Grief and the Brain: Why Clear Thinking Feels Impossible
Grief doesn’t just break your heart, it hijacks your brain.
If you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t concentrate, make a decision, or even remember what you were doing five minutes ago after a loss, the overwhelm of emotions was clouding your cognitive signals.
The emotional weight of grief has real, measurable effects on the brain and nervous system. Yet, we rarely talk about how deeply it impacts our mental capacity.
I remember when I realized that I needed to find some new tools to help me process my emotion.
I was at the top of my game in my work and one loss after another piled up. While I had a very supportive workplace, I couldn’t deny the need to seek help when I booked a trip on top of another.
You heard that right – a whole trip double booked – complete with flight and lodging. A few hours later that day it occurred to me that I had double booked and I was able to quickly cancel the second trip.
It’s scary when you feel like your ability to process information, pay attention, and think clearly is challenged! This is grief…and it’s normal and natural to have some degree of mental strain and confusion.
What Grief Really Does to the Brain
When you experience a significant emotional loss, your body and mind enter a state of emotional overload.
You may be flooded with thoughts, memories, regrets, and what-ifs. This emotional flood activates the brain’s limbic system (especially the amygdala), which processes fear and emotional threat.
In this overwhelmed state, the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, logic, and attention, becomes impaired.
This isn’t weakness. This is neurobiology.
The brain prioritizes survival and emotional regulation over productivity and planning.
The result? What many describe as “grief brain” or brain fog:
- Difficulty focusing on tasks or conversations
- Impaired short-term memory
- Trouble making even simple decisions
- Feeling disoriented or out of sync
- A sense of mental fatigue or numbness
Why “Keep Busy” and “Be Strong” Make It Worse
Culturally, many people are taught to push through grief, stay productive, or distract themselves.
Unfortunately trying to push through and suppress your emotions just compounds it.
When grief is not acknowledged or expressed, the emotional energy remains active beneath the surface, consuming bandwidth the brain needs for everyday functioning.
We Need to Normalize the Cognitive Side of Grief
In my work with clients using The Grief Recovery Method®, I often hear frustration and shame about not being able to “function” normally.
People think something is wrong with them. The truth is nothing is wrong. This is a part of how grief can manifest itself.
Grief experiences vary widely and yours is unique and individual to you.
Let’s normalize the cognitive symptoms of grief the same way we talk about emotional ones.
What Helps
- Gentle awareness: Simply understanding that grief affects your brain can relieve the shame of “not being yourself.”
- Emotional processing: Grief must be felt and expressed to be released. Suppressing it doesn’t protect you — it prolongs the mental strain.
- Prioritize sleep and rest: Your brain needs downtime to recover.
- Simplify decisions: When possible, reduce complexity in your daily life during intense grief.
If you’re struggling with grief related brain fog, you are not broken. You are human.
And healing is possible by giving it the space and support it deserves.
If you are struggling with ‘grief brain” and would like to know more about my work and The Grief Recovery Method please connect with me at info@energym.org
