Grief can impact people in many different ways. While we often associate it with extreme sadness and emotions like denial and anger, the lingering effects of grief can do so much more.
The grieving process can even contribute to “brain fog”, affecting your memory and cognitive processes as you try to work through your loss and move forward.
Let’s take a closer look at how grief can affect your thinking, why it happens, and what you can do to start feeling more like yourself again.
Grief and Cognition
When you’re grieving, it can be difficult to focus on anything else. The distraction caused by loss often makes it difficult to stay focused. Some people even have a preoccupation with the person they lost, which can take over just about every thought and make it difficult to concentrate.
Grief can also cause memory lapses. You might have a hard time remembering simple things like names, dates, or even appointments you’re supposed to keep. It should come as no surprise that these lapses can impact everything from relationships to your career.
Even if you don’t have a hard time remembering, grief can contribute to attention issues, and actually slow down the way you process information. This makes it easy to feel overwhelmed, so you might have a hard time making decisions or prioritizing tasks. This can directly impact your day-to-day life and start to contribute to other problems.
Why Does This Happen?
So, why is there a direct connection between grief and cognitive processes? A big part of it has to do with the way the brain processes stress.
When you’re met with an extremely stressful situation, including the loss of someone you love, your body releases specific hormones that can disrupt normal cognitive function. You’re also more likely to experience a hormonal imbalance when it comes to serotonin and dopamine. These imbalances can directly affect your mood and the way you think.
Certain areas of the brain deal specifically with emotion and mood. When those areas are disrupted by stress, it can slow down the way you think, make it hard to stay focused, and affect your memories.
What Can You Do?
First, it’s important to remember that some cognitive changes during the grieving process are normal. The severity of these changes can vary from person to person, but most of them are coping mechanisms your brain puts in place to help you work through the stress and loss.
However, if memory loss and slower cognitive processing are impacting your overall quality of life, it might be time to reach out for help.
Grief impacts people differently. There’s no ideal timeline, and there’s no perfect way to get through the process of losing someone. But forward motion is important, even if it’s slow. If you’re feeling stuck or completely preoccupied by your loss, working through the stages of grief on your own might not be possible.
Things like self-care are important. Getting enough sleep, staying active, and leaning on the people you love can make a big difference. But, it could also be time to work with a mental health professional to help you work through the grieving process in safe, healthy ways.
If you’re concerned that grief is affecting your memory and cognitive process in a way that’s negatively impacting your life, don’t hesitate to reach out and set up a consultation for grief therapy soon. Together, we’ll work through the stages of grief so you can not only move forward with your life, but learn coping methods that will allow your mind to start processing in healthy ways again.
