This is the rough draft of part 3 of a book I am writing. The tentative title for the book is: The Power of the Human Mind
I am publishing part 3 here for anyone who might find it helpful even in its preliminary rough-draft format. After you read this, I would greatly appreciate any comments that you are willing to share with me. I am particularly interested in hearing about anything that needs clarification or improvement. I would also like to hear about ideas that you find particularly interesting, or about which you would like to read more. My preferred way to receive these comments is by email: chuckge@bellsouth.net.
You may also be interested in other articles that present what I am currently working on in my writing of this book, (the rough drafts of parts 1 and 2 or available on my website, the rough drafts of part 4 is not yet complete):
Part 1: Better Health with less Medications
Part 2: A Ray of Hope for the Terminally ill
Part 3: (this article: Coping with the Loss of a Loved One)
Part 4: Some answers to some of life’s big questions
(Most recent update: 2/24/25. If you are reading a printed version of this article, it can also be found on my website: chuckgebhardtmd.com)
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The loss of a loved one has been compared to having a dark cloud descend over your heart. Some feel like they have lost a part of themselves. Others say they have lost their purpose in life. People may even say their loss has destroyed their faith in the ultimate fairness and goodness of the universe. It is devastating and quite painful, and it feels like our suffering is out of our control.
Over the years, as I have tried to help patients suffering from their losses, I have often wished I could have done more. My medical school training, my careful reading of medical journals, and my years of continuing education were poor preparation to meet this challenge. Recently, I became encouraged that there are ways to do more to help, so I began a review of the latest scientific research into the causes and effective treatments for the suffering due to grief. It was time very well spent! I was surprised to find a lot more new knowledge about the grieving process than I expected. Even better, this research has confirmed the value of some simple yet powerful techniques that may speed healing and minimize the pain grief causes.
In the last few decades, sophisticated research techniques and strategies have been giving us a much better understanding of the internal structure of the human brain than ever before. We now know there are predictable changes in the structure and function of the brain that are associated with many of the impairments to our health and wellbeing. We can adopt strategies based on these insights to improve our comfort and health. Unfortunately, though, helping people to become more aware of this new information and guiding them in using it requires much more time than the usual medical office visit allows. What you are reading here was designed to bridge the obstacle this time gap creates by summarizing the medical research concerning bereavement.
My intent here is to provide a simple guide to the insights from this research that will be useful for as many readers as possible. Accordingly, I will start by presenting some of the most important implications, along with some suggestions for using them, in plain language that does not require a scientific background. Immediately following this, I will provide a summary of the research itself along with more advanced strategies that will add to the simple strategies of this first part. While they will require more confidence and motivation to effectively use compared to the simpler strategies, they also have a lot more potential power.
Insights from Recent Brain Research
For well over a century, scientists have known that what we are experiencing and feeling in any given moment is a direct result of the various areas of the brain that are most active at the time. But neuroscientists also believed that these areas of the brain were completely formed and permanently fixed once we had entered early adulthood. So, if what we are feeling depends on the structure of our brain, and this structure is permanently set, then we are powerless to change the way we are feeling in response to events we have no control over.
Fortunately, in contrast to what was previously believed, the recent research I am referring to shows that the structure of the brain is constantly changing. Our central nervous system has the innate ability to change its structure in response to everything we do and everything that happens to us as we go about our lives. Now that we know this, if we learn the key factors behind how our brain is constantly changing, we can use this understanding to allow us to take better control of this natural process in ways that will improve our lives.
The research findings clearly show that when the activity within any area of the brain is triggered in any fashion, that part of the brain tends to become more powerful and more easily triggered in the future. This means that whatever we are feeling, at any point in time, is a very clear and important guide to how the structure of our brain is changing. Since it has also been shown that these changes are usually subtle and often slow to accumulate, we have not usually been aware that this is what has been happening. Once we know this, though, we become much more empowered to work with the brain’s natural healing processes to decrease the intensity of suffering that is part of bereavement.
If we are in pain, suffering, anxious or frustrated, this is not only unpleasant, the experience itself is also making it more likely that these same kinds of feelings will be triggered in the future. On the other hand, if we are engaged in activities that are satisfying, or are making us happy and more confident, we are improving our lives and building a better future. This means that we can use our feelings and our emotional responses to the world around us as indicators of what is happening to the structure of our brain. If we take steps intended to assist our brain’s natural healing processes, and if we give them enough time, we should see that our episodes of sadness and frustration are becoming less frequent and less intense.
Next, I will suggest specific steps you can take that have been shown to be effective in speeding recovery from a major loss. You should pick and choose from what feels right for you as you consider these suggestions.
Some Simple Healing Strategies
When we are grieving, anything that triggers memories of our lost loved one can start a wave of sadness. If these bouts of sadness are intrusive, (that is, if they are not part of a purposeful effort to manage the grieving process), they are likely to be harmful. There are often many steps we can take to make it less likely that these triggers will produce emotions that disrupt our mental equilibrium. One simple step to take is to place pictures and other mementos that arouse unpleasant emotions out of sight. Another useful strategy might be to make use of opportunities to travel out of town to a location with less painful reminders. In addition, some people find that resuming their usual work routines as quickly as possible can also be a welcome distraction. Any of these strategies can be quite useful since avoiding intrusive waves of grief will help you to heal from your grief more quickly. If using them is helpful, you should find that they will become less needed as time passes.
Beyond their value as a distraction, activities that you find rewarding offer an additional benefit. Another of the insights from the recent research is that pleasant experiences, in and of themselves, will also tend to weaken the intensity and decrease the likelihood of negative states of mind in the future. Activities like enjoyable music, games, hobbies, movies and favorite internet sites are all potentially useful. Prayer and worship, if they uplift your spirits and encourage you, will also bring healing. The bottom line is that feeling good will help you heal; anything that makes you smile, laugh, or feel good, in any fashion, should be beneficial.
There is an even more effective strategy than using distractions and focusing on doing what we enjoy. Supportive friends or family members are often available to spend time with and share. You should always allow the loving support of others. If they are interested in you and care about you, they will always improve your state of mind. If there is a support group available to you, this is usually a caring and compassionate setting that can be a marvelous benefit and will likely also be an opportunity to expand your circle of close friends.
In summary to this brief introduction, the human brain has been shown to have powerful self-healing capabilities. Just being aware that research findings exist that demonstrate this effectiveness may encourage us to find ways to work with its natural tendencies to improve the way we are feeling. While it is usually best to avoid intrusive and unintended triggers that provoke sadness, anger, or frustration, if we are in a supportive setting, purposefully facing our grief can help us heal. We should also spend as much time as possible with activities that we enjoy, especially when they include time with people we care about and who care about us. While the improvements that result are likely to be subtle and slow to become obvious to us, if we persist in our efforts, they will likely become permanent.
Next, let’s look deeper into the research I just finished introducing.
A Summary of Recent Investigations into the Structure and Functions of the Human Brain
Although I have already presented a few of the most important conclusions provided by recent research into the structure and function of the human brain, there are further benefits to be gained by reviewing this information in more detail. A better understanding of the pertinent scientific research should increase your confidence and motivation to apply the simple strategies suggested previously, and it should also better prepare you to consider other self-healing strategies that will require more time and effort to use effectively. These more involved strategies should also have benefits far beyond helping you through the grieving process, though. Using them should help you to feel more confident about the future, help to decrease the likelihood of developing disease of any kind, and help you live longer. Suggestions for their use will follow the summary of the research.
To begin this presentation of what we now know about the human brain, it has been common knowledge for well over a century that it is composed of trillions of neurons, all inter-connected in a very specific structure. For several centuries we have known that virtually everything we experience and everything we do is made possible by the electrical activity of specific areas within our brain and the neuronal pathways that connect them. We know this since the loss of important brain areas from injuries like strokes and brain tumors can result in the loss of some of our ability to sense what is happening around us, to remember events from our past, or even the paralysis of an arm or a leg.
While all this is well known, it is not usually as obvious to us how electrical activity within certain areas and along certain pathways in our brain also give rise to our feelings and how we emotionally respond to what is happening to us as we go about our lives. The importance of these brain areas to the emotional quality of our lives, though, has been very reliably demonstrated by a sophisticated surgical technique used to investigate the structure and function of the brain, called “awake craniotomy.” Neurosurgeons have been using this technique to guide surgical interventions for over 60 years. It is used to help a surgeon minimize damage to important brain pathways and structures as parts of the brain are removed to help heal the patient’s disease. It involves the removal of part of the patient’s skull to gain access to their brain tissues. While their brain is exposed in this way, patients can be comfortably awakened, and they are able to report on what they are feeling and experiencing as an electrical stimulation probe is used to test the functions of different areas of their brain.
As a byproduct of the use of this technique, the stimulation of certain areas and pathways within the human brain have been found to produce intense emotional states. Some are pleasant and some are uncomfortable, but the electrical stimulation of specific locations within the brain always results in very similar responses. From these investigations, and others like them, we know beyond any doubt that electrical activity in certain areas in our brain produces our feelings and our emotional states. These observations make it clear that the way our brain is structured controls our feelings and emotions, and this has a powerful impact on the quality of our lives.
The insights from this research would not be of much practical use to us if, as neuroscientists believed until relatively recently, the structure of our brain is predetermined and fixed by our genetic inheritance. With the use of brain imaging scanners developed over the last several decades, though, we can now view the size, power, and connections of the brain’s functional areas while the person being studied is reporting to investigators what they are experiencing and what they are thinking about. Since these scans are completely non-invasive, they can safely and comfortably be repeated to follow any changes in the size, functioning, and connections of important brain areas over the course of people’s lives.
From the extensive and well replicated use of these devices, we now know that the human brain is constantly remodeling and reforming itself, and these naturally occurring processes continue throughout our lives. We have learned that the repeated firing of any neuron changes its connections to other neurons, and the resulting re-organization reshapes every part of the brain’s processing hierarchy. New connections between neurons are formed constantly. From anything we do and anything we experience, some existing connections become progressively stronger, while others become weaker. And, also contrary to what was believed in the past, we now know that new neurons can even be formed at any point in our lives. Neuroscientists now refer to these continuous, natural, self-adjusting changes in our brain’s structure and function as “neuroplasticity.”
A simple example of how neuroplasticity works is what happens when someone practices a skill like playing a piano. Brain scans show us that the areas of the brain involved with playing or performing music enlarge over time and each part being used is strengthened. In contrast, when we stop playing and practicing these skills, they tend to slowly weaken. While we are usually completely unaware of the reshaping of these brain circuits as we use a skill like playing a piano, this process is what produces the changes in piano skills. It is a hidden, unconscious, and powerful part of everything we do and everything we experience. And it is not just our actions that produce these changes, we now know that even just passively thinking about or imagining something also reshapes and reforms the brain’s structure.
The plasticity of the human brain is, to a great degree, responsible for its power and for our ability to successfully adapt to the many different environments and circumstances we all face in our lives on this planet. It is not only behind our ability to learn the skills we need to survive and prosper, it is also behind our ability to avoid or overcome threats we face in our day-to-day lives. But what the research is also showing us is that instead of always helping us adapt, neuroplasticity can also be detrimental and maladaptive. In certain circumstances, instead of helping us to live long and satisfying lives, it can produce changes in our brain that impair our ability to feel joy, and it can even produce diseases that shorten our lives. This is crucial to understand, and to better do so we will need to look more deeply into the brain’s structure. Next, we will discuss two of the brain’s largest organizing systems. One that help us survive major threats to our safety, and another that helps us to rest and recover once important threats are resolved.
Since very little else matters if we don’t survive threats that we face, our brain has evolved to make protecting us from serious threats its priority. It possesses a major system of circuits and pathways that, when activated, is commonly described as its “fight or flight” system. Whenever we perceive a serious threat to our lives and wellbeing, our brain releases a cascade of reactions that quickly prepares our mind and body to maximize our chances of avoiding or eliminating the threat. Hormones, steroids and other powerful compounds are released by our nervous system into our bloodstream that prepare every organ and metabolic system to counter the threat.
The activation of this system raises our blood pressure and our blood sugar. It increases blood clotting capacity, adjusts our immune system and diverts the body’s resources away from reparative and regenerative processes, like digesting food and repairing damaged tissues, toward maximizing our ability to survive the immediate threat. While these preparations have great survival advantages in the short term, if they are continued long enough, they can produce many of the diseases we associate with chronic stress. For instance, prolonged elevation of stress hormones results in hypertension, diabetes and heart disease, to name just a few of the chronic diseases that can develop as a result.
Of course, we all know that whenever we feel threatened, we feel unpleasant feelings and emotions like fear, anger, and agitation. Research scientists have found that how strongly we feel threatened not only matches the strength of these emotional reactions, the level of our discomfort also correlates with the degree of the activation of the brain areas involved in the “fight or flight” reactions of our nervous system. When we are feeling unpleasant emotions, and if they continue unabated, it is a very reliable indicator of ongoing changes in our brain and body that can result in both emotional and physical disease.
If we determine that the threats have resolved, we begin to feel better, the stress reaction diminishes, and another major system of the brain takes its place. This system begins the repair of any physical injury from the threat faced, as well as reversing the metabolic disturbances that were part of the fight or flight reaction. This second system, the one that heals, repairs, and strengthens us, is the one that we need to be active almost all the time if we are to live a long and satisfying life. When it is active, we feel good, optimistic, and more comfortable. And, just like when the threat system is active, the more the rest and repair system is being stimulated, the stronger the brain areas involved in this system become and the more likely they will be activated in the future.
This brain research has strongly suggested two other important conclusions. One is that only one of these systems can be active at any point in time. The second is that since the “fight or flight” system is dominant, to the degree that it is active, the repair systems will be blocked. Here, things get complicated. Because of the plasticity of the brain structure and function we have been discussing, the defense system can become chronically overactive. If we believe that there is an ongoing serious threat to our life or wellbeing, it will continuously suppress the repair and healing system, even when the actual threat is gone. There is a very large body of research findings that now show us that a chronic state of stress can result from either emotionally traumatizing events, living in situations that we find threatening, or a combination of both. Some very well studied examples include emotional trauma during childhood, post-traumatic stress disorder after military combat, chronic occupational stress, and the loss of a loved one. Events and life situations like these often produce enduring changes in brain structure that result in chronically high levels of toxic stress hormones and steroids. These derangements may then lead to emotional disorders, chronic physical illness, and a shortened life span.
Research scientists are actively investigating why severe emotional trauma or persistent exposure to a threatening environment so powerfully change the brain in ways that produce these very undesirable impacts on our lives. Brain scan studies are now allowing us to follow the impact of trauma and chronic stress on the structure of the brain and to see how these changes correlate with abnormal blood chemistry, emotional illness, and chronic physical disease. Of particular importance to us, researchers are also finding ways to use our brain’s natural plasticity to counteract the effects of trauma and chronic stress.
One of the most powerful and useful insights uncovered by this research is the observation that experiences which are harmful to our brain and body usually feel bad, while experiences that tend to reverse damage usually feel good. Scientists use scales to measure negative emotions like fear, frustration, and anger, and they find that these feelings are closely associated with the activation of the brain’s fight or flight mechanisms, the damaging long-term effects this activation has on the structure of the brain, and the impact they have on the health of our body. In contrast, they also have found that positive emotions like comfort, confidence and satisfaction are closely associated with healing and regeneration, produce helpful structural changes in the brain, increase the feeling of wellbeing, and eventually result in better health.
This is all very good news! It means that we do not need complicated research protocols to know what is helping and what is not. Instead, we can rely on our feelings. At any given moment in time, what we are doing and what we are thinking generates feelings that indicate which brain areas are most active, and these feelings are reliable guides to making better moment-to-moment choices.
We can also use our feelings to help us to evaluate the effectiveness of long-term strategies that we might adopt to improve our health. We can pay attention to what might be called our “emotional baseline” that is present for us in those periods of time when we are not involved in anything of significance to us, and we can observe how it changes over time. When the overall effects of the changes in our brain structure are positive and helpful, research has shown that our baseline emotional state will improve. Research subjects who engage in programs that have been shown to improve the structure of important areas of the brain usually report greater feelings of wellbeing, better sleep, less anxiety, and less pain.
While the brain’s neuroplastic changes are usually completely outside of our awareness, we can use the results of these research findings to gain conscious, deliberate control of these powerful processes. Next, I will present some well researched and well validated strategies to counteract harmful changes from any trauma and or chronic stress we may have experienced in the past. And, as you probably would expect, the healing strategies that have been shown to be generally helpful in reversing the damaging impact of emotional traumas and sources of chronic stress will also help to decrease the distress and damage that follows the loss of a loved one. The strategies and methods that follow, though, will require enough confidence to spend the time needed to learn them and continue to use them long enough to evaluate their benefits for you.
More Healing Strategies
One of the simplest and most powerful ways you can improve your health is to set aside a few minutes each day focusing your attention on your breathing. Since being very regular with your pattern of breathing while using this technique is very important to its effectiveness, the easiest way to do this well is to download a free cell phone app that lets you precisely control your breathing pattern. It is easy to learn, and once you have learned it, you can also use it to very quickly stop yourself from thinking about things that stress you by making you feel bad or anxious. This skill can be particularly useful if you are grieving and find yourself ruminating about unpleasant thoughts that involve the person you lost.
Well-designed research studies have shown us that the regular use of this kind of paced breathing stimulates the areas of the brain that calm anxiety, nervousness, and other kinds of emotional upset. The activation of these areas also lowers stress hormones and improves the body’s regulation of many of its metabolic processes. Among its many benefits, it improves sleep, lowers blood pressure, and decreases chronic pain. Over time, its continued use should increase the size, power and the neural pathway connections of the brain systems that will provide better health and a greater sense of wellbeing.
Another way to speed your recovery from the distress that accompanies grief is to try what has been called expressive writing. This is a simple and safe therapeutic technique that was first described in the 1980s. Writing is an effective method to deal with the after-effects of any kind of distressing or traumatic experience, including bereavement. When research subjects were directed to write about a past emotional trauma in order to vividly re-experience the emotions involved, research scientists have repeatedly and reliably demonstrated many benefits that continued for months after the sessions were completed When compared to subjects writing about neutral, unemotional topics, expressive writing resulted in improved mood, greater feelings of wellbeing, and higher ratings of happiness. Those who were doing expressive writing also experienced less symptoms of depression, less anxiety, and better sleep. Immune function was found to improve, elevated blood pressure was lowered, and people suffering from chronic pain reported less pain than those randomized to do neutral writing sessions.
While writing about distressing or traumatic memories is very safe, it often makes subjects in the experiments feel worse for a while before their feelings improve. As an alternative strategy, research subjects have been directed to focus on and write about very pleasant memories or ideas instead of past traumas. With this kind of expressive writing, immediate improvements in mood are found while retaining similar, or even superior, long-term improvements. This is an important advantage for people who have suffered the recent loss of a loved one, especially when their grief can easily become overwhelming. Because of this advantage, I recommend a trial of positive written expression for those who have recently lost a loved one.
To try positive expressive writing, start by picking a focus for your writing sessions. I will suggest a few, here, but anything similar should work well. One strategy might be to recall very positive experiences from your past, and to write about the circumstances, any others who were involved, and as much detail of the events as possible. Really get into the experience again and immerse yourself in the good feelings as much as possible. Experiences from early in your childhood, before you began to take on adult responsibilities and concerns, may be particularly valuable. But anything that gave you great joy, and that feels really good to think about now, will work well.
Another positive writing strategy might be to write about your most significant skills, abilities, and other strong points of your personality. These might have resulted in successes you have had that feel good to think about. They could have been from the past week, or they could have been from many years ago. Reflect on your motivations, how you felt back then, and how you are feeling now as you look back on your accomplishments and your successes.
Yet another positive writing strategy might be called “Acts of Kindness” writing. For instance, you might recall and write about little things you did for others over the past week, or you could write about ways you helped someone years ago that you feel good about now as you recall the details. Imagine the ways your actions benefited those you helped and consider ways you might find more opportunities to do little things that make the lives of others better, even something as simple as smiling more often.
You might start this self-healing strategy by getting a stack of blank pages and finding a time and a location where you will have at least 15 or 20 minutes to concentrate on your thoughts and any feelings that arise, without being interrupted. Choose any of the topics I suggested or anything else in the same vein. Write about the same topic each time or keep trying others while striving for the strongest positive reactions to what you are writing. Do not worry about grammar, spelling, or legibility, just let yourself go and follow your creative and expressive impulses. Each writing session will be likely to feel good immediately, but it may take 3 or 4 sessions to make a noticeable impact on your usual state of mind and feelings of wellbeing.
As a final self-healing method to wrap up this brief introduction, consider using what is often called “mindfulness meditation.” Of course, many people around the world currently meditate, and many have done so for thousands of years. Westernized versions of meditation, usually described by modern researcher scientists as “mindfulness-based interventions,” have been shown in extensive scientific research studies to provide many benefits. When research subjects who are new to meditation are compared to controls who do not meditate, they report feeling less stress, sleeping better and having an improved sense of wellbeing. Research subjects with psychiatric illnesses like chronic anxiety, depression and psychosis usually improve. Those with high blood pressure, high blood sugar and overweight also see better control. Memory also improves.
Many, well-replicated imaging studies of the neuroplastic changes in the brains of people who do mindfulness meditation show improvements in brain structure that closely correlate with the improvements in their health and wellbeing. Neuroscientists find that the function and size of brain areas that are known to be associated with self-awareness and favorable regulation of emotion increase with the duration of meditation practice. These are the same areas of the brain found to be very prominent in Buddhist monks with many thousands of hours of meditation experience.
While the research examining the use of mindfulness meditation for people who are grieving is relatively new and not as extensive as those for other kinds of trauma, the same benefits have been found. The indicators of the level of distress due to bereavement are found to improve more quickly in those who meditate when compared to those of matched controls that do not meditate. The detrimental changes found in the brains of people suffering from prolonged grief have also been shown to return towards normal. Improvements in sleep, wellbeing, and health for grieving people have also been confirmed. I recommend meditation for anyone due to its many benefits, but it should be particularly helpful for those suffering from the loss of a loved one.
There are many ways to start doing mindfulness meditation. If there is a Yoga program where you live, you may find meditation training available there. There are also many on-line training videos available. In addition, there are many well-written books you could use. If you have tried meditation in the past and found it to be too difficult, and if you have not tried controlled breathing (as I described earlier), it is a kind of simple-to-learn meditation technique that could be used as a transition to a more involved mindfulness meditation.
So, to wrap up Part 3, there is a large amount of scientific research exploring what happens in the structure and function of our brain when we are experiencing either emotional trauma or chronic stress. These brain changes are found to be closely tied to both the emotional and health impairments that often result from distress and trauma. As a very fortunate byproduct of this relatively new information, strategies that reverse the damage have been found. Since grief is not only one of the most intense kinds of trauma, and it can easily become a source of chronic stress, everything presented here applies to the suffering that results from grief. Of course, you can try any one of the strategies presented here, but there is no reason not to try more than one. Whatever you try is likely to result in improvements within a few weeks, and these improvements may well be permanent.
References
Here are two articles that explain awake craniotomy in detail and show how human emotion can arise from the electrical activity of certain brain areas:
- Guillory SA, Bujarski KA, Exploring emotions using invasive methjods: review of 60 years of human intracranial electrophysiology. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2014; 9:1880-1889
- Penfield W, Some mechanisms of consciousness discovered during electrical stimulation of the brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci 1958; 44:51-56
This article is an in-depth introduction to Functional Magnetic Imaging technology:
3. Glover GH, Overview of Functional Magnetic Imaging. Nuerosurg Clin N Amer 2011; 22:133-139
This Wikipedia article on the internet provides a nice overview of how the modern understanding of the how the human brain is constantly changing in its structure and function with each new experience:
4. https://en.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity
These are two excellent reviews of what we know about how stress and trauma change the structure and function of the key regions of the human brain that determine our emotions and our response to these experiences:
5. Lucassen PJ, Preussner J, et al, Neuropathology of stress. Acta Neuropath 2014; 127:109-135
6. Sousa N, Almeida OFX, Disconnection and reconnection: the morphological basis of (mal)adaption to stress. Trends in Neuroscoiences 2012; 35:745-752
This is a recent review confirming that prolonged grief is both a severe trauma and a source of chronic stress that have the same long term detrimental impacts as other causes of human distress:
7. O’Connor MF, Grief: A Brief history of How Body, Mind and Brain Adapt. Psychosom Med 2019; 81:731-738
Here are two review articles that summarize a large number of research studies showing that carefully paced slow breathing sessions not only work to repair brain areas chronically damaged by stress, they have also been shown to provide lasting improvements in health and wellbeing:
8. Zaccaro A, Piarulli A, et al, How Breath-Control Can Change Your Life: A Systematic Review on Psycho-Physiological Correlates of Slow Breathing. Front Hum Neurosci 2018; 12:353
9. Brown RP, Gerbarg PL, et al, Breathing Practices for Treatment of Psychiatric and Stress-Related Medical Conditions. Psychiatr Clin N Amer 2013; 36:121-140
Here are three review articles that all indicate that writing about past traumas is a powerful therapeutic technique that often has lasting positive impacts on health and wellbeing:
10. Esterling BA, L’Abate L, et al, Empirical Foundations for Writing in Prevention and Psychotherapy: Mental and Physical health outcomes. Clin Psych Rev 1999; 19:79-96
11. Frisian PG, Borod JC, et al, A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Written Emotional Disclosure on the Health Outcomes of Clinical Populations. J Nerv Ment Dis 2004; 192:629-634
12. Frattaroli J, Experimental Disclosure and Its Moderators: A Meta-Analysis. Psych Bulletin 2006; 132:823-865
Here is a review article comparing expressive writing about trauma compared to positive writing showing that positive writing is as least as effective as writing about trauma in improving health and wellbeing. The citation that follows is a very good example of research included in the review:
13. Ruini C, Mortara CC, Writing Technique across Psychotherapies – From Traditional Expressive Writing to New Positive Psychology Interventions: A Narrative Review. J Contemp Psychother 2022; 52:23-34
14. Wong YJ, Owen J, et al, Does gratitude writing improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Evidence form a randomized controlled trial. Psychother Res 2018; 28:192-202
Here are three review articles that summarize the results of a large number of research studies completed over the last several decades showing that mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on brain structure that is proportional to its effects on health and wellbeing:
15. Tang YY, Holzel BK, et al, The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2015: 16:213-225
16. Boccia M, Piccardi L, et al, The Meditative Mind: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of MRI Studies. Biomed Res Int 2015; 2015:1-11
17. Zhang D, Lee EKP, et al, Mindfulness-based interventions: an overall review. British Medical Bulletin 2021; 138:41-57
Here are two research reports showing the benefits of mindfulness meditation specifically during bereavement:
18. O’Connor M, Piet J, et al, The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive therapy on Depressive Symptoms in Elderly Bereaved People with Loss-Related Disrtress: a Controlled Pilot Study. Mindfulness 2013; 5:400-409
19. Huang FY, Hsu AL, et al, Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on bereavement grief: Alterations of resting-state network connectivity associate with changes of anxiety and mindfulness. Hum Brain Mapp 2021; 42:510-520
Science and Spirit 