Grief in the brain: accepting the longing without a scan to explain it

Where the reward idea comes from

How it works

Longing is one of the plainest feelings there is, and after a death it is the most honest part of grief. When someone has mattered, the mind keeps reaching for them: a voice, a habit, a question you would have asked. The wanting does not switch off because they cannot come back.

You may have read that grief is a kind of addiction, or that the brain craves the person who died. It is easy to see why that idea spreads. It offers a mechanism, and a picture from a brain scanner looks like proof. It does not deserve the weight it gets.

All of the brain research here is about grief after a death. The study most often behind the idea that grief engages the brain's reward system scanned a small group of bereaved women. Some had grief that had stayed intense, by the researchers' interview criteria, and some did not. In the scanner, they saw words drawn from their own account of the death.

In the women whose grief had stayed intense, those words raised activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area linked to reward, and across the whole group that activity rose with how much yearning they reported. The authors described the response as craving-like, not pleasant.

Why a scan should not label you

Why it matters

Anyone who has heard their longing called an addiction should know this: the science has not confirmed it.

• When the same research group tried to repeat the finding with older adults whose spouse had died, the difference did not appear.
• A systematic review judged the evidence "consistent with, though not confirmative of" a reward account, and found most of the brain-scan studies small.
• A more recent review found grief linked to brain networks for emotion, reward and control, and its authors say grief's mechanisms "remain poorly understood".

This research is interesting, and the people doing it deserve respect. The trouble starts when it reaches a grieving person, or anyone carrying a strong feeling, as a verdict. Calling longing an addiction turns a feeling into a fault, and a fault is something people fight or hide. What gets fought or hidden is what stays stuck.

Longing is not a malfunction. It sits close to the centre of grief. In one US study that followed bereaved adults over two years, yearning for the person was the dominant painful feeling throughout.

There is no right amount of connection to keep. A review of research on ongoing bonds found that a sense of connection with someone who died brings comfort, distress or both, and could not confirm that keeping a bond is better than letting go.

Four ways the brain story can get in the way

Where people get stuck

1. Reading a scan as a verdict on you. A lit-up area in a small group does not explain any one person's feelings. It should never stand in for yours.
2. Hearing "addiction" as a judgment. The original paper's own title asked "Craving love?". Reading craving from activity in one area works backward from a brain area to a feeling, which researchers call a reverse inference. Longing deserves kinder words than that.
3. Waiting for an explanation before accepting the feeling. The researchers themselves say grief's brain mechanisms are poorly understood. Accepting your longing, or any feeling, does not need to wait on them.
4. Treating a sense of connection as a problem. For some people a continuing sense of the person is a comfort; for others it hurts. Both are allowed, and neither is a sign you are doing grief wrong.

When longing, or any feeling, is worth taking to someone

Any feeling that stays intense for a long time and gets in the way of daily life is worth taking to a doctor or a therapist.

If longing has stayed intense for a long time and gets in the way of daily life, grief-focused therapy exists and has helped people in a trial. A doctor or a therapist who works with grief can help you find it.

Sometimes wanting to be with them means not wanting to be alive. If that is where you are, or you cannot tell, please reach someone now. The help box near the end of this page says how. For immediate danger, contact local emergency services.

Where the research on longing and the brain is thin

Where the research is thin, or disagrees

Researchers disagree on whether the reward system plays a special part in longing after a loss: one small study found a sign of it, and a repeat did not. The imaging studies are small, often from one research group, and they show links, not causes. No study I found tests how a person comes to accept longing, and all of these studies are about grief after a death, not separation, estrangement or other feelings.

Noticing what the mind reaches for

One thing you might notice

The next time your mind reaches for someone or something, you might notice what it reaches for: a voice, a habit, a question you would have asked them. It is only noticing, not homework.

What a session does with longing

How Feelings Buddy fits

Feelings Buddy is built for working through feelings with self-compassion, toward self-acceptance and self-motivation. A hard feeling is the obstacle, not the destination.

The brain research above did not shape a session's instructions, and a session does not work on the brain. A session is an AI working from written instructions, so it can get them wrong. Its instructions say to:

• never add a detail, a feeling or a fact the person has not given, and offer any connection only as a question they can wave away;
• treat longing as a possible risk signal: when someone says something like "I just want to be with them", ask once, plainly, whether they are having thoughts of suicide or of not wanting to be alive.

There is no diagnosis, and a session carries nothing about risk into a later session. No one reads the conversation as it happens.

No study has tested Feelings Buddy. How a session works, step by step