Title: Grief Psychology
Headings: Grief Psychology
Grief Psychology
Content: The power of the grief is likely to vary according to the strength of the lost relationship. When we grieve it involves a rich array of feelings and thoughts. Many are higher order mental processes such as hallucinations, grappling with a change of identity and trying to defend our minds against the most distressing aspects of grief. It is thought that as individuals we possess a complex representation of our loved ones in our brain. These stored memories have an expectation of certain consequences when in a relationship with someone. Our brains’ set off an alarm system when what we expect is different from what we actually experience. For example, not getting our usual feedback because someone is not there will set off an alarm reaction within us. It is there to trigger us to search for what is missing and re-establish communication. However when the outside world is different from what our brain tells us it should be like, based on its previous experience, ie a death has occurred and therefore there is a missing relationship, then the alarm reaction is futile as it cannot regain the contact and it simply continues to trigger again and again and again without the appropriate response to calm it down. Loved ones are a part of our own sense of self and therefore a gradual change of expectation within our stored memories has to come about for the signals in our brain to respond more appropriately to the new real situation presented;