Psychologist & grief expert Mary-Frances O'Connor on how our brains learn from love and loss

Episode 19 Psychology professor and author Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor explains how our expectations encoded in the brain impact our grief when we lose someone we love (through death, divorce, or estrangement). She also illustrates why our brains have to learn over and over that someone is truly gone and why some people experience more intense, persistent and prolonged grief.

Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor is an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona Department of Psychology, where she directs the Grief, Loss, and Social Stress Lab. Her research focuses on the wide-ranging emotional responses to bereavement. Dr. O’Connor also studies difficulties adapting following the death of a loved one, termed prolonged grief. She believes that a clinical science approach toward the experience and physiology of grief can improve psychological treatment. Dr. O’Connor’s recent book, The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss has garnered praise from peers and literary critics alike.  Connect with Mary-Frances through her website 

In this episode, (in order) we talked about…

*The impact of time and experiences on the intensity of longing

*The grief metaphor of the missing table in a familiar room

*Why our brains continue to account for our predictions not being true anymore

*Why people avoid spaces after the loss of a loved one or a break-up

*The “Gone But Everlasting” theory: why it’s so difficult to learn that our loved ones are gone

*How our brains are encoded when we have a bonded relationship with someone

*How “Continuing Bonds” work after we’ve lost a loved one (dead or alive)

*Prolonged grief: why some people continue to revisit memories of lost loved ones

* The difference between wanting and liking and why someone might be more drawn to one feeling over the other

*The use of “Yearning in Situations of Loss” scale for those who experience bereavement, a break-up or homesickness

*The need for grief education among psychologists, psychiatrists and the general public

 Quotes

“The real world and our internal map of the real world sometimes don’t match up….There are tons of times when you walk into a room and your loved one should be there. The internal map of your world says, ‘My loved one will be there.’ But when they’re not and that expectation is so strong, we often have a very visceral reaction. 

“I’m not suggesting learning means forgetting….Having new experiences does not mean you are going to forget that close and important relationship you had in those places.”

“That encoding, that everlasting belief, is critical when our loved one is alive. That’s what keeps us returning to them. That’s what keeps us seeking them out…When our loved one dies, our brain still believes for a long time that they’re out there somewhere. It’s still reaching for them because it has a solution. And that solution is, ‘Go get them!’ But after a death or a divorce or estrangement, that’s not a solution anymore.”

“It is normal many years later to continue to talk about the person and have waves of grief. What is challenging is when those waves of grief (make you feel) like your current life has no purpose without this person. Or you don’t know who you are without this person. Or you feel estranged from the people around you because you feel bitter they haven’t had a loss and you have.”  

 “Our attachment relationships are as important to our survival as food and water…If someone hasn’t had water for a long time, they’re going to be incredibly thirsty and thinking about water all the time, but you’d never describe them as addicted t