To mourn the loss of something or someone – not just as a result of death – is a perfectly natural experience. But as with any other stress-inducing situation, we should be mindful of how we are mourning, and the impact it has on us and the people and world around us. It also indicates an attachment to that person or thing. The heavier and longer the mourning experience is, the stronger the attachment.
Loss-aversion is a very natural human trait – it’s literally wired into our brain. But being overly attached to something will only ever bring unnecessary suffering. I have mourned the loss of loved ones – both through death and breakups, very heavily, and the loss of my health. So much so that they have shaped my entire adult life. Obviously there are many other factors that have also had an influence, but the degree to which mourning – and the way I have mourned – has impacted my life cannot be overstated.
I have let the feelings of loss consume me, and tear me apart – time and again. There are two deaths and two breakups, and a life-changing illness that I have let affect me to such a profound level, that each was a turning point in my life, and each one plunged me deeper into a hole of my own digging. One death was at the age of 7 – that of my brother who died of leukaemia – and I had no tools to manage such an experience, and no concept or understanding of how it was shaping me. This inevitably set the foundations for how I dealt with loss from that point onwards.
The other life-changing death, at the age of 19, and the two breakups were a different matter. I believe the reason I mourn so deeply, and am so heavily impacted by loss is because of what my 7-year-old self witnessed and experienced – it’s around the age of 7 that your brain chemistry actually settles. As an adult I did nothing constructive to address this unresolved trauma, and so my brain chemistry remained as it was, and has influenced my behaviour and response to loss unchecked ever since.
When you experience trauma at a young age this also affects your amygdala – the old chimp brain that dictates emotional and fight-or-flight responses – making it overactive. Everything passes through there before reaching the younger, rational, human brain – the prefrontal cortex, and so if it’s overactive, it makes it harder for the prefrontal cortex to have a chance to kick into action and manage the situation.
Thankfully our brain is plastic, and through neuroplasticity we can build new neurological pathways, rebuild or replace old ones, through changes in our behaviour and by other natural means. So, we can break old habits and replace them with new ones, we can replace old traumas with new memories, and build a brain that thrives on activities and behaviours that are positive to the physical, mental and spiritual self.
As an adult I am still acting out the feelings and behaviours of my 7-year-old self, because that is how my brain – both its structure and its chemistry, is currently built. Losing something or someone brings with it not just feelings of loss, but of profound sadness. It also brings intense feelings of not being good enough, of guilt that I could somehow have done something different, as well as survivor’s guilt, and feeling that I was at fault. I have carried these traumas with me all my life, and let them dictate my life…not for the better.
Mourning should be about letting go of the person or thing you lost, and finding the most effective and least destructive and disruptive way of doing that – no longer having an attachment to them in the form they once took, but accepting their form in the present. However, so long as we allow traumas experienced by our younger selves to influence how we mourn, then we are doomed to repeat the same destructive patterns time and again.
I am exploring how we can restructure our brains to address traumas and their influence over us. Ultimately we don’t have to act out based on my younger self – we can choose to act as the person we are now. This of course is easier said than done and needs a lot of work to achieve – I believe we first need to reconnect with our younger selves, sit with them, forgive them for the impact they have had on you, and give them the love and support they needed and deserved at the time of the trauma. By finding peace with them and the experience that traumatised we will be more able to let them go and their self-destructive influence over us. This will hopefully give space for our current selves – and our prefrontal cortex – to manage the situation more effectively.
Another aspect of the attachment that must be addressed is the impact of their absence on our present day. We may have a gapping hole in our hearts as a result of the loss, but we must ensure that this hole is filled with self-love and positive new experiences, and not left open to fester, not filled with people or material things in an attempt to replace what has been lost in a reactionary and ill-considered way. Trying to fill the hole by means of external things will never successfully fill that hole, leaving you yearning, while also maintaining an attachment with the past and the person or thing that has been lost.
We must instead focus on filling the hole with what we have, and with love and respect for ourselves. We must also work on forming a new relationship with the person or thing we have lost. Whether in death or in separation the person lives on in our memories and we should be grateful to have loved and been loved, and in health, we should always be grateful for what we have, what we have experienced, and focus on exploring the boundaries of what we can still experience.