Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and university professor at the Stanford School of Medicine who offers YouTube videos and podcasts on the neuroscience behind human wellness.

Not long ago I listened to a two-hour explanation by him on the neuroscience behind why we grieve after a loss of a loved one. I found it to be absolutely fascinating and thought I would attempt to share the basic message with you in hopes that it may help you grieve better.

The good news is, I’m going to do this by keeping it simple and in a way that will help you navigate your own grief journey. The neuroscience behind grief is absolutely fascinating but I want to translate it into information that will benefit you on your own grief journey.

The bad news is, if you really want all the smarty pants technical terms involved in the neuroscience, I’m not going to go there. If you want to hear all the deep brainiac details you can Google the name Andrew Huberman.

Let’s begin with two basic things about the human brain. There are specific locations in the brain that have specific responsibilities or generate certain functions. Also, the brain retains every experience, stimuli, or knowledge that has been part of our life. Your brain files everything like an organized file cabinet or a computer that stores bits of data.

Neuroscientist have done testing and have determined that grief draws from three specific locations of the brain that governs our sensory of space, time, and emotional closeness. This has been determined through experiments that identify and measure brain activity.

Stick with me here because I am going to end up with a very important truth to incorporate into your grief journey. Before I can do that, I have to explain the space, time, and emotional closeness functions of the brain.

The emotional closeness function of your brain is likely self-explanatory for you. Your depth of grief is directly affected by how close you were to the deceased. We all understand this because how often have we all referred to a grieving friend or family as “They were very close.” The emotional closeness function can also be thought of as the relationship that we have had with the deceased.

The space function of your brain is the proximity we have had with the deceased and knowledge we have carried with us as to their location. This activity in the brain is about consciously knowing where someone or something is at any given time. Grief is going to be more pronounced if the deceased was regularly present with us compared to if they lived several states over and maybe we only saw them once a year.

The time function of your brain is our frame of reference knowing when we last saw someone or when we expect to see them next. Our brain holds an expectation of how long it should be till we see someone again. As an example, if we kiss a loved one off to work in the morning our brain will hold an expectation that we’ll see them again in about 8 hours or so. We don’t think much about not seeing them until we get to that 8 hour mark.

All three of these functions come into play as we grieve the loss of someone. We grieve because we were emotionally close to them, we held a general proximity to them, and have an expectation that we should be able to see them by now.

Grief that is healthy and helpful is a grief that maintains the emotional closeness, but remaps the space and time functions. Sometimes people in grief try to deny the emotional closeness they had or they try diminish the relationship that they loss because it seems less painful that way.

However, the best thing to do is allow yourself to naturally hold onto the emotional closeness, the relationship, but re-adjust and change the way we handle the space and time functions of the brain.

Allow me to try to explain this a bit further. A loved one has died, your relationship with them is still very much alive. This is all normal and healthy as that relationship begins to be based on memories. The loved one is gone from your sight and the relationship is no longer face to face, nor is it fluid with new interactions or activity together.

You are still very much emotionally close to them and your brain is affirming that. However, your brain is buzzing about the withdrawal of proximity and the time lapse of not seeing them. These functions of your brain is making you very uncomfortable and you are feeling the emotional pain of not being with them and not seeing them.

The solution to navigating this grief, knowing that your brain is driving these feelings, is to hold to your emotional closeness while cognitively remapping your brain as to why you can’t be with them and why you can’t see them.

Of these three brain functions (emotional closeness, space, and time) it is really only the emotional closeness that we are consciously aware of. So what happens when our grief gets difficult to bear, we attempt to diminish or ignore our emotional closeness to the deceased loved one but the space and time brain functions continue to wreck havoc with our emotions.

The space and time brain functions will subconsciously bug you with the questions Where are they? and When will I see them? Which is why the secret to remapping or changing your space and time brain functions so they cooperate with your grief journey, is to intentionally remind yourself where they are and when you’ll see them.

If you are Christian and a believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, you can remind yourself that your loved one is in Heaven and you will see them again there after you pass away. Of course, you tweak this to match your personal biblical understanding if you need to, as well. An example maybe, they are sleeping in Jesus awaiting His return and you’ll see them at the resurrection.

All people grieve, but remember what Paul said about the grief of unbelievers in 1 Thessalonian 4:13, “we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope” (NIV). If you have hope in your deceased loved one’s salvation and have hope that you will see them again in eternity, you’ll experience a much more productive grieving journey.

The neuroscience behind grief is something that I find very interesting, and especially the scientific verification that our emotional bond to a loved one doesn’t leave when they are gone. Remember, our relationship shifts to a memory based closeness but it doesn’t end and we certainly should not try to diminish it.