How Grief Affects the Brain: Insights on coping with loss of cognitive function

In this episode of the podcast, host Judith shares her personal experiences and insights on the topic of grief and its impact on mental health. Drawing from various life events, including the Port Arthur massacre, the loss of loved ones, and her own struggles with depression, Judith explores the cognitive and emotional effects of grief, highlighting the importance of self-compassion and seeking support during difficult times.

Podcast Episode Summary

• The shared sense of loss and communal grief experienced during tragic events like mass shootings, stabbings, and other acts of violence and loss
• How grief can trigger or exacerbate depression and other mental health challenges
• The neurological impact of grief, including effects on the prefrontal cortex, limbic system, and amygdala
• Strategies for promoting healthy brain rewiring and breaking the cycle of grief-induced stress response
• The importance of acknowledging vulnerability and giving oneself space to fully experience and process grief
• Seeking professional support and resources to aid in the recovery process

If you're facing challenges with your mental well-being, please remember, you DON’T have to face it alone. We strongly ENCOURAGE reaching out for SUPPORT. If you need someone to talk to, consider contacting:

- Lifeline at 13 11 14

- Kids Helpline at 1800 551 800

- MensLine Australia at 1300 789 978

- Suicide Call Back Service at 1300 659 467

- Beyond Blue at 1300 22 46 36

- Headspace at 1800 650 890

- QLife at 1800 184 527

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Chapters

• 1:09 Personal experiences with communal grief (Port Arthur massacre, Westfield stabbings)
• 3:12 Understanding communal grief and its impacts
• 4:45 Grief's effect on depression and cognitive function
• 6:09 Neuroscience of grief (brain regions affected)
• 7:42 Healthy rewiring and breaking the grief cycle
• 9:23 Personal experience after mother's death (leaving job)
• 11:34 Admitting vulnerability and putting wellbeing first
• 12:29 Advice on coping - take a break, seek support

Transcript

[00:00:06] Hey everyone, it's Judith and I'm just checking in before our episode starts to remind you that we are going to be talking about the experience of loss and grief and the impact it can have on our mental health. I'm going to be talking about my own experiences and they include. Depression, fertility treatment, losing parents, and even pets and other experience that may be confronting to you right now. If that's the case, perhaps choose another one of our episodes or catch up with another podcast that you love. And if you are struggling with loss, grief, or your mental health, please do not do so alone. There are lots of great resources out there that you can access, and we've listed some in the show notes. If you take nothing else away from today, remember that nearly everyone is challenged with mental health at some point in their lives, either themselves or the people they care about. Making a call for support is completely normal. So take care and we'll see you soon.

[00:01:09] So it was late afternoon on Saturday that I first heard that something had gone on at Bondi Junctions Westfield in Sydney's Eastern suburbs. My niece who is in Melbourne had heard a news update during the footy and asked what was going on through the family's WhatsApp. So I checked and found the updated news stories on the multiple stabbings, victims and fatalities. All the shit as it was going down. As I kept doom scrolling through the early evening and the next day, it began to remind me of another Monday morning in early autumn. 

[00:01:47] That was Monday the 29th of April, 1996. The day after a man took many guns and automatic rifles and opened fire in the Port Arthur tourist town, killing 35 people, including children and wounding 23 others. There was no internet then, but there was the ABC and Radio National and it kept the coverage going, ad free and uninterrupted. I used to set my alarm to wake up with the news, so I was hit with all of this the first thing. Port Arthur is still known as the deadliest massacre in modern Australian history. It led to massive reform in our gun laws, buybacks and the banning of many weapons. This reform was controversial at the time, but has since been praised as a model of sensible gun reform and responsible for saving many lives. On both days I struggled to get out of bed. I cancelled or delayed work due to what we would now call a mental health day. Back in the mid nineties it was considered chucking a sickie, even if I was in fact dealing with the fallout of shock, grief, and a feeling of anger mixed with helplessness that I now recognise as potential symptoms of depression. You might be surprised at an event hundreds of kilometres away from me. In a place that I'd never been to, about people I did not know, would affect me so much. 

[00:03:12] But that is what communal grief is. It's a shared sense of loss, normally of something intangible but very important to us. A sense of safety, of predictability, of knowing something about our community that now is taken from us or permanently changed. It is a shared sense of hopelessness, of fear, of doubt, and powerlessness. It may include anger, sadness, and confusion. It can all be happening at the same time and takes up huge chunks of your brain, leaving you left with only remnants of cognitive function to deal with your day to day life. 

[00:03:51] In retrospect, the Port Arthur shootings was one of the first signs of a major depressive incident for me. I became irritable, beat myself up a lot, and lost energy and interest in a lot of my life. Of course, I did not know that at the time and so made a major impulsive change in my life to fix things. It did. It led me to moving to Sydney, starting postgraduate studies and changing my career path. But I was still irritable, blaming others, and increasingly difficult to be around. Did the Port Arthur incident cause my depression? Or was my depression always there? Look, we're never really going to know, but grief, even community grief, can affect you on many levels, on your decision making, in your relationships, and of course your work life balance.

[00:04:45] Since that day in 1996, I've experienced the kind of losses that come with adulthood. So my parents and my mother in law passed away. I experienced multiple miscarriages and the stress of fertility treatment. I lost a job that had meaning and purpose for me. And over the past 10 years, we've had to put down our two rescue dogs. And one of those was just a month ago. And I miss her daily. During these incidents, I could not run away as a coping mechanism. And I did want to beat myself up a lot. And even did it to the point of being physical and self punishment. Luckily, all of this led to me getting the mental health support I needed, a diagnosis and treatment for major depression. And finally, a better understanding of the impact grief can have on our cognitive and executive function. A lot of writing about grief focuses on our mood changes, and that's valid. Being angry and sad are draining. However, none of that explained why it took me a whole month to register my car after my mother died. And why I was having increasing anxiety to the point I needed to take time off work, and eventually I left the job that I had. Some of this may have been the early stages of menopause, because that kicked in about then. But I have believed that it had a huge correlation to grief. 

[00:06:09] According to psychologists and neuroscientists, lots of interesting things happen to our brain when we grieve. Isabella Simontov, who's a research associate with Feel the Magic, that's an organisation that helps children recover from grief. According to her, grief is a natural response to loss, and it is a normal protective process. It involves our emotions, our thoughts, behaviours, and physiology. And as she says, grief can also lead to cognitive impacts, such as brain fog. 

[00:06:42] In neuroscience language, during grief, a process called neuroplasticity occurs, whereby the brain rewires itself in response to the emotional trauma, which has profound effects on the brain, the mind, and the body. After a loss, the body releases hormones and chemicals like fight, flight, freeze response. The pathways you rely on for most of your life takes a massive But mostly temporary detours and the brain prioritises the most primitive functions. There are several parts of the brain affected by grief. The prefrontal cortex, the decision making, reasoning, and control part of your brain becomes underactive, and the limbic system, which is all about survival, takes over. The anterior cingulate cortex, which is the emotional regulation part of the brain, becomes underactive. And the amygdala, the fear part of the brain, becomes overactive.

[00:07:42] Grief can reinforce brain wiring that locks the brain in a permanent stress response. This is what happens in the case of childhood trauma or childhood loss, but it can also happen for adults. To promote healthy rewiring, you need to break the cycle. This can involve a whole range of creative and contemplative practices. For me, meditation was supportive, but ultimately, therapy really got in there and taught me the importance of self compassion in stopping the constant attacks on myself. That and antidepressants. The main difference in my ability to recover from grief from my thirties to my fifties is that I have had the opportunity now to give myself space to feel the negative emotions of sadness and loss. And I say negative in inverted commas. There's emotions are neutral. We just label them as good and bad. And I equally felt the anger, including self blame by having processes to support myself to fully experience the loss. I believe I can move through these periods, if not quicker, at least with less friction than before. I know that I'm not experiencing the same collapse into depression that happened after the Port Arthur shootings, or even after my fertility treatment. I'm no longer trying to be strong or resilient, going into denial or deflecting my feelings through escape. And overall, understanding that my brain is operating differently during these times is so important in being kind and patient with myself. 

[00:09:23] When my mother died, which was about five years ago, I had no idea why my cognitive function had collapsed and felt like I was in a constant state of panic. This was especially puzzling as I did not feel especially sad about mom's death as it was expected. She was 85 and at the time that she died, I got to spend time with Mark with her and be with her when she passed away. I had family, my partner and more cousins than you could ever need by my side during the funeral. I had a lot of good memories. I had done work on separating the bad mother of my past, that concept that we carry of disappointments in our parenting, and I'd managed to separate that from the woman in front of me and could appreciate her strength, her passion, and her values, alongside acknowledging where she had suffered and sacrificed. Yet even with this work, my brain had its moment of textbook reprogramming because of grief after her death.

[00:10:33] As I said, at that point, I simply could not work. I was in a CEO role for a not for profit, but after the initial shock had passed, I found myself not recovering. And in fact, experiencing daily anxiety and panic attacks. I had to take time off, something I would never have done in my 30s, and explain this to my Chair. Unfortunately, whilst he appeared to understand the impact this had on me, he also expected me to be back at work within the next week. Even though I had told him this was not going to be possible. So I got a month's leave from my doctor and in the end decided to act on the notice I'd given earlier, like about six months earlier and leave the organisation without ever going back. It was probably the first time I truly put my being first. As it was not a convenient time for the organisation by any means. In fact, put them at a bit of risk. 

[00:11:34] Acknowledging that I did not have the brain capacity to do the work I was employed to do was humbling and disorienting. It involved a collapse of my sense of self and identity that hurt. I was no longer strong, resilient and invincible. I was vulnerable, human, even weak. I was no longer special in my capacity for work at any cost. I was just like everyone else, with a human sized capacity for grief and recovery. When I started this episode, I thought I was going to give you a list of ways you can cope with grief that would help you. But really, who am I to do that? Grief is deeply personal, and what worked for me may not work for you.

[00:12:29] We'll have some links to professional resources in the show notes, so check those out and please get professional support as we have seen that grief can do permanent harm to your mental health. I know that can be incredibly scary to do, but you will gain benefits with the right support. 

[00:12:46] Overall, let yourself take a break from work if you need to. If you are grieving, you are not in the best place and your brain needs to recover. Of course, work may give you a break from your constant thoughts and feelings, and if so, that's great. But if work feels oppressive or just beyond you right now, that's okay. 

[00:13:13] With support, grief is not a permanent state and you will in time recover your cognitive and executive functions. The loss will remain. But your experiences and recovery will create new experiences and learnings for you that help you to carry the loss with increased wisdom and self awareness. I send all my kindness and love to anyone going through grief right now, whether that be from the impact of the last few days or weeks or from a longer term loss or change. If nothing else from today, please know that you're not alone. Please reach out to the resources you have or the ones we've provided you and give yourself permission to have support to recover. In a few weeks we'll come back and have a look at what happens when the world expects you to have moved on and you haven't.

[00:14:11] But until then, please take care.