How do our brains handle grief? | Mary-Frances O'Connor | TEDxUArizona

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Published 2023-05-28
Mary-Frances O’Connor ponders these questions: Why does it take so long to learn our loved one is really gone and what does this mean for our own lives? Learning is hard in part because our brains can listen to two conflicting streams of information at the same time. Powerful neurochemicals, like oxytocin, opioids and dopamine, reward us for reuniting with our loved ones, and create deep, strong yearning in their absence. Thankfully, our attachment neurobiology is actually set up to learn to transform our relationship to our deceased loved one. Mary-Frances discusses how the human brain can create new pathways in order to learn what life is like after we experience a loss and become someone who carries both grief and the absence of another.

Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, and author of The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss. She directs the Grief, Loss and Social Stress (GLASS) Lab, which investigates the effects of grief on the brain and the body. O’Connor earned a doctorate from the University of Arizona in 2004 and completed a fellowship at UCLA. Following a faculty appointment at UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, she returned to the University of Arizona in 2012. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, and Psychological Science, and featured in Newsweek, the New York Times, and The Washington Post. Having grown up in Montana, she now lives in Tucson, Arizona. For more information go to www.maryfrancesoconnor.com/

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at www.ted.com/tedx
All Comments (21)
  • @sr2291
    Grief isnt only the physical loss of a loved one. It is loss of anything that was meaningful.
  • @rowenveratome
    I love how she described the paradox of walking in both the world of expectation and the world of sensory experience at once. It makes sense to connect that to grief.
  • @alinavsn
    You deserve to be with someone that would do everything it takes to keep you. Period.
  • @ME-bs6qh
    Grief is hard. I lost my partner June 2. Grief is love. 😢
  • @tammyicious
    You have helped me immensely with my grieving. I lost my husband on 9/1/23 after he had heart surgery and never recovered and he died two weeks after the surgery, still in the hospital. This video was so helpful that I will come back and refer to it often. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. 🙏
  • @RandyR
    Watched my dad die, during April 2013. A major first for me. My brother died on Sept 2 2021. Saw my mom, at hospice, the day before she died on 7/2/2022. Has given me more firsts than anytime before. Nothing can really prepare you for this. Have also lost 4 local friends. Does get a little easier over time. But the pain never totally leaves. I had wished a million times that I could wake up and all this would not be for real. It is. I picture it as an emotionally roller coaster. I have had a dream that I was calling my mom. Then I shook myself and realized i can't😣
  • @BFRIZZLE909
    I'm losing my closest friend to cancer, I'm lost I ache. It's hard yet I know I'll find peace in keeping her proud of me.
  • @magnolia8046
    Mary-Frances O’Conner- your theory on grief and loss has brought me so much peace and understanding as to what I’ve been going through. Thank you so much for all your hard work and sharing this information. You are such a gift.
  • @musiqkidchristian
    The stolen dining room table analogy is absolutely genius. The phantom pain of missing what once was.
  • @LucyLane07
    Ive never understood why i have been prescribed antidepressants because i am grieving. I feel loss of loved ones deeply. Even losing my pets . To me, its a natural process and one needs to go through the stages. The latest loss is my son's fiancee. She died of covid at 27yrs old and it was senseless and shocking. My grief extends to my sons loss of the love of his life.
  • @lynbeck2359
    I’ve lost a long time partner of 20 years (2020) & my precious two Shihtzu 2020&2022 heartbreaking 💔 grief is hard particularly during COVID isolation. Good talk to help understand our brains 🧠
  • @IdreesSarkani
    Theme of the conversation. Attachment is the root of all types of grief.
  • @no.1belleandsebastianfan
    I have only had a taste of grief. We rehomed the cat I grew up with. He used to comfort me when I cried, and sleep in my bed at night. I loved him. I felt the loss so deeply my Dad thought it was ridiculous. I would dream of him, see him out of the corner of my eye, and cry myself to sleep. It’s been a few years. I still love him.
  • @215juliusgirl
    The whole thing of that space where someone should be, I grieve others that way, some for 25 years, but I also keep on grieving myself, who I was before chronic illness, when I had energy and was able to work and have friends, family, future, hope. Having to match my present reality with the reality I knew before, to know how old I am and that I don’t remember anything since my 20s and I’m 42. I won’t remember writing this. I miss me. Yes, I miss my fiance who had cancer, my last serious boyfriend who killed himself, so many old friends, so many family members. But every day when I wake up, I have to remember that I’m not her anymore. I’m this.
  • @Doggieworld3Show
    Grief is fine. Facing reality, you can remember love and use those memories, those experiences, to realize that you have a purpose to breathe
  • @windygreene
    hi michelle - you are so powerful sharing these vulnerable moments in life. i hope that you and Kaeden continue to be blessed and have the right people on speed dial. i hope too that for the rest of us who stumble here, we all get the support we truly need, find the right people and give our loved ones the love that they deserve. happy easter as well❤
  • @kathrynmonaco-douglas9003
    I have lost my spouse and a child. I facilitate bereavement support groups for close to two decades. Widowednotalone ( no profit) I read your book and it gives much needed answers for what’s happening in the brain. Which helps us to understand why emotionally it never completely leaves us. We move forward but we always feel attached. It also is spiritually that two become one. Ty for all your studies to help try to understand.