The Science & Process of Healing from Grief | Huberman Lab Essentials
In a Nutshell
Grief requires remapping attachments in the brain's three-dimensional map of space, time, and closeness after loss, while deliberately preserving the emotional bond rather than trying to detach from it. Dedicated periods of focusing on the attachment without counterfactual thinking, combined with writing exercises, help uncouple episodic memories from the present reality. Establishing healthy cortisol rhythms through morning sunlight, quality sleep, and NSDR protocols supports the neuroplasticity needed to reorganize this map and move through grief effectively.
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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where past episodes are revisited for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. Andrew Huberman is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. The episode discusses how grief is conceptualized at both emotional and logical levels, covering the neuroscience and psychology of grief.
Key findings indicate that people map their experience of others in three dimensions: space (where people are), time (when people are), and closeness. These three dimensions establish close bonds with people and require remapping and reorganization within emotional and logical frameworks when someone is lost. Grief is a process with a beginning, middle, and end. Being able to orient where one is in that process is beneficial for predicting duration and for conceptualizing the lost person or animal while maintaining functional capacity in life.
Grief and depression can feel similar with overlapping symptoms including loss of appetite, challenges sleeping, and crying for no apparent reason, but they are distinctly different processes.
Common myths arise from Elizabeth Kubler Ross's work in the book on death and dying. The five stages described are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While much of what Kubler Ross described holds true, brain imaging studies, psychological evaluation, and clinical observation show it is not always the case. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies reveal that brain areas associated with motivation, craving, and pursuit are primary circuits activated in states of grief.
Brain imaging studies show that attachments and the breaking of attachments in healthy ways are governed by three dimensions: space, time, and closeness. An experiment placed people in a brain scanner to evaluate brain activity without predictions about which areas would be involved.
In the first condition, subjects saw images of objects at different distances (beach or parking lot with bowling balls spaced differently). Brain imaging showed activation in the visual cortex and a brain area uniquely tuned to distance between the subject and objects, referred to as proximity.
In the second condition, subjects listened to tones spaced from one another. Areas associated with auditory perception were active, and brain regions uniquely tuned to spacing of sounds were identified.
In the third condition, subjects saw images of people and faces at different physical distances (close-up faces versus full body at distance). The emotional relationship was also varied using personal photographs of family members, neighbors, celebrities, and strangers.
The same brain area was uniquely activated across all three conditions involving changes in physical spacing, temporal spacing, and emotional distance. That area is the inferior parietal lobule. The map of people is not merely emotional closeness but a map of attachment interwoven with physical space and time (when someone was last seen, when they are likely to be seen again, and how much time would be required to reach them).
One key function of the nervous system is making predictions. Attachments involve the ability to predict what it would take to see someone again and when that will occur. All relationships are mapped through three dimensions: space, time, and closeness. After loss, this map must be reordered because episodic memories persist and remain linked to feelings of attachment.
Episodic memories are the conscious recollection of experiences with someone, including where and when events happened. Grief is the process of uncoupling, unbraiding, and untangling the relationship between where people are in space, in time, and attachment to them. This is difficult, and for some nearly impossible at the outset.
When someone is lost, the brain continues making predictions that they will be in certain places or times. Neural activity continues as reverberatory activity, explaining yearning and desire to interact. Neural circuits continue functioning in ways that put one into an action state of seeking the person in familiar locations and expecting contact at accustomed frequencies. It is disorienting to maintain close attachment while being unable to make predictions about space and time.
The reordering of the map required to move through grief involves remapping while maintaining the sense of attachment without undermining its intensity. The approach is to remap space and time dimensions while preserving attachment.
The first tool is acknowledging that the real attachment should not be disengaged or dismantled. There is no adaptive reason to persuade oneself or numb the recognition of how much someone meant. What is important is shifting mindset to hold that the attachment is real and intense, but now uncoupled from space and time dimensions.
One method is setting aside dedicated periods of five, ten, or up to thirty minutes to feel deeply into closeness and attachment while consciously preventing counterfactual thinking (the what-ifs). Counterfactual thinking is tied to guilt and strengthens bonds to episodic memory rather than allowing uncoupling. The goal is thinking about attachment in a rich way and experiencing it in brain and body during these dedicated blocks.
Two people with intense attachment to the same lost person can experience grief differently. There appears to be variation in how intensely people feel the yearning aspect of grief, related to the molecule oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone and peptide involved in milk letdown during lactation, pair bonding in males and females, parent-child bonding, and romantic partner bonding.
Prairie voles have been studied extensively. Some are monogamous and mate for life while others are non-monogamous. When monogamous prairie voles are separated by a physical barrier, they work very hard to regain access to their mate. Non-monogamous prairie voles do not work as hard. Monogamous prairie voles have far more oxytocin receptors in the nucleus accumbens, the brain area associated with motivation, craving, and pursuit. This links attachment circuitry to reward and motivational pathways.
Human literature on oxytocin receptor expression and brain imaging shows that people experiencing intense grief and deep yearning often have heightened levels of oxytocin receptors within brain regions associated with craving and pursuit. Persistent counterfactual thinking, yearning, desire, and impulsivity to reach out may reflect higher oxytocin receptor density or more oxytocin in motivation-related brain areas. This does not mean such individuals are more capable of attachment than those who move through grief more quickly. People move through grief at different rates, influenced by both psychological and neurochemical factors.
A study published in Biological Psychology titled "Emotional disclosure for whom? A study of vagal tone in bereavement" explored whether written disclosure of emotional connection would help people move through grief. The study also examined the vagus nerve, which is bidirectional between brain and body and associated with parasympathetic functions. Exhales slow heart rate through increased vagal tone.
Thirty-five participants completed a writing exercise over weeks. The written disclosure group wrote about what happened when a loved one died, their deepest emotions and thoughts, and memories. They were also asked to write a letter to the person lost. The control group wrote about how they used their time with no heavy emotional content.
The initial hypothesis was that writing about attachment would help people move through grief by experiencing the attachment without counterfactual thinking. No difference was found between groups until vagal tone was examined. A subset of individuals with high vagal tone and greater respiratory sinus arrhythmia benefited more from the writing exercise.
For those able to feel the relationship between breathing, heart rate, and vagal tone, the writing exercise was beneficial because they were better able to access feelings of attachment rather than disengaging from them. This relates to the three-part map of space, time, and attachment. Accessing emotional states by writing or thinking about someone engages bodily and mind states associated with attachment, which supports moving through grief.
Tools exist that support healthy transitioning through grief and are distinct from the neural map involving space, time, closeness, and attachment discussed previously. Everything exists in the context of baseline physiology. Learning, relationships, immune system function, and health operate far better when sleeping well with a pattern of being awake during the daytime and asleep at night.
A particular feature exists in diurnal patterns involving the release of cortisol, which is linked to temperature rhythms and can increase temperature leading to waking. In a healthy individual, cortisol is somewhat high around waking, reaches its highest level about 45 minutes post-waking, then drops gradually. By about 4pm, when body temperature tends to start dropping, cortisol tends to be very low and remains low throughout the night during sleep.
A paper titled "Diurnal cortisol in complicated and non-complicated grief slope differences across the day" explores the relationship between cortisol rhythms and grieving. Figure 1 shows that people experiencing complicated grieving have significantly higher cortisol levels at 4pm and 9pm compared to those with non-complicated grieving.
Modulating the foundation of life to establish cortisol rhythms, sleep patterns, and patterns of autonomic arousal and catecholamine release positions individuals to navigate grief optimally. Getting adequate sleep at night and establishing normal cortisol patterns is very important for those heading into or challenged with grief.
The most powerful way to establish an early day cortisol peak and very low cortisol late in the day is to view sunlight very close to waking. If the sun is not out upon waking, turn on as many bright lights as possible. Having an early cortisol peak and very low cortisol at 4pm and 9pm reflects a properly regulated autonomic nervous system, means being alert during the day, and tightly correlates with the ability to sleep at night.
Dedicate periods of time ranging from 5 to 45 minutes or longer, perhaps daily or every other day, to rational grieving. Rational grieving involves clear acceptance of the new reality that the person, animal, or thing no longer exists in the same space-time dimensionality, while holding onto and anchoring to the attachment that existed. This anchors to the depth and intensity of attachment as a way to push off from episodic memories and distance from them, since episodic memories lead to looking for the person in current reality, and those expectations are maladaptive.
The node of the map being anchored to is a very real component involving cells that represent the depth of attachment. Quality sleep on a regular basis supports emotion regulation and autonomic control, and ensures neuroplasticity takes place. Neuroplasticity is a two-part process involving the triggering of plasticity and the actual rewiring of connections.
Plasticity is triggered by focusing on attachment, feeling attachment, writing about attachment, and by the mere loss and intensity of the experience. The literal rewiring occurs during deep sleep and non-sleep deep rest (NSDR). NSDR scripts are short behavioral protocols lasting 10 to 30 minutes performed throughout the day that accelerate neuroplasticity.
The practice involves holding onto attachment and imagining and feeling the attachment as much as possible while being extremely rationally grounded and not trying to hold onto the past or anticipate the person walking in the room. When thinking about attachment, it tends to drag with it episodic memories and the rich catalog of experiences.
Prepare for more adaptive grieving by regulating catecholamines, particularly epinephrine. Tools from the mastering stress episode are useful. Increasing vagal tone by building the relationship between exhales and slowing of the heart rate, known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, provides useful tools.
Accessing a trained professional psychologist, psychiatrist, bereavement group, or all of the above provides proper support for grieving. The tools discussed are compatible and complementary to professional approaches. Lean into building episodic memories to create a richer set of experiences and emotional attachments. The process of grieving relates directly to how closely attached people are, and there are ways to move through it. The depth of attachments and the number and depth of meaningful experiences shared with others and animals makes life rich and worth living.
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