What is traumatic grief?

Traumatic grief can come from a sudden loss where you’re unprepared, from witnessing the death or seeing disturbing images, or from violent death or loss.

• suicide

• homicide

• violent crime

• overdose

• disaster

• war

Many of these kinds of losses are also surrounded by stigma, leaving you socially isolated and feeling shame on top of the grief. Traumatic losses often leave behind unfinished business and a lack of closure. You may have symptoms similar to PTSD in addition to your grief.

The brain science behind traumatic grief

Normally, our brains try to make sense of the world by taking in our thoughts, feelings, and sensory information and then integrating it into a cohesive story that then gets encoded into memory. This process of narrative framing is interrupted during trauma, and the integrative step never happens. As a result, we get stuck in the emotions or memories around the loss, we don’t attach a sense of time and place to the memories so they always feel fresh and current, and since the story isn’t completed it lacks a sense of purpose or comprehension.

Part of the problem is that traumatic grief leads to a consistent activation of the amygdala. Normally, the amygdala is a part of a whole responsive system. When it’s consistently activated, other parts don’t function like they should.

The amygdala’s purpose is to help ensure your survival. It keeps you aware of potential threats and also your relationships. Its goal is to keep you safe, connect you with others, and respond to situations. When it’s affected by traumatic grief and overactivated, you might feel out of control, like you should have done more. You might notice your heart racing, constant tension, a tendency to hold your breath, or sleep disturbances. Your mind might go foggy, zoning out more than usual. You might feel scared, anxious, numb, or hopeless.

Because the amygdala responds quickly to threats, it depends on brain maps called schemas to make connections based on association. That’s why each loss you experience makes it more likely that you’ll experience trauma- if you haven’t fully grieved your previous losses, your brain can associate a new loss with the old ones in negative or unhelpful ways.

What you can do to help your traumatic grief

Here’s a quick 4 step exercise that can help you intentionally reshape your experience and avoid trauma symptoms. This exercise is meant to help your brain get out of the cycle of trauma responses by diving deep into a positive memory of an experience.

1. Think about a positive experience from your past or present. This doesn’t have to be related to your loss.

2. Tell yourself the story of that experience and focus on what made it special to you.

3. Tune into your sensory memories of that experience and spend time remembering it using all five senses.

4. Notice how your body responds to feeling good and how your brain feels after getting out of amygdala overactivation.

How therapy can help with traumatic grief

Therapy for traumatic grief focuses on helping you manage your trauma symptoms and process your loss. It often starts with helping you go through the process of integrating your traumatic memories so you can work toward meaning making. Along the way, your therapist will help you learn skills to regulate your mind and body to help you break trauma cycles both mentally and somatically. You’ll reduce the amount of mental and physical stress you’re experiencing, and you’ll develop more resilience.

Interested in working with me?

I offer online grief therapy for California residents. I work with many different kinds of grief, including traumatic grief. Request a free 15 minute consultation here, or learn more about me here.