Grief Brain: Is It Normal to Forget Things When You're Grieving?

The short answer: yes. Forgetting things, losing your train of thought and not being able to concentrate are so common after a bereavement that there's a name for it: grief brain. It isn't a sign that anything is wrong with you, and for most people it eases over the following months. If it's severe or getting worse, talk to your GP.

Clients can be surprised that grief affects not only their mood but also their mind and body too: this is expected and completely normal.

What are the signs of grief brain?

It tends to show up in small, ordinary ways, which is partly why it's so unsettling. You might notice yourself:

• walking into a room and having no idea why
• losing your keys, your phone, or the thread of a conversation
• reaching for a word you use every day and finding it isn't there
• reading the same paragraph over and over without taking it in
• missing appointments, or forgetting things you'd normally never forget
• finding simple decisions, like what to cook, suddenly exhausting

Plenty of people also describe feeling foggy or slowed down, as though everything takes longer than it should. None of that means you're losing your mind, even if it feels that way at three in the morning.

How does grief affect the brain?

There's no single switch that grief flips, but a few things are happening at once.

The first is plain stress. A death is one of the biggest shocks a body can take, and stress gets in the way of attention and short-term memory. A 2019 review of grief research by the neuroscientist Mary-Frances O'Connor lists difficulty concentrating right alongside disrupted sleep and appetite as part of grief (O'Connor, 2019). Those three feed each other: you're sleeping badly, eating at odd times, and asking a tired brain to do more than usual.

The second is load. In the first weeks and months there's a lot to carry: the admin, the phone calls, other people's grief, and your own thoughts coming back to the person again and again. There's only so much room to work with, and when grief is taking up most of it, there isn't much left over for where you put your keys.

The third is slower. O'Connor's argument, in her book The Grieving Brain, is that grieving is partly a kind of learning. Your brain spent years expecting the person to be there, and now it has to learn a world where they aren't. That takes time and a lot of repetition, and it's tiring work even when you're not aware you're doing it.

How long does grief brain usually last?

There isn't a fixed timeline, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. For most people the fog is thickest in the first weeks and months, when shock, broken sleep and practical chaos are all at their worst, and it lifts gradually as those settle. It rarely clears on a particular day. More often you notice, one week, that you've stopped losing things quite so often.

It can come back for a while around anniversaries, birthdays and other hard days. That's normal too, and it doesn't mean you've gone backwards (see Grief Is Not a Straight Line). There's more on the wider picture in How Long Does Grief Last?

How can I look after myself with grief brain?

The aim isn't to fix your memory. It's to stop it costing you so much while it recovers.

Write things down, in one place. A single notebook or one note on your phone works better than scraps of paper, because you only have to remember where one thing is. Set reminders for anything with a time attached.

Cut down the decisions you have to make. Eat the same few simple meals, lay your clothes out the night before, and let the non-essential things wait. The NHS suggests not trying to do everything at once and setting small targets instead (NHS), which is good advice for a brain that's running low.

Tell people. If you're back at work, let your manager know you might need things in writing for a while. Most people are more understanding than you'd expect, and it saves you pretending everything's fine.

Look after the basics. Sleep, regular meals and a bit of movement, even a short walk, will do more for your concentration than any memory trick.

And be kinder to yourself about it than you'd normally be.

If your loss is recent, The First Few Months is a short, free guide to the early weeks, including more on looking after yourself while everything feels harder than it should.

When should I see a GP?

Grief brain on its own is normal, but it's worth seeing your GP if:

• the memory problems are severe, or getting worse rather than slowly better
• they're putting you or someone else at risk, for example leaving the hob on or getting lost while driving
• the fog hasn't started to lift after several months
• you're struggling to cope, or you've had a low mood for more than two weeks, which is the NHS's own guidance

Memory problems can have other causes, and a GP can rule those out. If the grief itself has stayed stuck and unchanged well beyond six months, that's worth raising too. It can be a sign of Prolonged Grief Disorder, a diagnosable condition your GP can assess.

If grief ever tips into thoughts of harming yourself, contact Samaritans on 116 123, NHS 111, or 999 in an emergency.