I listened to Huberman's podcast on Grief again. The first time was just before or after my mom died, I don't remember exactly as much of that time is a blur. I only watched about half of it, his podcasts are almost 2 hours long and his info can be a bit overwhelming. I love knowing the science behind stuff but he (like me!) tends to digress a lot. He also delves WAY into detail, which again I like but 2 hours is a long time for me to just listen to something.
So now that I have had some time to digest it, I am going to Cliff Notes it, not just for you, but for me to refer back to when I find myself falling back into unhealthy, or rather unhelpful, ways of grieving.
I am going to preface this with the usual, there isn't a right or wrong way to grieve. We all grieve differently. His podcast is about the most "adaptive" way to grieve and from what I gather what he means by that is there are some things you can do to aid in moving the grief process along to a less painful place. And there are ways that may prolong the amount of pain or the intensity of that pain. It is up to the individual if they are content to wallow or if they want to feel better, no judging going on by him or me, just providing info if you want to feel better.
When we lose someone (or a pet or thing, as he points out nearly every time thus making the podcast longer than it had to be...maybe just state in the beginning that he's talking about all grief, not just the loss of a person) the grief we feel is proportional to our connection to them. Which seems quite obvious, right? It's also related to how often you saw them and your physical distance from them. He refers to these 3 aspects frequently. Space, time and closeness. He goes into great depth on the scientific reasons for how his tip on making recovery less painful is supported by research. I'll spare you all of the mumbo jumbo and sum it up by saying our brains have different storage places and pathways for memories for loved ones. He states that the pain we feel when we lose someone is because of a yearning for something we can never have. It's the brain "reaching" for something, he compares it to being thirsty and a glass of water is just out of your reach and that you ache, feel frustrated, feel anguish...because you can not get to it. It's the same type of neural pathway for the loss of a loved one. It's unquenchable. So how do we deal with that?
He says we must not deny the depth of our connection to the person, we must not lie to ourselves that they weren't THAT important and try to move on too quickly. Though that may seem like an effective way, it doesn't really work. Instead we should spend as much time as we are mentally able (5- 30 or even 45 minutes every day or every other day) actively thinking about how important this person was to us....BUT....not by remembering the past. This is the key, and obviously very difficult thing to do. I have been trying to figure out how you think of someone and NOT think about a memory of them, it seems natural and the only way but it isn't. To lessen your pain, lessen your grief, we must create a separation of our love for them from our memory of them. What happens in our brain, proven by MRI's, is that when we think of them through memories our brain starts trying to figure out when and where we will see them again...which is what causes the yearning and thus the pain, because it can't answer those questions, it's an endless reaching. If we can think of our love for them and create a new place and time for when we will see them that yearning will be satisfied. He calls this remapping our relationship to them. We literally need to remap what our brain does when this person comes to mind. I can picture it in my mind as, I think of my mom and remember her smile at a particular event and my brain sees her image and starts a search, a never ending quest for when and where I will get to see her smile like that again, and, of course, the answer is I won't. So I have to create a new path for my brain, I think of my mom's smile and it makes me remember when I was on the top of Mt, San Jacinto and she spoke to me in the clouds, now I can associate her with a place and time that still can exist, I just need to look to the sky.
All of this is my interpretation of what he's trying to say. I could be way off base on how to do it. He repeats over and over that we have to honor the depth of our connection without relating it to the past. My way of doing that is to think of my love for my mom and think of her as here, but not in her body state, so I solve the problem of where and when. She is here, right now. I don't need to see her because she is here. I don't need to wait for my death because the when is now, she's already with me.
I am guessing that once we can start to think this way, the memories will be easier to bear. I have found that they have been getting easier for me. I still relapse into moments when I "can't believe" she is gone, the denial. I think I have resolved the anger, but I realize the process is a tricky one and I can go back to that stage again as well. I am not sure I am quite at the acceptance stage. Not fully anyway. I also think I realize it's ok to cry any time I want to, I don't have to feel like I'm ok means I never cry about her being gone again. I know that I don't need to compare my grief to anyone else's but that's a human thing to do. I realize I may be more inclined to try to move through the grief and not feel stuck because of how I have spent the last 2 years. At the same time, I still haven't been able to listen to the voicemail I have from her. Not yet.
My mom was so proud of me for learning mindfulness and meditation and stoicism. Learning to bring gratitude into my life every day and stop focusing on negativity. I know she wants me to continue that. Huberman also discussed that there was a study that showed people with stronger vagal tone tended to experience grief "easier" (not sure that's really the right word- they were less likely to have prolonged or complicated grief). He went into great depth on vagal tone and parasympathetic and sympathetic responses, but basically what I got was that people who learn to control their breath, which helps control heart rate, tend to handle grief "better". One of the things I have been doing the past 2 years is a lot of breath work, not just mediation but trying to play around with longer exhales, etc. I am hoping that it is helping me.
He also mentioned studies relating to cortisol levels and the ability to process grief. In brief people who don't get enough good sleep have cortisol spikes in the late afternoon or early evening that can affect your ability to grieve. He refers you to a podcast on improving sleep, but that will have to wait for another day for me, although I know I could definitely use tips. One tip he did give that he really insisted is essential is to within 30 minutes of waking to get outside and get at least 10 minutes of outdoor light, sunlight is best, but just being outside is good enough and if you can't get outside to expose your eyes to as much light as you can indoors, it is crucial for regulation of cortisol and other circadian rhythm stuff. It certainly seems like an esy enough thing to do...so I guess I need to start a new habit...get my butt outside ASAP.
I think I am doing ok most days, though I still have my fair share of crying, but again, I am not sure I should look at that as a gauge of anything.
One thing I still struggle a lot with is control. I find myself constantly reminding myself of what I can control....and it's only one thing....how I react to things. That's it. I can't control anything else. There are annoyances in my life and the only thing I can do is control how I react...I make them an annoyance by reacting to them that way, I just need to brush it off with a "It is what it is" or if it's something I can control and change than I need to change it. I also find myself worrying about my dad and my sister, wanting to help them, to take away their pain, but again...not something I can control. My mom's death sucks, it's going to cause all of us pain, and the only thing we can do is whatever the other person asks us to do, whether it's just being there or a hug or an I love you. There's no magic wand, no pill to take, we just have to hope that time will start to make it better, but still understanding that the grief will always be a part of us now.
Link to the podcast https://hubermanlab.com/the-science-and-process-of-healing-from-grief/
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