A deep and meaningful exploration of grief and its connection to the brain’s fundamental wiring can offer powerful insights into one of the most intense and universally shared human experiences. By combining the latest research in trauma therapy with neurobiological and philosophical frameworks, we can begin to understand why grief feels so profound. Perhaps then we may begin to navigate our own grief experience with greater tenderness, care and acknowledgement.
The grief process may differ according to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the loss experience. An unexpected or sudden loss can confer a more complicated grief process. Loss, in some shape or form, whether sudden, unexpected or anticipated, has been central to much of my work as a therapist, not because this is particularly unusual, but because loss and grief are central ‘themes’ in life. Many factors coalesce impacting upon the process and upon the expression of grief.
Corrigan’s Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a trauma-focused therapeutic approach that targets the brainstem-level processes underlying trauma, attachment wounding, and the experience of SHOCK.
At the heart of overwhelming human experiences, like trauma and sudden loss, lies a primal, non-conscious response arising from deep within the midbrain and brainstem circuitry. DBR aims to pick up these very first responses in the system that have unfolded during a traumatic or distressing event and which have remained unprocessed, almost as if they have become ‘stuck’ or lodged in the system.
When a distressing, traumatic or adverse event occurs, a rapid, ordered sequence of responses are triggered within our deep brain structures. A part of the midbrain, one of the oldest and most primitive parts of our brain — activates a rapid “orienting” response. This is a sub-cortical response that prepares us to ‘turn toward’ or ‘away from’ whatever has captured the brainstem attention – some form of stimuli that has been encountered as novel, salient or threatening.
Where needed, the system then initiates another part of the brain, our innate ‘alarm system’ to release a surge of neurochemicals into the system designed to jolt us into a ‘high-alert and wakefulness’ state.
This is the experience that we call ‘SHOCK’ and might be experienced as if the breath has been taken away, shivers, or emptying, a sudden jolt through the system, or perhaps a feeling of disorientation, a sense of numbness, unreality, or dissociation in the immediate aftermath. This ‘shock’ response can be so overwhelming that the profound physiological response can bring about an emotional “freeze”— a ‘turning away’ from the horror of what is happening at a brain stem level, , it is ‘too awful, too overwhelming’ to be able to take in fully what is happening. These are the protective mechanisms of the brain automatically kicking in before the conscious mind can even orient towards what is happening and process the underlying pain and grief.
When sudden trauma or loss disrupts this system, these subcortical processes can be dysregulated and become ‘stuck’ and lead to persistent symptoms such as hyperarousal, dissociation, overwhelm and emotional dysregulation.
DBR works by gently guiding an individual to elicit and process this physiological sequence, to process unresolved shock held in the body. Unlike other therapies that may focus on talking about the traumatic event, DBR’s “bottom-up” approach addresses the trauma at its neurological root and does not entail much talking as that takes us up into higher brain areas. By resolving this foundational shock response, it can then help us to process the underlying pain and affects without overwhelm.
At the heart of the ‘orienting’ response lies the ‘Innate Connection System’, a term coined by Corrigan and Christie-Sands describing the neurobiological network involved in orienting and connection, and a foundational element of DBR neuro-developmental theory. This system is our internal compass for social bonds, driving us to orient toward others for safety and connection. It’s mature from birth and subsequently shaped by our relationships with caregivers. When a sudden loss or trauma occurs, this system is violently disrupted, triggering a powerful shock response arising from the brainstem.
Frank Corrigan incorporates aspects of Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience into Deep Brain Reorienting theory.
Panksepp identified seven primary emotional systems or basic AFFECTS deep within the mammalian circuitry of the brainstem, (which he capitalised to avoid confusion with social feelings). One of these is the PANIC/GRIEF system.
This system is one of the primary emotional circuits of the mammalian brain, and the source of the intense psychic pain and deep distress experienced during separation and loss of attachment figures, and can be activated in the course of other loss experiences. It explains the desperate yearning, protest, and despair that define grief. This system, which we share with other social mammals, underscores that the acute pain of social loss is not a mere psychological construct; it is a survival mechanism rooted in our evolutionary history.
Endowed with an ‘Innate Connection System’, our evolutionary history has ensured that we have a hardwired neurobiological process that has evolved to promote connection and maintain social bonds and the development of attachment essential for survival. It’s the neurobiological basis for why a baby cries when separated from a parent, a primal “protest” against a lost connection – a cry that is hardwired into our very being.
The activation of this ancient circuitry explains why the loss of a loved one can feel like such a profound emotional anguish, or even physically painful as if we have been wounded. Grief then, is not just a psychological phenomenon, but rooted in these ancient, subcortical brain systems designed to ensure survival through our innate need for connection. The SHOCK response, as described by Corrigan, is the body’s immediate reaction to the painful rupture of these connections.
Attachment theory, developed by John Bowlby, explains how our earliest bonds with caregivers shape how we relate to others throughout life. These early bonds influence not just love and friendship, but also how we respond to separation and loss. Bowlby observed that when humans (and animals) are separated from a primary attachment figure, they typically go through three stages:
Protest (panic) – immediate distress, including crying, clinging, calling out, or searching. The attachment system is activated, signalling: “Where are you? Come back!”
Despair – when reunion does not occur, sadness, withdrawal, and hopelessness emerge.
Detachment – outward calm may appear, but underlying emotional disconnection often remains.
So here we see the PANIC/GRIEF system responsible for separation distress. For an infant, what might be seen is the ‘PANIC’ in response to separation, whereas in the adult, this may manifest more in terms of the experience of grief. This mammalian system within the brainstem explains the biological roots of grief: the yearning, the waves of anxiety, the racing thoughts, and even physiological reactions that accompany the loss of a loved one.
As we have learned from Panksepp, the PANIC/GRIEF system is responsible for mediating the affective response to separation distress. In infancy through early childhood, the PANIC/GRIEF system may be observed in a more obvious fashion. A toddler left at daycare may cry, cling to a parent, or panic when separated. A preschooler may express fear or rage if a caregiver is emotionally unavailable.
Where an infant/child develops secure attachment, they essentially learn that separation is temporary and safety will return. Whereas for infants and children who develop insecure attachment, they may experience helplessness, panic, confusion when comfort is inconsistent or unavailable. And for those who have had more unpredictable, chaotic, more disorganised attachment pattern, the child may vacillate between seeking closeness and comfort and fearing closeness.
Such patterns are laid down early in life and are underpinned by our capacity to connect, and foreshadow adult patterns of interpersonal relationships and therefore the responses to grief, influencing intensity, duration, and expression.
We grow and develop in the body of another and are entirely dependent upon the provisions of another’s own nervous system. This means that the bodies (and nervous systems) within which, and around which we develop, with their own patterns of connection and attachment, contribute towards the shaping and development of the infant’s own system. There are many different physiological systems that are regulated through this bio-dynamic relational process. How our nervous systems adapt and form to our environment and care will shape how we learn to tolerate separation and regulate distress in relation to our connection and bonds to another, and our separations and disconnections from them too.
Our early life experiences and the resulting attachment patterns of relating that we formed early in life, shape how this system responds, influencing the intensity and trajectory of our grief. Typically, where we have experienced stable upbringings, where carers offer their presence and are attuned to our needs, where they have been consistent and responsive, we may be fortunate in developing a more secure pattern of attachment. We may have come to believe and experience the world as benign and offering consistency in terms of our safety, care and security. We may learn to trust love and connection as being reliable and feel safe both giving and receiving closeness.
Where our upbringing and care may have fallen short of this, where caregivers have not been endowed with consistent capacity for care and presence owing to their own histories, our patterns of coming into connection with others, and the process of our developing attachment bonds may have lead to patterns of attachment that render us less secure in relation to others and to our own sense of self. Where caregivers were inconsistent, we may learn to become fearful of abandonment and crave closeness and reassurance. Whereas with emotionally distant caregivers we may have learned to be self-reliant, to not ‘need’ and to minimise needs as a result and to be more avoidant of closeness. Where caregiving has been frightening or unpredictable, there one moment, gone the next, craving for closeness may be present but alongside accompanied by a deep fear of it.
How our systems have become organised to connect and form the patterns of attachment, will inform how our systems respond when attachments become ruptured or broken through loss.
So for some, grief may be moved through ‘steadily’, the pain experienced and felt, while also finding a way of moving forward rebuilding and reshaping their life. Others may experience grief as overwhelming, and become paralysed by waves of devastation, yearning, anxiety, or numbness. And then there are some who may appear as if they have been untouched by their loss, perhaps finding ways to distract themselves, suppressing expression, even the ‘feeling’ of emotion, or minimising their pain, both inwardly and with others.
Bringing together DBR’s neurobiological insights and Ratcliffe’s meaning-making philosophical perspective, we come to appreciate that grief is both a biologically grounded and existentially transformative process. The pain of loss is rooted in the brain’s innate connection circuitry, but its meaning and trajectory are shaped by the bereaved’s history of attachment woundings and patterns, personal history, and the existential challenge of reconstructing a world without the deceased. Attachment, loss, and the search for meaning converge in bereavement.
Ratcliff proposes that grief is a “temporally extended process”, disrupting the very structure and fabric of a person’s life, of our reality. The loss of someone or of something significant, is more than just the loss of the person or the ‘object’; we lose the future that had been anticipated. The habits, projects, and shared expectations that gave our lives meaning suddenly become unintelligible, our shared world shattered. The person or habit that used to be a source of regulation, a co-creator of our world is no longer there and can leave us in a state of unsettling ambiguity, caught amidst both the presence and absence of what has been lost, the person gone, yet their memory and influence remain so powerfully that they feel ever-present. We are left with the sense of their presence in their absence, a temporal split between a past that continues and a present that feels alienated and alienating, where even our core sense of identity can be shaken.
This existential rupture is intensified by the initial shock response which can initially be a powerful, protective mechanism though may, if unprocessed delay and complicate recovery and healing. Shock can feel like a buffer, a numbing fog that makes the world feel unreal, a profound disorientation that can accompany loss is what Ratcliff refers to as the existential grief, which in DBR terms may be the overwhelming shock and horror rendering us unable to process the pain and affective responses fully. Grief, in this sense, from a DBR lens could be seen as a brainstem negotiation of a deeply altered world. To recognise and respond to wide-ranging disturbance in our life’s possibilities, we first need to be able to ‘orient’ fully towards them. This highlights that the shock of loss and the primal pain of separation are not isolated events. That when we have not been able to process the shock and the underlying pain, they form the foundation of the ongoing disturbances to our entire sense of self, to the very structure of our being in the world.
Understanding GRIEF as a multidimensional phenomenon, underpinned by fundamental neurobiological processes, combined with the interplay of attachment patterns, and the evolution of existential meaning-making helps us to reframe it. Rather than being experienced as a flaw or weakness, GRIEF can be understood and validated as a natural, protective mechanism that evolved to ensure our survival as social beings, which when ruptured can bring rise to anguish, pain and existential fragmentation.
Clinically Corrigan’s DBR, is aimed at eliciting the sequence of what happens neuro-physiologically in response to trauma, and underpinned by existing neuroscientific theory including the work of Panskepp. Corrigan and Christie Sands coin the term the ‘innate connection system’ and help us to understand these brainstem systems that we are endowed with – that support us to orient towards and away from connection, and which precede the development of attachment.
When we integrate these perspectives, a compelling narrative emerges. Grief and loss is a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon, which when sudden or unexpected, begins with a physiological shock response in the deep brain, manifests as a primal painful cry for a lost connection, and ultimately requires us to renegotiate the tapestry of our lives.
Healing, therefore, is not about “getting over” a loss, but about integrating this profound experience physically, emotionally, and existentially. Effective grief therapy must address both the deep brain responses (SHOCK, core pain and subsequent affective and defensive responses) and the existential challenges of loss.
DBR aims to gently process the shock, core pain and affective/defensive responses, allowing the individual to move from having oriented away from the pain – from a frozen state of disconnection, to orienting toward connection and reorienting ourselves to a world that has been irrevocably changed.
Working from the ‘bottom up’, processing what is held at the deep brain level, the system is freer and more spacious facilitating navigation of any existential work of rebuilding meaning and a necessary part of holistic recovery. And combined, we can offers a richer, more compassionate framework for supporting the bereaved.
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