Understanding the ‘Grieving Body’

Motivated by her personal experience, including the death of her mother when she was just 26 years old and her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, Mary-Frances O’Connor, Ph.D., has been studying the physical effects of grief for 25 years. The author of The Grieving Brain and her new book, The Grieving Body, was also inspired by the growing body of research that reveals how much our bodies are impacted by the death of a loved one.

“We are 21 times more likely to have a heart attack on the day a loved one dies than any other day of our life. That data, that clear research, has motivated us because it means there’s no doubt that grief has a physiological component,” she shared in an interview.

O’Connor says other sobering statistics also show the impact of losing a loved one. “In the first three months after the death of a loved one, a man whose wife has died is almost twice as likely to die as a married man during that same time,” she explained. Other studies have also shown that vaccines are less effective after loss, and our immune systems are impacted.

Her own MS diagnosis came as she was grieving the loss of her mother, and her grief taxed her immune system.

How Our Bodies Are Connected to Loved Ones

O’Connor says there are measurable positive physiological changes in our bodies when we are in a relationship. For example, our blood pressure drops when we get a hug from a loved one. So, when that person is gone, we need to adjust to the new reality. “If we have this dynamic system it means that when that person is amputated from our life, we have to figure out how to regulate our body without that external pacemaker,” O’Connor explains. 

What Happens to the Body During Grief

Because those who have experienced loss are not aware of how grief will affect them, their physical symptoms can be surprising and alarming. “We know that grief comes along with many physical symptoms,” O’Connor explains. “Over 80 percent of people report sensations in their chest in a research study. We do know that physical sensations are the norm when we look at the data, but it’s not something that we are told in advance and so it can be very alarming to us to have physical sensations we are not expecting, a lump in the throat, discomfort in the pit of our stomach, it can be alarming and also make us feel like we are going crazy.” In fact, she says these are some of the typical ways that humans respond. Trouble eating and sleeping are very common physical symptoms of grief, she says.

Self-Care for the Grieving Body

O’Connor says that when her mother died, she was not aware of how her loss was affecting her “grieving body.” “The body in many ways is sort of the ‘read out’ of how we are doing. I myself when my mother died, I hadn’t spent a lot of time aware of my physical state, paying any attention to how much tension I was carrying in my body or whether I was breathing in a shallow way. The problem is that if we are not aware of the ‘read out’ of how our body is doing, we can’t respond in ways that support the grieving body.” She says she had to learn to pause and pay attention to the information her body was sending her. O’Connor says that by listening to our bodies, we can find coping strategies. 

She also says if caregivers have been putting off their own medical care, with their loved one’s passing, this is the time to make sure they get back on track with dentist’s appointments, mammograms, and their regular medical care. Meditation and movement can also be helpful for those on the grief journey.

Ways to Support Grieving Friends and Family

O’Connor says that although our societal reluctance to talk about grief has improved during her 25 years of research, it still can be difficult to engage in conversations with those who are grieving. “One of the reasons we are so afraid to talk about people’s experience of loss is that as the person standing next to someone who is grieving, we think it is our job to fix it, to make them feel better. But in fact, that’s not our job. That’s an impossible task. Our job really is to witness what they are going through, to offer them hope that they won’t feel this way forever, and to give them reassurance that we will be there with them whatever that path may look like until they are in a place where they have restored a life for themselves,” she explained. 

O’Connor says by recognizing our own discomfort and being compassionate toward ourselves and others, we can engage in conversations that might otherwise feel uncomfortable and make us feel less isolated from one another.

O’Connor says her book aims to help those in grief by offering tips to grievers on listening to their bodies, learning a “toolbox” of coping strategies, and borrowing some hope from her own experience.

Mary-Frances O'Connor is a Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry Professor at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on the physiological correlates of emotion, in particular, the wide range of physical and emotional responses during bereavement, including yearning and isolation. 

Photo courtesy Eric Godoy.

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