--- ---  # How to Cope with Grief Attacks, According to a Psychologist by [Delaney Rebernik](https://time.com/author/delaney-rebernik/) ## Delaney Rebernik Mar 11, 2026 4:48 PM UTC  Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: blackCAT/Getty Images) by [Delaney Rebernik](https://time.com/author/delaney-rebernik/) ## Delaney Rebernik Mar 11, 2026 4:48 PM UTC When Kelly Edmonson’s son died, she was on a cruise ship. It was January 3, 2023, and Edmonson and her husband were ringing in the new year—their first as empty nesters—with a Caribbean vacation. She received a phone call telling her that her oldest son Darius, then 28 years old, had passed away suddenly in his sleep from an epileptic seizure. In the middle of the ocean among strangers, Edmonson, a nurse executive, felt as if she was in “a parallel universe,” she says. “We were surrounded by people having the happiest time, and it was no question the worst moment of my life.” But it was a moment that would repeat itself in the months to come. Mother’s Day. Thanksgiving. Darius’ birthday, which falls on Christmas. As the world around her celebrated, Edmonson would be hit with swells of overwhelming, whole-body grief that transported her back to that day on the ship. It felt, she says, like “complete suffocation”—chest constricting, breath catching, mind racing, fear and sorrow cresting. Edmonson was experiencing what some researchers call a “grief attack.” The surprise siege, which typically lasts between one and 30 minutes, combines the physical grip of a panic attack—with symptoms such as shaking, sweating, numbness, dry mouth, and dizziness—and the psychological anguish of acute grief: irrepressible tears, pangs of longing, intense fear about life without the deceased. Though well-documented among grievers, with accounts spanning medicine, literature, and sociology, the grief attack, also sometimes called a “[grief burst](https://www.centerforloss.com/2025/05/ask-dr-wolfelt-are-griefbursts-normal/),” has been little explored scientifically. It’s a gap that recent [research](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07481187.2025.2590954), published in November in the journal _Death Studies_, aims to help close. In a study of 247 bereaved adults, about half of whom had experienced loss within the past year, researchers identified the symptoms and structure of grief attacks and a way to measure their intensity. They also found that attacks, which nearly half of the participants reported experiencing once or twice a day in the past week, can cause serious ruptures to daily life. Reported consequences range from emotional distress (depression, anxiety, hopelessness, panic attacks), to impairments (trouble sleeping, eating, working, or studying) to accidental injuries (kitchen knife accidents, falls, even a motorcycle crash). “There are good scientific reasons to take this seriously,” says the study’s co-author, Robert Neimeyer, a clinical psychologist and director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. “The profundity of these attacks correlates with one’s inability to function more generally in one’s grief.” # What causes an attack? A grief attack, though sudden, is “not mysterious,” Neimeyer says. His research, conducted with Sherman Lee, an associate professor of psychology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, shows the experience is a composite of two well-understood perspectives on how the brain deals with a sudden loss of an important emotional connection: attachment theory from psychology, which suggests we’re compelled to repair a bond broken through the death of a loved one since deep connection is so vital to our survival; and the [PANIC/GRIEF system](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1521/psyc.2011.74.1.5?url%5Fver=Z39.88-2003&rfr%5Fid=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr%5Fdat=cr%5Fpub%20%200pubmed) from neuroscience, which says significant loss produces visceral hurt via a neural circuit that’s evolved over millions of years from pain mechanisms meant to promote social cohesion. Often, an attack comes on during circumstances that “seem to be neutral enough,” Neimeyer says. Someone might be at home washing the dishes or doing laundry when a trigger—a song, a memory—brings on the tidal wave. **Read More**: [_How Close are We to a Universal Vaccine for Respiratory Illnesses?_](https://time.com/7382892/universal-vaccine-respiratory-illnesses-research/) For author Jean Alfieri, that trigger was an ad about an annual local event she heard on the car radio as she was driving to work one day. She hadn’t attended the event the year before and with a start remembered why: her dad’s funeral. “I couldn’t get my head around how that much time had passed,” she says. “My hands started trembling. I could feel the tears coming.” Eventually, since nothing she tried would stop the attack, “I pulled over, and I put it in park, I put my hazards on, and I just wept.” That first attack came on when Alfieri was 53\. Though difficult, it also felt like a sign of emotional growth. “I’m a lot more sensitive to how delicate life is,” she says. “It’s painful, but gosh, there’s just an appreciation for things.” # How intense is a grief attack? Experts hold different views on how—and if—to “treat” grief, and care should be taken to avoid pathologizing a normal human experience. But the growing body of psychological research on grief is affirming for people like Linita Mathew, an author and educator who was “dumbfounded” by the frequent and debilitating attacks that lasted for years after her father died. “I could feel my eyes physically trembling. I couldn’t read anything…I couldn’t focus,” Mathew remembers. “I was having this whole-body experience where every part of me was trying to figure out where he went.” She’s since learned she has what’s now called [prolonged grief disorder](https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/prolonged-grief-disorder) (PGD), the first grief-related condition to appear in the _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders_, added in 2022. To measure the intensity of such attacks, Neimeyer and Lee developed a self-assessment called the [Grief Attack Questionnaire](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41297903/), which asks people to rate their symptoms across four dimensions: panic, yearning, disorganization (trouble sustaining a routine), and despair (grief-related depression). A total score above 34 suggests someone’s attack is “clinically high” in intensity and may warrant further exploration or support. But a score can only say so much. “Grief is a very personal thing that I feel like is not measured only in numbers,” says journalist Cindy Mich, who’s experienced intense grief attacks after her partner died of stomach cancer. **Read More**: [_Why Laughing at Yourself Makes You More Likable_](https://time.com/7381641/laughing-at-yourself-awkward-moments-science/) Neimeyer advises against using the GAQ as “an index of pathology” or viewing a high score as an indication that “something’s wrong with you.” Likewise, a low score doesn’t mean your bond with your loved one wasn’t strong, Lee says, or that you “have to wait till you’re in full-blown clinical depression to go see a counselor or get help.” Though Lee and Neimeyer’s latest research focuses on grief attacks among people mourning a human death, grief is often more expansive, Neimeyer says. “Bereavement is one doorway into the house of grief, but there are many.” Two of Alfieri’s grief attacks have been brought on by hearing a song that reminded her of a departed pet. They can even occur before a death: Anticipatory grief for a loved one with a terminal illness can be another catalyst, Neimeyer says. ## How can I stop it? Nearly four in five participants in the latest study were able to reduce the intensity of their attacks. Although more research is needed, common techniques that show promise include slow breathing (used by 36% of participants) and acceptance of an oncoming attack without judgment (30%). Trauma-informed therapeutic techniques, such as some used in cognitive behavioral therapy, can also help the griever learn to face their fears around loss, Neimeyer says. Leaning on friends or community members is also crucial, but even though all of us will face loss at some point, people often aren’t sure how to support someone who’s grieving. “We’re terrified about death and dying. And yet \[facing\] it can be the greatest superpower that we have,” says Jock Brocas, who runs a grief and spirituality group where he encourages joyful storytelling about the deceased. Neimeyer underscores the value of such narrative work in shaping lasting bonds with a lost loved one. “Grief attacks arise in the context of separation from a relationship that was more loving than unloving. It’s a reflection of our capacity to connect to those who matter greatly to us and to whom we have greatly mattered, and we should experience profound emotion at these points of transition,” Neimeyer says. “The question is, what do we do with that?” The answer is highly personal. Often it involves artifacts, rituals, and commitments to carry forward the best qualities of the loved one. Mich, Alfieri, Mathew, and Brocas all turn to storytelling. Edmonson even started a gifting [service](https://thetimelypresence.com/) to support the newly bereaved at those weighty milestones throughout the first year of grief. “As you carry forward what you learned \[from your loved one\] and whatever was good in the relationship that now is a part of you, these things also begin to help diminish the broken bond that is at the heart of the grief attack,” Neimeyer says. How to Cope with Grief Attacks, According to a Psychologist ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/what-to-do-when-grief-attacks/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/what-to-do-when-grief-attacks/"},"headline":"How to Cope with Grief Attacks, According to a Psychologist","datePublished":"2026-03-11T16:48:35.104Z","dateModified":"2026-05-19T07:45:26.003Z","description":"Grief attacks have seldom been explored scientifically. But some strategies show promise for addressing them.","url":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/what-to-do-when-grief-attacks/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07ef2d5130831657/69b18b8f035c6fded37a5ca4/What_to_do_When_Grief_Attacks.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Delaney Rebernik","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/delaney-rebernik/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07ef2d5130831657/69b18b8f035c6fded37a5ca4/What_to_do_When_Grief_Attacks.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"What to do When Grief Attacks.png","caption":"","creditText":"Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: blackCAT/Getty Images)","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/10/what-to-do-when-grief-attacks/","name":"How to Cope with Grief Attacks, According to a Psychologist"}}]}] ```