How Grief Can Trigger Neuroplastic Pain: Understanding the Brain and Body Connection

Grief doesn't just affect our emotions. Profound loss can also affect the nervous system and trigger or amplify chronic symptoms, such as neuroplastic pain. Understanding this connection can help us respond to our symptoms with compassion rather than fear.

This year I have experienced loss myself in several ways, and have supported others going through their own grief. It has made me think about how loss affects both our mind and body.

Grief is about more than death

We often associate grief with bereavement, but grief can follow any significant loss — a relationship, a beloved pet, our health, a career or business, a sense of security, or the future we had imagined.

When we lose someone we love, we don't simply lose their physical presence. We lose shared experiences, conversations, familiarity and the sense that they are part of our world. Sometimes, it can feel as though we have lost a part of ourselves too.

One loss can awaken another.

When I lost a friend this year, I was surprised by how much it brought up the grief I experienced when I lost my mum many years ago. My friend had also been a good friend of my mum's and was around the same age as her. She was someone I could talk to about my mum and had become a mother figure in my own life. So losing her opened up another layer of grief connected to my mum.

How grief can trigger the survival system

When we experience profound loss, our sense of safety can be shaken. The future may suddenly look different. Familiar routines change. We may feel vulnerable, uncertain or afraid.

Our brain is constantly assessing what is happening and whether we are safe. Significant emotional stress can therefore increase nervous-system arousal and affect sleep, muscle tension, energy, attention and our sensitivity to bodily sensations.

We may feel constantly on edge, sleep badly, experience muscle tension or become much more aware of sensations in our body.

For someone who is already vulnerable to neuroplastic pain, or who has previously experienced mind-body symptoms, this heightened state of nervous-system protection may contribute to a flare-up or recurrence of symptoms.

The brain's alarm system and neuroplastic pain

Neuroplastic pain is real pain that can occur when the brain and nervous system have become sensitised and are generating pain as part of a learned protective response, even when there is no ongoing tissue damage that adequately explains the level of pain. The pain is not imagined. The brain is producing a genuine pain experience.

If your nervous system has learned that certain sensations, movements, situations or emotions are associated with danger, it can become increasingly vigilant for signs of threat.

When profound grief activates that protective system, this can contribute to a cycle of:

Loss → emotional distress → increased nervous-system arousal → greater attention to bodily sensations → increased protection → more pain or other symptoms.

The symptoms are real, but the danger signal may not accurately reflect what is happening in the body.

Why grief can be particularly powerful

Our relationships provide connection, familiarity and a sense of safety. When we lose someone important, our world changes. Our brain has to learn a new reality. And if the loss also involves trauma - for example, a sudden or distressing death - there may be an additional layer of nervous-system activation.

I've worked with clients who have experienced significant trauma around bereavement. Their grief isn't simply "I miss this person."

It may also contain:

• "I can't stop thinking about what happened."

• "I should have done something differently."

• "I didn't get to say goodbye."

• "I don't feel safe anymore."

That combination of grief, fear, guilt, anger and trauma can place a considerable load on the nervous system.

Grief isn't just sadness

Grief can contain many emotions: sadness, anger, guilt, regret, relief, fear, loneliness, longing and confusion. Sometimes laughter or moments of joy can appear alongside profound sadness.

We might think:

• I wish I had said that.

• I wish I had done more.

• Why did this have to happen?

• I'm angry that they were taken from me.

• I feel guilty for carrying on with my life.

These emotions can come in waves. There is no single correct way to grieve.

Can grief cause physical symptoms?

The mind and body are inextricably linked. I witnessed the sharp exacerbation of my mum's dementia following the death of her parents, who died within a couple of months of each other. In my work with mind-body symptoms, I've witnessed clients experience a recurrence or flare-up of symptoms such as pain during periods of significant grief or emotional upheaval.

The brain and nervous system are involved in producing every experience of pain, and they are influenced by what is happening in our lives.

Physical symptoms should always be appropriately assessed, particularly when they are new, severe or changing. But once appropriate medical causes have been considered, it can be helpful to explore the role that the brain, nervous system, emotions and life circumstances may be playing.

Grief, healing and the nervous system

We cannot protect ourselves from loss, however much we might wish we could. Life is a cycle of beginnings and endings, gaining and losing, holding on and letting go.

Perhaps grief doesn't always need fixing. Perhaps sometimes it needs to be witnessed, felt and held with compassion. And if grief has triggered physical symptoms, those symptoms don't necessarily need to be feared. In fact, I have noted in my client work that when physical symptoms are triggered, the client has not allowed themselves to go through the emotions of bereavement.

Sometimes healing begins when we learn that it is safe to feel the feelings that we once could not.

So if you are grieving someone or something at the moment, be gentle with yourself. You don't need to rush. You don't need to grieve in a particular way. And you don't need to justify why something is a loss.

If it mattered to you, it is okay to mourn it. Give yourself permission to pull inwards when you need to. Rest. Reflect. Remember. Cry when you need to. Laugh when you can. And slowly, in your own time, you may find yourself carrying the loss differently. Not because you have forgotten. But because you have made space for it within the story of your life.

If grief has triggered or intensified your physical symptoms

If you've noticed pain, fatigue or other physical symptoms appearing or becoming worse during a period of grief or emotional upheaval, it can be understandably frightening.

If you'd like to explore whether a mind-body approach could be relevant to your symptoms, I offer a free, no-obligation discovery call. We can talk about what you've been experiencing and whether I might be the right person to support you.

There is no pressure to book anything. Sometimes it can simply help to talk to someone who understands the connection between the mind, body and nervous system.

MH Wellbeing, Maria Hancock MSc GQHP

Specialist in Anxiety, Stress and Chronic Symptoms

Trauma-Informed Somatic Therapist, Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness Teacher, SIRPA Pain Recovery Practitioner

Local areas: Horley, Reigate, Redhill in Surrey and Crawley, Horsham, Copthorne in West Sussex. English Speaking Online Therapy.

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