Widowhood & Grief Healing: Mind & Body | Hope Speaker

Widowhood & Grief: Is Something Missing?

We have all experienced how disorienting, and confusing, grief healing can be. While there are various ways widows can feel stuck, or like there are gaps in healing, today we're getting specific.

Sister, have you struggled with either of these issues in your widowhood grief journey?

• Recurring thoughts and questions that bring up pain for you... that you can't seem to escape?

• Episodes of anxiety or fear that you experience, but can't seem to control?

You may have tried different things, and they likely helped- in ways. But if you still feel like something is missing, you’re not where you want to be yet.

Today I want to talk to you about the importance of top-down and bottom-up processing — and why you can’t have just one without the other if you are going to bring grief healing to the two different parts of your brain that are impacted.

The Problem: Gaps in Widowhood & Grief Healing

Let’s talk about what it looks like when there are holes in your healing these two different areas of your brain.

1) When Top-Down Processing Is Missing

Top-down processing and healing is mindset work. It takes place in the pre-frontal cortex, or the thinking and logic control center.

If this is missing, you can find yourself stuck in patterns of thinking... that are creating patterns of being stuck in pain. The questions (whys, hows, what-ifs, etc.), beliefs that your life is over, the goodness is all gone, and other faulty ways of thinking.

It’s like walking down a sidewalk in grief, where you keep falling in the same hole. They’re repeated patterns, loops, things you can’t seem to resolve... the painful memories and thoughts.

Your mind can’t find answers and doesn’t know how to reframe what happened. When everything is through the lens of loss, our connection to your person becomes tied to pain.

When this happens repeatedly, it becomes a downward spiral, where deeper trenches are dug. And it gets easier to just fall right back down every time you journey down the grief sidewalk.

2) When Bottom-Up Processing Is Missing

Bottom-up processing calms the limbic system (near the brain stem) by using sensations from the body and sensory input to signal safety to this area of the brain. This part of the brain is more like your emotional command center.

The problem is, the thinking command center isn't online when you are in this fear response, so you cannot "talk yourself out of it."

If bottom-up processing is missing, grief can feel excruciating or overwhelming in lived, physical ways that you feel in your body.

It could be flashbacks, painful memories, a racing heart, chest pain, tightness in your throat, headaches, and many other symptoms that keep coming up. It’s your body feeling unsafe — and you don’t know how to regulate it.

But it doesn’t have to stay either of these ways, sister. We are integrated beings — mind, body, and soul. With the right tools for both top-down and bottom-up processing, our minds and bodies.

Top-Down & Bottom-Up Grief Healing

Top-down processing is related to mindset work. It can come through things like therapy and coaching. From a Biblical point of view, we are transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2). The Word also tells us the importance of our beliefs- we are often choosing between truth and lies.

What feels true (really true in grief) is not always what is actually true. And what you believe is shaping the life and future you are walking into.

Your thoughts and feelings impact each other.

Your feelings impact your choices.

Your repeated choices become habits.

And those habits create the life you are living daily in widowhood and grief.

Mindset work is powerful. It is grabbing hold of truth, taking thoughts captive, and being renewed and transformed. It can change so much of us, our widowhood experience, and even our future.

And here is what is equally important: As mentioned earlier, when you are in deep painful experiences like grief, the thinking part of your brain is not always online.

The front part of your brain — logic and planning — is only available when you are regulated. So when you are in trauma or deep pain, the back part of your brain is running the show.

This is why Scripture, truth and mindset tools can sometimes feel like they fall short. Not because they aren’t true, but because the thinking part of your brain literally isn’t online. They cannot talk to each other.

We need to stop shaming ourselves for not being able to - or to “just hold onto Scripture” and be fixed.

The good news is we can meet our body in that place, from the bottom up.

Practices like vagus nerve regulation use the sensations in your body to send signals upward to this part of your brain. They help bring you back into regulation, your window of tolerance, and a felt experience of safety.

And when you are regulated, the thinking part of your brain comes back online.

Now truth can land.

Now renewal can happen.

Now grief healing can integrate.

That is mind and body healing together!

The Right Healing Support for Mind & Body

Sister, if you have been feeling stuck in repeated thought spirals, the right mindset tools can help you make life-changing shifts.

If your body feels overwhelmed, unsafe, or reactive, body regulation practices (breathing, grounding, or calming touch tools) can bring the comfort and soothing that is needed. Which methods to use depends on the nature of the dysregulation (hyper or hypoarousal).

Both top-down and bottom-up processing are needed, are available, and are proven effective.

This is a core part of what we practice inside my Coaching and inside our Christian widow community, The HOPE Stronghold.

We use both modalities regularly:

• Renewing the mind with truth

• Practicing regulation in the body

• Integrating grief instead of pushing through it

Because grief is not metabolized by gritting your teeth. Not by trying harder. Not by numbing or shutting parts of yourself off.

It is metabolized by bringing gentleness, love, and truth to the way God created and wired you.

If you are ready for deeper widowhood and grief healing — support that addresses both your mind and body — I am here to guide you.

You don’t have to keep falling into the same holes. Please consider where you may need to fill in holes in your grief support. Both your mind and your body will thank you for the right care.

With you,

Rachel

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