Grief After a Sudden Loss: When the Body Stays in Shock

Maybe this sounds familiar. Months have passed since the phone call. People have gone back to their lives, and you are managing the shopping and the school run. Yet every time your phone rings unexpectedly your whole body goes cold, and you cannot think of the person you lost without seeing that hospital corridor.

Grief is not an illness. It is what love does when someone is gone, and it takes the time it takes. This article is about something narrower: what can happen in the body when a loss arrives with shock.

Grief is not a problem to solve

There is no correct way to grieve and no date by which you ought to be "better". Some days are bearable and some are not, often for no reason you can name. Anniversaries, a song in a shop or the smell of someone's cooking can bring it all back, years later. That is not going backwards. It is part of carrying someone with you.

Nothing in neurofeedback, or in any other approach, should try to take your grief away or hurry you through it. Missing someone is not a symptom.

Grief does not need to be fixed. It needs room, and a body steady enough to hold it.

When the body stays in the moment of loss

Sometimes a loss comes with trauma. It may have been sudden: an accident, a heart attack, violence, a suicide. You may have been there, or found the person, or had to make impossible decisions in a hospital. Or it may have followed a long illness in which you had to stay strong for months without a break.

In moments of extreme shock, the brain's alarm system is thought to take over, and what you saw, heard and felt can be stored in a raw, vivid form. Normally a memory is filed away with a sense of "that happened then". One common explanation is that after a shock that filing may not be completed, so the memory can keep returning as if it is happening now.

When this happens, the experience can go beyond sorrow:

• Images of the death or the moment of hearing the news that push in uninvited
• A jolt of panic at ordinary things such as a ringing phone, sirens or a hospital smell
• Feeling numb and far away, as if watching life from behind glass
• Broken sleep, nightmares or dread at bedtime
• A body that is always braced: tight chest, shallow breathing, exhaustion
• Being unable to think of the person at all without being flooded

That last one is often the most painful. The shock stands between you and your memories, so that the person's last hours crowd out the many years that came before. We write more about how the body holds shock in trauma and the nervous system.

How neurofeedback may support you

Neurofeedback is a gentle, non-invasive form of brain training. Sensors resting on your scalp read your brain's electrical activity. A computer gives soft feedback through sound or images when your brain moves towards a calmer, more settled rhythm. The sensors only read. Nothing is sent into your brain.

Neurofeedback does not erase memories, and it does not lessen love. It is not aimed at your grief at all. What it may do is help a nervous system that has been stuck on high alert, or shut down in numbness, to find its way back towards steadier ground. One rhythm often encouraged is alpha, a slower brainwave linked with being awake and at ease.

The hope is that, when the body is less braced, sleep may improve a little, the startle reactions may soften, and it may become possible to look at a photograph or tell a story about the person without being overwhelmed. The sadness remains, as it should. The aim is only that it is less tangled up with terror. Results vary, there is little research on neurofeedback for grief specifically, and no one can promise how it will be for you.

Support alongside other care

Neurofeedback works alongside your doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist, not instead of them. Grief counselling, a support group, your faith community and the people who knew your person are all part of being held through this. If your doctor has prescribed an antidepressant or any other medication, please do not stop or change it without the doctor who prescribed it.

Please see your doctor if you are unable to eat or sleep for long stretches, if you cannot manage daily tasks, or if the heaviness is deepening instead of slowly shifting. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or of not wanting to go on, contact your doctor or the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) straight away.

If you decide to try neurofeedback, every client begins with a 19-channel brain map at our practice in Krugersdorp, which takes about an hour and a half. Training sessions are 45 to 60 minutes and start with a short check-in on how you are feeling. You can read about a first visit on our what to expect page. If the nights are the hardest part, our article on chronic insomnia may help, and hope as an antidote is a quieter read for a difficult day.

Common questions

Will neurofeedback make me forget or stop missing them?

No. Neurofeedback does not remove memories and it is not meant to reduce your love or your sorrow. Its aim is to help a nervous system that is stuck in shock to settle, so that remembering is less physically overwhelming. The hope is that you can then think about the person with more warmth and less panic. Results vary.

How do I know if I am stuck or simply grieving?

There is no timetable for grief, and deep sadness for a long time is normal. It may be worth seeking extra help if intrusive images, panic, numbness or sleeplessness are not easing at all, or if daily life has become unmanageable. A doctor or psychologist can assess this with you. Asking for help does not mean you are grieving wrongly.

Do I have to talk about how they died?

No. The training works with your brain's activity in the present, so you do not need to describe what happened. Each session starts with a short check-in on how you are feeling. If you would like to talk through the events themselves, a grief counsellor or psychologist is the right person for that.

Your grief is yours, and it honours someone who mattered. If the shock around it is keeping your body from resting, and you would like to talk about gentle support, you are welcome to contact Irine in your own time.