Grief puts your brain in survival mode, impairing memory and focus. The fear center locks you in place, making you avoid work and life. Recovery means small rewarding actions and gently sidestepping triggers, not facing everything at once.
How does invisible loss affect our cognitive health and processes?
People say time heals all wounds. Actually, the longer time we are in that survival mode where we feel unwell, we feel stuck, we actually get so modified that we are not able to overcome it ever. People die in the waiting room. If you ask 10 people how do they feel when they wake up in the morning, 9 of them will say, I don't want to go to work, because they're living a very wrong life for them. So when you experience a tragedy, you go into that survival mode, and you will not leave that survival mode unless you slowly find a way to not trigger that fear center that's keeping you stuck in that place. The only way we can do this is by finding actions that feel rewarding and feel closer to that original self. Don't be afraid to take very, very small steps in the right direction because not every mountain is our mountain to climb.
The Library of Minds: Brain Coach: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik
