain, it's as though they haven't died. There's a learning that has
[11:56]to take place to be able to predict their absence. And what does that absence mean for your life
[12:02]as opposed to the sort of habitual prediction of and there they are, you know?
[12:07]And yet there will always be these triggers like a smell or coming across a shirt or something
[12:14]that will tell our brain that the person is there for a minute and then we have to re-remember,
[12:19]right? That's absolutely right. Handwriting is the thing for me. I'll come across
[12:23]something my mother wrote, you know, it'll fall out of a book or something.
[12:27]Yeah. And boy, in that moment, it just, she feels so alive, right? Like she just wrote it and sent
[12:34]to, and that is just that is how it works. The brain permanently encodes this bond.
[12:41]Yeah. Which maybe has a sort of, I mean, I actually take great comfort in the fact that
[12:47]in a way she is a part of me, right? Like she's visiting my brain is physically
[12:54]including the fact that we had a relationship that we were so tightly bonded and somehow carrying
[13:02]that around with me is very comforting. Yeah, absolutely. So when we care about someone or we're
[13:08]close to somebody who's going through the grieving process, you're very comfortable with it. It's,
[13:14]you know, it's your world, but it can be hard. It can be challenging to see someone you love
[13:18]really struggling and you talk about the prongs of empathy. What can we do? What should we do to show
[13:25]empathy or to show up for someone who is grieving? This is a tricky one because while I say I feel
[13:31]very comfortable with people who are grieving and that is true. People who are grieving, it's
[13:39]really hard, right? It is really hard to watch someone who's suffering or who's really angry,
[13:46]right? I mean grief brings with it a lot of anger quite unintentionally, you know, it's not like
[13:51]the person wants to feel angry, but yeah, you know, there's often nothing you can do that will
[13:56]make them angry. And so I think then it's incumbent on us a little bit to recognize, ah, for this
[14:05]person, they're just not themselves at the moment. And the emotion dial has just on everything. It's
[14:11]just been turned way up. So, you know, it's interesting to think about so many of our social sort of
[14:19]mourning practices. I think in some ways we're reminding other people, right? So you wear a black
[14:25]arm band, for example, reminding the people around you that they're having a different experience
[14:32]day-to-day than you are right now, you know? So a friend of ours, a friend in my sort of circle of
[14:38]friends, his mother had died maybe three months before this happened and we were in a parking lot
[14:44]after something we'd been doing together and he got really angry and he said something really kind
[14:48]of mean to one of our friends and you know, and everyone was sort of like, what the heck, what was that?
[14:55]You know, this is very out of character. And it wasn't true. And you know, and I said later to them,
[15:01]we have to remember that, you know, he is still grieving and everything is just raw right now.
[15:08]So when I think about being with people who are grieving, I think one of the biggest
[15:16]quagmires we get ourselves into is that as the person who wants to be supportive and wants to be
[15:23]kind, often our goal is sort of to cheer them up, right? And then fortunately, think about it
[15:30]this way, if you're already not feeling yourself in the world, you're not now you also have this
[15:35]expectation that someone wants you to feel happy as well, like that's just a whole lot, right?
[15:40]Yeah. And so sometimes I think if we can sort of change our mindset to, I'm just, I want to be
[15:48]with you, right? I want you to know you're not alone and that I am open to however and whatever
[15:56]you want as this goes forward, a friend of mine whose little boy died, she says, you know, we think
[16:04]the golden rule is the most important thing treat others as you would like to be treated.
[16:09]She says there's actually a platinum rule. Treat others as they would like to be treated.
[16:14]Oh, that's so good, right? It's so good. Yeah, yeah, because you can't put the expectation or the
[16:20]burden onto them, you know, to then live up to whatever they're expecting to receive from you.
[16:26]That's so good. And you say grief is a door, yep through which we will all walk and some of us
[16:32]earlier than others, some of us more often than others, but it is a universal human experience.
[16:37]It is, but it comes at different times, doesn't it? And in different ways. And we all have
[16:42]different sort of capacities for sharing and for disclosing and for supporting even. So, you know,
[16:49]it may be often people say, it's not even that I need to talk. It's that I need someone to help
[16:55]me clean out the closet, you know, or I need someone to take my kids to the park because I just
[17:01]need some time. And so I think trying to ask people and not even just what can I do, right? Because
[17:09]that's pretty broad and doesn't always sound like an actual offer. So saying things like, hey,
[17:17]I know that Thanksgiving's coming up and that might be a really tough time for you. Is there some
[17:22]shopping I could do? I'm already going to be, you know, setting my own table. Is there an
[17:26]could I come over and help with, you know, X? Can I, you know, take the kids on Wednesday so you can
[17:32]get, you know, giving kind of concrete examples of things that you might do. And then letting them
[17:40]sort of decide. And I'll tell you, here's a great example. One of the students, I teach a psychology
[17:45]of death on the lost class and one of the students was telling a story about she and her boyfriend
[17:49]lived next door to this older couple. And the husband died in this older couple. And so the following
[17:55]Christmas, he had always put up Christmas lights on the house. And so her boyfriend went over and
[18:01]said, Hey, you know, I just, I wanted to offer, I'd be happy to put up your Christmas lights this year
[18:07]if you wanted. And she got really angry. And so I don't need that from you and sort of slam the door.
[18:13]And he was like, Oh God, you know, what have I done? Yeah. Yeah. And about 24 hours later, she came
[18:19]and knocked on the door. And she said, I'm so sorry, you know, it just is so hard for me that he's not
[18:26]that I just reacted, but I would actually really love it if you would help me put up Christmas
[18:31]lights. You know, so I think that's a great example of both offering something. It doesn't always
[18:36]go well, but that's your not your last opportunity, you know? Yeah. And extending the grace when
[18:42]there is anger or there is an outsized reaction you might not have felt you expected. You talk
[18:48]about restoration to a meaningful life as a worthwhile goal or aspiration. Can you talk about what
[18:55]that means and what a meaningful life means? One of the models that we use more contemporarily
[19:01]that many clinicians I think find very useful now is what we call this dual process model. And
[19:06]what it suggests is that on the one hand, we have all these stresses about the actual death,
[19:12]the actual loss, right? All these emotions and thoughts and you know, what do we do now and all that?
[19:16]What do we do with those feelings? And those we call loss stressors, but we also have what they
[19:23]call restoration stressors, which is sort of what does this mean for my life now? And who am I? And
[19:30]you know, what is retirement supposed to look like if my spouse has died or how am I supposed to
[19:36]parent if my co-parent is gone? You know, so all of those, what does life look like now? And how do
[19:45]I, given that I am a person who has grief, how do I continue to have a meaningful life, to do
[19:53]meaningful things? And that takes a long time and a lot of courage and friends.
[20:00]a lot of support. So when I think about what is a meaningful life, I mean, what's interesting,
[20:05]of course, about this for me is, I think that's a question we're all asking ourselves all the time,
[20:11]right? That doesn't only happen when a loved one dies. It's just that because when a loved one dies,
[20:16]you get the rug ripped out from under you, things that previously felt really meaningful.
[20:21]Sometimes don't feel very meaningful anymore. And so trying to figure out, okay, so what is this like
[20:29]now? I think there's a couple of things that people can do. They can think about what it is
[20:37]they value, kind of at its most basic. And that can be related to the person who's died. So you know,
[20:44]what things do I know my mom would have been proud of me for doing, right? Or even just how
[20:51]would she have done things? My mom was British. And so there are things I do like at the holiday
[20:55]is because, you know, it reminds me of her. It's something she would have loved that I carried on.
[21:00]So we can think about sort of values. Or maybe it is, you know, I want to have a close family,
[21:06]the way that my grandparents, you know, manage to do that. So coming up with things that are
[21:12]meaningful, kind of as a value. And then what would a person who valued that do?
[21:17]Part is both probably harder. And also, again, I think often to require support is experimenting,
[21:26]right? Like going out and trying something that you're not sure if it's going to make you
[21:31]very happy. But staying at home on the couch is definitely not making you happy. It may be worth
[21:38]trying something that could feel meaningful and probably trying it more than once. So the first time,
[21:44]you know, you go out to dinner with, you know, your couple friends, if your spouse isn't there,
[21:49]the first time is probably not going to feel really good. It's probably going to be pretty hard.
[21:55]But then the second time you go, it may still be hard, but you may also think, oh, you know,
[22:01]but I'd never had that pasta before. And that was pretty good, you know. So it's sort of the slow
[22:08]upward spiral, I think, of what makes sense now, what works now. But you're only going to learn
[22:13]that by sort of trying things out. Yeah. So beautiful. So the grieving brain, the surprising
[22:20]science of how we learn from love and lost decades of research and work and expertise and
[22:28]interviews went into this book. If you could send readers away with sort of one token or nugget to
[22:36]carry with them, what would it be about the grieving brain and from this beautiful book?
[22:41]I think probably the thing I get most often as a question is, you know, someone describes something
[22:48]and says, is this normal? Should I be over this by now? Or should a friend be over this by now?
[22:53]And just really trying to give yourself some kindness. This is a door you walk through. But once
[23:00]you're through the door, there's no, there's no end point. You are now a person who understands
[23:07]life differently than you did before. And so remembering that what you feel is normal. And a lot
[23:15]of what you do is normal. And we can decide, okay, I do that pretty regularly. Do I want to do
[23:23]something different? Or I feel that pretty regularly. How am I going to manage the fact that I feel
[23:28]that? Those are really legitimate questions and things we can work with with ourselves. But the fact
[23:35]that you feel things intensely or that you believe things or are motivated to do things that
[23:42]you're surprised by, that doesn't make them not normal. And so giving ourselves some
[23:49]some loving kindness that this is really hard. This just is really hard. And what you're
[23:56]experiencing is normal and you're going to find a way through. Because of what you just said and
[24:03]because of all that, this book feels in so many ways like a companion and in many ways sort of
[24:09]like a road map or a guide or a hand to hold. Not only is we go through the experience of grieving
[24:15]but just the experience of being human. Yeah. So thank you so much, Mary Francis. What advice
[24:21]would you have to aspiring writers? Oh, to aspiring writers. That's a great question.
[24:26]I think for me, what I've learned is you got to write. Sounds really obvious, but you know,
[24:35]I write every morning. And only on weekdays, I write, you know, for an hour every morning.
[24:41]And I think this is the piece. When inspiration strikes, I will be at my desk and they will have
[24:48]a place to go, right? You're not at your desk. You can't write it down. Absolutely. And as you said,
[24:56]first time might be hard. Keep doing it. Keep doing it right. And eventually you will get the
[25:00]inspiration down on the page. The grieving brain by Mary Francis O'Connor, the surprising
[25:06]science of how we learn from love and loss. Mary Francis, how can readers connect with you and learn
[25:11]about your journey? I have a website at Mary Francis O'Connor.org. And also I'm on Twitter at Dr.
[25:18]MFO. So reach out. Wonderful. Mary Francis O'Connor, the grieving brain. Thank you so much. Thank
[25:24]you for writing this book, sharing this book. And thank you for joining me tonight. Thank you
[25:28]for bringing this conversation to people. Have a beautiful day. You too. Bye-bye.
[25:34]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
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