Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor has been studying grief for a long time. Part of her interest in the subject is personal.
After her mother died, O’Connor began experiencing bizarre neurological symptoms, like tingling sensations on her skin. She was ultimately diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And while she knows her condition wasn’t directly caused by grief, she wanted to know if the physiological stress brought on by her grief helped create the conditions for MS to emerge.
It turns out that it did. And now, O’Connor, a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Arizona, has expanded her research into a book called "The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be An Opportunity for Healing." O’Connor joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
MARY-FRANCES O’CONNOR: You know, we think of our body at ending at the edge of our skin, right? But what science is discovering is that, of course, when we fall in love with someone, if you fall in love with your baby or the, the person you're gonna marry or whomever, when we form that relationship, it's our body that is also co-regulated.
You know, that, that person is our external pacemaker for our cardiovascular system. If I, you know, come home from work and my partner hugs me, my heart rate goes down.
SAM DINGMAN: Yeah, well, I mean just to speak from my, my own life, like one of the things that I treasure the most about my relationship with my wife is that I feel like situations which on my own, would be incredibly stressful and overwhelming, just the opportunity to speak with her about them, to not be ashamed of what I'm feeling about some situation that's stressing me out, lessens the overall amount of stress that I am experiencing.
And if God forbid she was not there to do that, it would increase the amount of stress in my life, and we know that increased stress has all of these attendant physical symptoms.
O’CONNOR: Yes, that's it, exactly. And it doesn't even have to be completely conscious. They're, they are in our, in our brain, encoded in our brain, they're in our mind, even at a very subconscious level. So we know that, you can even just call the, the thought of them to mind, and we see that buffering in people's pain tolerance, even if they're not in the room, calling them to mind decreases our pain experience.
DINGMAN: You know, this is so silly, but you're making me think about the fact that I keep a picture of her as the lock screen on my phone.
O’CONNOR: Exactly. I do, too! Well, not your wife, but my partner.
DINGMAN: No, exactly, it's, it's, you're making me realize that the little ping of relief that I get when I unlock the phone and see that image is actually connected to this, this much more significant thing.
Speaking of this idea of regulation, it seems like one of the key physiological catalysts for these symptoms is something that you seem quite fascinated with called the vagus nerve.
Yeah, the vagus nerve, which is a nerve that runs throughout our body. In fact, it comes from the same word as vagabond. And it's, it's like the brake. So if you're in a car and you release the brake, the car also goes forward, but it doesn't require so much energy, right?
You don't have to turn the gas on for that to happen. So what's amazing is that the vagus nerve is, is helping our heart rate to decelerate, to go down when we need to rest and digest. And it takes much less energy. It's much, it's much easier on the body to use that vagal break than to have to put the gas on and get the adrenaline going and everything if you, if you.
So, the point is really that we can do things to improve that vagal control over our heart. Simple things, even like very deep breathing, improves our vagal control of the heart. So it's one of those avenues into helping our grieving body to rest and be soothed.
DINGMAN: Yes, and if I'm not mistaken, the idea is that there are loved ones in our lives that help us do that kind of vagal regulation unconsciously.
O’CONNOR: That's right, that when we are a part of this, you know, and we're two orbiting bodies around each other, the, the cues from that person increases our vagal control of the heart, right? So that hug I was talking about. And then when that person is gone and we don't have those day to day cues, you know, we can support that vagus nerve by doing things like deep breathing or exercise. We know for sure that regular exercise helps improve that vagal control of the heart, like going for a run regularly, doing yoga regularly. It just, it, it's a way of supporting that grieving body.
DINGMAN: Part of what we've been talking about in terms of this relationship to loved ones who help us self-regulate is this idea of attachment theory. And you have a hypothesis that crying, which is obviously something that we associate with grief, is a very important part of attachment-related behavior.
O’CONNOR: I'm so grateful that you recognize it's a hypothesis. There isn't necessarily current evidence for this idea, but we know that in many situations of attachment behavior, think about nursing an infant or intimacy in a couple, that there are a number of hormones that are released during that, and that those hormones help our brain to encode that other being as this is our one and only.
Now, what we do know during crying is that a variety of hormones are released, and some of those are similar hormones as we see in other bonding behaviors. So oxytocin, for example. And oxytocin has what neuroscientists call a permissive effect on the brain, meaning when the brain is flooded with oxytocin, it permits the learning to happen more deeply or or quickly or however you want to think about it.
So, I think crying during bereavement is part of the brain learning this person is not here now. The hypothesis is it helps us to understand the new reality. And so I think supporting our body is helpful, but also trusting it to be able to do this natural grief response.
DINGMAN: I wonder if you could speak a little bit about some of the practical things that you have found to be helpful in your own life.
O’CONNOR: I finally realized that I need a nap every day. I take a 30-minute nap with an alarm. And for a long time I had all these, you know, inner dialogue about how I was lazy and I wasn't getting enough work done and, and eventually I came to realize that it, it made me a happier person, but it also ultimately even made my afternoon more productive.
So I tried it out. We got to try out new coping strategies. I discovered that for me, it makes an enormous difference. And then I had to sort of overcome all the, you know, the cultural messages about whatever that coping strategy is. And, and now it is just a very authentic part of my life.
Grief as an opportunity to know yourself better. That's it. Not that we would ever choose this. And yet, given that we've walked through this door. We can and do learn so much.
DINGMAN: Well, I've been speaking with Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor, who is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona College of Science, and Mary Francis will be speaking about this book at Changing Hands on Feb. 11. Mary-Frances, thank you so much for this conversation.
O’CONNOR: I'm so grateful you are asking me these questions and bringing this information to the world.
