Grief Doesn’t End When the Funeral is Over

The science behind grief and its impacts.

When Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler published On Grief and Grieving, looking at how we experience the five stages of grief, they took great pains to explain that it shouldn’t be thought of as a linear process. Despite their gentle instruction, they regularly received feedback from readers who, feeling misled by the book’s message as they bounced around the five stages from one day to the next, were trying to make sense of their new reality. 

It’s no surprise we try to paint-by-numbers our way through it; our culture still struggles to support those who are grieving. Instead, society pushes us to process our grief as though there is a singular, linear response with a checklist and timetable for recovery. Take our approach to compassionate leave. Currently employees can access a mere two days of paid leave per incident. Where we need connection and ritual following the death of a loved one, capitalistic structures force us to prioritise productivity at the expense of time and community. 

Through my training and lived experience with neuroplasticity and vagus nerve regulation, I’ve come to recognise the need for a new model for grief care—one that honours our nervous system and enables us to move through our grief in an embodied and whole-hearted way.

Because while we’re all going to lose someone eventually, often it’s only when we experience it for ourselves that we understand how momentous it is. Until then, grief is something that happens to other people.  

I was 32 when I got the call that my bother Sam has died by suicide at 34. To call him simply a brother feels inadequate. As kids, we were by each other’s side when our little brother Luke died of SIDS at only eight weeks old. As adults, we’d been international travel buddies, lived in share houses together and socialised in the same circles. He was my safe space, my cheerleader and my best friend.

When he died, I was crushed. 

Emotionally, I felt life’s very foundations collapse from underneath me. I experienced a sense of profound shock and felt untethered, like I didn’t know what, or where, home was anymore. Physically, I couldn’t eat, suffered severe insomnia and was crippled by persistent and debilitating stomach cramps. 

Through my work helping others repair their nervous system, I can now recognise these symptoms as a sign that my nervous system was in a state of dysregulation, reflecting the deep impact that emotional pain has on the body.

Much like stress and trauma, our reactions to grief are not just emotional, but physiological. Losing somebody can impact cardiovascular function, disrupt hormone levels, sleep rhythms, and immune processes. Insomnia, headaches, anxiety, tension, and fatigue are also common symptoms.

These changes to our brain’s neurochemistry, which is wired for connection with others, explain why the loss of a loved one shifts our nervous system from connection to protection when reality hits and we realise they are no longer available. Their absence threatens our security on a primal level.

Animal studies have found that when we lose an important connection, there’s an increase in stress hormones such as cortisol and corticosterone. In humans, when we fall in love with our spouse or child the brain encodes this bond, replacing the ‘you and me’ with a ‘we’. So when that loved one is no longer there, we experience it as a missing piece of ourselves. At a purely neural level, the representation of the ‘we’ now has a hole in it. This can alter our brain chemistry and realign our nervous system. 

Following the death of a loved one we may go into a textbook fight or flight response when our parasympathetic nervous system is activated. Marked by heightened anxiety, restlessness, anger, and agitation, this state is the body’s way of trying to mobilise energy in response to overwhelming pain. If you’ve ever known anyone that takes over funeral planning or clears out closests immediately after the funeral, it’s likely they are in a dysregulated state of fight or flight. 

Conversely, when our nervous system is dysregulated, the dorsal branch of the vagus nerve, which is responsible for our response to extreme stress or danger, leads us to immobilisation, shutdown or freeze. This is a state of collapse or dissociation associated with feeling numb, detached and emotionally distant. Anyone withdrawing from their social life or battling feelings of extreme exhaustion following the death of a loved one, is experiencing dorsal vagal shutdown. 

These are natural responses to the shock of grief however if the grief isn’t adequately processed our nervous system can become stuck in these states, recalibrating our system towards chronic hyperarousal (too much activation) or hypoarousal (too little activation). 

Rather than accept the resulting fear, anxiety and stress as our new state of being, we can use the knowledge of our nervous system responses to guide us through the grieving process and tune into what our bodies are trying to tell us. Interoception, the sense that helps us feel what's going on inside our body, is often critical in realigning the nervous system. An awareness of physical sensations, such as tightness in the chest or feelings of exhaustion becomes clues that help us decode the links between our emotions and bodily responses.

As we build the skill and capacity to ‘tune into’ the different states of our nervous system, we can cultivate the ability to be present with a wider and wider range of experiences.

This isn’t to say we passively accept what’s happening but we increase our capacity and flexibility to move with and also be with what’s happening. In neuroscience  speak, we widen the Window of Tolerance. 

This can support us when we’re triggered by individual events, circumstances or particular dates such as birthdays or the anniversary of a death. 

Ultimately, our biggest tool in processing grief is each other. A dysregulated nervous system is soothed by connection, whether through physical touch, comforting conversations, or by simply being with others who understand the experience of loss.

After losing both of my brothers, and working in the space of nervous system regulation, this knowledge didn’t make the grieving process any easier. However I do know if society better understands how we process grief, we can access a blueprint that will allow us to prepare for, and navigate more gently, one of the most difficult, and common, experiences we will ever face.

This holiday season, grief can feel even heavier. If you’re navigating loss or seeking tools to support yourself or others, I invite you to join me for a free, live webinar:

Grief, Loss, and The Nervous System
Tuesday, December 17th, 10–11am AEDT (Replay Available)
>> Save Your Seat <<