The connection of Emotions and BioChemestry

[Rafael Thundercat]

This last week I had an experience of loss and grief. And had a first had experience of how that affected my routine, social stamina, focus and more. 

So I found this explanation that opened up to me what was going on with me.

There are so much to learn about our nervous-system, out health and how things that seems simple and disconnected ate actually interwoven. Is all survival in the end of the day, but to realize the intteligence of this system that are our bodymind is wondefull.

This is the text:

Grief can come from losing a person, a relationship, a job, or a pet.
Any loss that mattered to you is enough to trigger the same neurobiological response.
Your brain built a detailed internal map of that person.
Where they fit in your day, when to expect them, what their presence meant to your sense of safety.
When they are gone, that map is still there.
Your brain keeps firing predictions that can no longer be confirmed, which neuroscientists describe as a mismatch between what the brain expects and what reality delivers.
This is why grief is not just emotional.
Multiple brain systems are disrupted at the same time: the regions that handle memory, emotional regulation, reward, and threat detection all shift in response to the loss.
The amygdalae, your brain's two threat-detection centers, enter a state of heightened activation.
This is why emotions can feel more intense, more unpredictable, and harder to regulate during grief.
The prefrontal cortex, which handles reasoning, decision-making, and focus, becomes less active.
That is the neuroscience behind brain fog.
You are not struggling because you are weak.
Your brain's executive functions are genuinely reduced.
The hippocampus, which stores memory, gets flooded.
It is processing an enormous volume of autobiographical memories tied to the person you lost, which leaves fewer resources for forming new ones or retaining everyday information.
EEG studies show grief and depression are associated with elevated theta wave activity.
Theta rhythms normally rise before sleep or during deep inward processing.
In grief, they can persist through waking hours, contributing to that heavy, slowed feeling many people describe.
The reward system is also affected.
Research shows the nucleus accumbens, a brain region tied to motivation and craving, shows disrupted activity in bereavement, which helps explain the low drive and emotional flatness that often follow loss.
Cortisol, the stress hormone, rises sharply in acute grief.
In the short term this is a survival response.
Over time, elevated cortisol suppresses immune function, disrupts sleep, and worsens mood.
Sleep becomes harder, and that makes everything else harder.
Research links poor sleep during bereavement to increased grief symptoms, reduced emotional processing, and slower recovery.
Sleep is when the brain consolidates emotional memories and begins to integrate loss.
Neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor describes grieving as a form of learning.
The brain has to update thousands of stored predictions about the person who is gone.
That updating takes time and repetition, which is part of why grief does not resolve quickly.
What supports recovery
Movement, even light walking, helps regulate cortisol and supports the neurochemical systems disrupted by grief.
Maintaining small routines gives the nervous system a sense of predictability when everything else feels uncertain.
Social connection also plays a role.
Safe, familiar relationships help re-engage the reward circuits in the brain and provide the kind of co-regulation that calms the nervous system when it is in a prolonged stress state.
These changes are not permanent.
The brain has neuroplasticity, the ability to remodel itself.
With time and support, the networks disrupted by loss reorganize.
Healing is a biological process, not just a mental one.
If grief feels unmanageable or is not lifting over time, professional support can help.
Approaches like grief-focused therapy are shown to support brain recovery by working directly with the emotional and cognitive disruption that loss creates.

Ps: I watched the video "How to Forgive Anyone who hurted you" from Actualized.org and with 1 gram of Mushrooms that lead me into a Catharsis that is still lingering till now.