Understanding the Neuroscience of Grief: Why You Feel What You Feel (and How Healing Really Works).
By Kacy Mathis, LPC Associate — Resilient Mind Counseling and Coaching, PLLC
Grief isn’t just sadness. It’s the ache in your chest when you wake up and remember what’s gone. It’s the exhaustion that hits out of nowhere. It’s the fog that makes it hard to think straight or find motivation for even simple tasks.
When you’re grieving, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or even a life change you didn’t expect, it can feel like you’re losing parts of yourself too. Clients often tell me, “I feel crazy,” or “I should be over this by now.” But here’s the truth: you’re not broken. Your brain is doing exactly what it’s designed to do when it experiences loss.
That’s where the Neuroscience of Grief comes in, a framework that helps us understand what’s happening inside our brain and body when we experience loss, and why healing takes time.
The Pain: Grief Is a Full-Body Experience
When we think of grief, we usually think of emotions such as sadness, anger, or guilt. But grief isn’t just emotional. It’s physical.
The brain treats emotional loss a lot like physical pain. The same neural pathways that process physical hurt light up when we lose someone or something deeply meaningful. That’s why your body might ache, your stomach might churn, or your chest might feel heavy. It’s also why you might feel so tired. Grief requires enormous energy.
The limbic system, the emotional center of your brain, goes into overdrive. Your stress hormones spike. Your sleep and appetite get thrown off. Your concentration drops. You might even feel like you’re living outside your body.
This is your brain trying to protect you, keeping you hyper-aware of danger, scanning for what’s safe or unsafe, and holding onto memories of your loved one or your old life. It’s not dysfunction; it’s survival.
The Agitation: “Why Can’t I Just Move On?”
One of the hardest parts of grief is the internal battle between your head and your heart.
You might know, logically, that life has to keep moving forward, but your body and emotions don’t always agree. The brain doesn’t process loss as a single event; it experiences it as a rupture in attachment. That means every reminder, an old song, a familiar scent, an anniversary, can trigger a new wave of pain.
Your nervous system is trying to reconcile the difference between what was and what is. It’s like your brain keeps sending search signals, “Where are they? Where is that part of my life?” even though it knows things have changed.
This tug-of-war can make you feel frustrated with yourself. You might think you should “be doing better” or that time alone should have fixed it. But when grief feels stuck, it’s not because you’re weak. It’s because your body and brain are still trying to integrate the loss into your new reality.
The Solution: Healing Starts with Understanding Your Brain
Here’s the hopeful part: when you understand how grief works in the brain, you can begin to heal with more compassion and less self-criticism.
Through my training in the Neuroscience of Grief, I help clients reconnect with themselves by understanding what’s actually happening inside them. We focus on:
Regulating the nervous system. Learning how to calm the body helps reduce emotional overwhelm. Through breathwork, mindfulness, and grounding techniques, you can teach your brain that you’re safe again.
Naming what’s happening. When we give language to our experience—“I’m feeling disoriented because my brain is adjusting to loss”—it creates distance from the chaos and allows healing to begin.
Integrating the loss. Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It means finding a way to carry your loss differently, one that honors what you loved while making room for who you’re becoming.
Reconnecting to meaning. Grief often changes how we see the world. Together, we explore what this loss has taught you about love, resilience, and connection, helping you move toward a life that feels grounded and hopeful again.
Grief work is not about “getting over it.” It’s about learning to live with the reality of loss without letting it define every part of your day.
The Hope: Your Brain Can Heal
The most powerful thing I share with my clients is this: your brain and body want to heal. Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and adapt, means new pathways can form over time. You can re-learn how to feel joy, safety, and connection, even after heartbreak.
Healing doesn’t erase the pain, but it softens it. It allows you to remember without reliving. It gives you permission to feel sadness and peace, to carry love and loss at the same time.
If you’re walking through grief right now, please know this: you’re not alone, and there’s nothing wrong with you. Your brain is doing its best to make sense of what your heart already knows—it hurts because it mattered.
When you’re ready, I’d be honored to walk beside you. Together, we can help your mind and body learn how to rest, recover, and reconnect with life again.
Ready to begin your healing journey?
If you’re looking for grief counseling in Beach City, Texas, Baytown, Texas, Mont Belvieu, Texas, Liberty, Texas, Crosby, Texas, Dayton, Texas, or anywhere in the state of Texas through online therapy, I’d love to meet you. Reach out today to schedule your first session.
About the Author
Kacy Mathis, LPC Associate, is a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate under the supervision of Kristin Walker, LPC-S, at Resilient Mind Counseling and Coaching, PLLC. Kacy specializes in helping teens, adults, couples, and families navigate the emotional challenges of anxiety, grief, burnout, and relationship stress.
With more than 15 years of experience as a public school teacher before entering the counseling field, Kacy brings a unique ability to understand the emotional, behavioral, and relational dynamics that shape both teens and families. She integrates compassion with evidence-based approaches such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), attachment-informed care, and the Neuroscience of Grief to help clients heal from loss, build emotional awareness, and strengthen relationships.
Kacy is known for her calm, approachable style and her ability to make clients feel safe, understood, and empowered. Whether she’s helping a couple rebuild connection after emotional distance, guiding a parent through the stress of raising strong-willed children, or supporting someone through the pain of loss, Kacy approaches each client with warmth and genuine curiosity.
She provides counseling services in person in Mont Belvieu, Texas, and to clients across Baytown, Beach City, Liberty, Crosby, Dayton, and the Greater Houston Area through secure online sessions.
If you’re looking for a counselor who will meet you where you are and help you move toward emotional balance, connection, and healing, Kacy would be honored to walk with you on your journey.