Has Grief Made you Lose Your Mind?

When Matt first died, I lost my mind – but not in the ways you might think. Grief-related memory loss is a real thing.

I used to be a person who could keep everything straight without notes or a calendar. I never lost my car keys. I used to have a really great memory –– until grief and memory loss collided.

Suddenly, I was putting my keys in the freezer and forgetting my dog’s name. There were days I couldn’t remember what day it was or if I’d eaten breakfast. This was much more than forgetfulness. It was full-on brain fog.

I used to love reading books, but even that eluded me. Now I couldn’t read more than a few sentences at a time, and usually had to go back and reread those same lines many times. Grief and concentration are not a good match.

My mind simply stopped functioning. Has that happened for you?

Grief-Related Memory Loss Can Make You Feel Like You’ve Lost Your Mind

There’s no formula to follow when your life goes sideways. No definitive resource or master checklist that says, “these things are normal.” Unfortunately, many people lost in grief simply suffer alone in the weirdness of it all, wondering if they’ve lost their minds on top of everything else.

Grief, especially early grief, is not a normal time. It makes perfect sense that you’re disoriented: everything has changed.

Memory loss, confusion, an inability to concentrate or focus – these things are all normal inside grief. They do tend to be temporary, but they last a lot longer than you would think.

You Haven’t Lost Your Mind. You’re Grieving. 

Realistically, it may be a few years before your grief-induced memory loss abates and your mind’s capacity returns to a recognizable form. I know that may not be what you want to hear, but the thing to remember is, physiologically your body has experienced a trauma. All of those mental circuits that used to fire so clearly are trying their best to make sense of something that can’t ever make sense. 

When your mind is working so hard, there’s very little brain power left over to track more than a paragraph in a book, or remember that your car keys go on the hook and not in the freezer. It’s hard to think in an orderly, concise fashion when you’re reeling from a loss. 

While I can’t magically fix your mind, I can tell you this: you are not losing your mind. Your mind is doing the best it can to keep a bead on reality when the world has turned upside-down. Be patient with yourself. Make a lot of lists. Set reminders. Do whatever you need to do.

Remember that this is a normal response to a stressful situation, it’s not a flaw in you. 
 

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