🌌 The Holographic Nature of Grief—Why Loss Never Truly Leaves Us
Artist: SMH “Drastic Teal”
📖 Jump to a Section
- Introduction: Grief as an Imprint, Not an Absence
- The Holographic Principle: What It Means & Why It Matters for Grief
- How Grief is Holographically Stored in the Body & Mind
- How Grief Manifests in the Nervous System
- Try This: Embodied Reflection
- Final Thought: We Carry, Not Release
- Next in the Series: The Quantum Grief Model
- Physics Terms Used in This Article
- Notes on Grief
What This Article Explores
Why grief doesn’t disappear, but becomes embedded in the nervous system
How the Holographic Principle explains loss as structural, not vanishing
How grief manifests across five nervous system states
Why we carry grief forward rather than letting it go
🔗 The Quantum Grief Series (Core 5)
1️⃣ Schrödinger’s Grief
2️⃣ The Liminality Loop
3️⃣ You are here: The Holographic Nature of Grief
4️⃣ The Quantum Grief Model
5️⃣ Infinite Thresholds: Grief as a Quantum Spectrum
✨ Introduction: Grief as an Imprint, Not an Absence
We often think of grief as something to move through—a storm we weather, a process we complete, a wound that eventually heals.
Traditional grief models frame it as a linear experience, something with a beginning, middle, and end.
But what if grief isn’t something we pass through?
What if, instead, it encodes itself into us, shaping our body, memory, and identity long after the person is gone?
In physics, the Holographic Principle suggests that information is never truly lost—even when something collapses, its imprint remains encoded at a fundamental level.
Grief works the same way.
Rather than disappearing over time, grief restructures itself within us.
It becomes embedded in our nervous system, our relationships, our choices.
The people we lose do not vanish—they are encoded into who we are, imprinted into our existence in ways we don’t always recognize.
This changes everything about how we understand grief and healing.
🔍 The Holographic Principle: What It Means & Why It Matters for Grief
Physics Meets Grief: The Core Idea
In physics, the Holographic Principle states that information about a three-dimensional object can be stored on a two-dimensional surface—like a hologram.
This challenges the idea that information is ever “lost.” Even if an object appears to vanish, the encoded data still exists elsewhere.
This principle helps explain the paradox of black holes, where matter seemingly disappears but remains recorded on the event horizon.
Grief functions in the same way:
The person is physically gone, but their presence remains encoded in the griever’s body, nervous system, and sense of self.
Their influence continues to shape thoughts, behaviors, and emotional patterns—even in their absence.
Grief is not a deletion of the relationship—it is a transformation of where and how it exists.
❓ But What If That’s Not True?
Could some griefs fade because they were never encoded that deeply?
Are there relationships that don’t get holographically stored?
What if grief doesn’t always restructure us—but sometimes just passes through?
In trauma work, we often mistake intensity for significance. But not all losses become identity. Some dissolve quietly. Some come back later.
This isn’t about invalidating grief—it’s about refusing to flatten it.
When we give ourselves permission to differentiate the imprint of grief, we open the door to something more powerful than catharsis: meaning-making.
Meaning-making is not the same as identity looping. It’s not staying inside the echo chamber of “I hurt, therefore I am.” It’s choosing to ask:
🧭 What am I becoming in relationship to this loss?
This is why grief never truly "ends"—because the information of the person we lost remains permanently encoded in us.
🧠 How Grief is Holographically Stored in the Body & Mind
Grief does not stay in just one place—it imprints itself across multiple levels of experience. This is why grief feels both psychological and physical.
Here’s how the holographic encoding of grief plays out:
1. 🧩 Surface Memory → Conscious Recall
Remembering their voice, their favorite phrases, what they looked like.
Revisiting their absence when reminded by objects, anniversaries, or places.
2. ⚡️ Emotional Imprint → Stored in the Nervous System
Grief isn’t just a memory—it’s an emotional and physiological response.
The nervous system holds attachment imprints, creating gut reactions to reminders of the loss.
Triggers (songs, scents, locations) cause grief resurgences because the body has stored relational memory.
3. 🌀 Somatic Encoding → Felt in the Body
Grief doesn’t just live in the mind—it lives in the body.
Tightness in the chest, an ache in the gut, the weight of longing.
The body remembers absence in ways that bypass logic.
4. 🌱 Identity Imprint → Who We Become
Grief changes our sense of self.
The values, perspectives, and attachments we carry forward.
The way grief reshapes our relationships with others—how we love, how we fear loss, how we stay connected.
5. 🧲 Quantum Entanglement → The Ongoing Influence of the Deceased
Relationships don’t end with death.
We continue to interpret their absence, reshape our understanding of them over time.
New experiences change how we understand them retroactively—they still evolve within us.
Not every relationship evolves inside us.
Some feel incomplete, or stuck. Others vanish quietly.
Entanglement doesn’t mean we must keep connecting—it just means we can.
✅ This holographic storage of grief explains why:
✔ Some losses feel just as present years later.
✔ Certain reminders reactivate grief instantly.
✔ We never fully “let go” of those we love—because they are structurally written into us.
💥 How Grief Manifests in the Nervous System
Grief is not just encoded in memory—it activates deep nervous system responses that influence how we experience, react, and adapt to loss.
Below are five core nervous system states commonly referenced in trauma therapy. These grief-specific interpretations are based on my training in the Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST) model and reflect how I’ve come to understand grief’s embodiment.
🧬 For a deeper dive into how these responses interact with the brain’s architecture—including the amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex—Coming Soon - see my companion article on Neuroholography.
1. 🥊 Fight Response: The Need to Confront Loss
Grief Manifestation:
Emotional: Anger, irritability, resentment toward oneself, others, or even the deceased.
Adaptive Strategy: Seeking to regain control over emotions or environment.
Physiological Sensations:
Increased heart rate (body preparing for action).
Muscle tension (readiness to confront the source of distress).
Activated Brain Regions:
Amygdala: Processes emotions, especially anger and fear.
Hypothalamus: Regulates stress responses.
2. 🏃♂️ Flight Response: The Urge to Escape the Pain
Grief Manifestation:
Emotional: Anxiety, restlessness, desire to avoid reminders of the loss.
Adaptive Strategy: Distancing from distressing emotions or situations.
Physiological Sensations:
Restlessness, fidgeting, pacing.
Shallow breathing (quick, short breaths).
Activated Brain Regions:
Amygdala: Detects threats, signaling escape.
Periaqueductal Gray (PAG): Modulates defensive behaviors.
3. 🧊 Freeze Response: The Body’s Protective Shutdown
Grief Manifestation:
Emotional: Numbness, emotional detachment, feeling stuck.
Adaptive Strategy: Pausing to conserve energy or avoid harm.
Physiological Sensations:
Numbness, detachment from surroundings.
Holding breath, feeling unable to move.
Activated Brain Regions:
Dorsal Vagal Complex: Engages immobilization.
Amygdala: Maintains heightened awareness while preventing action.
4. 🙇 Submit Response: Appeasing to Avoid Discomfort
Grief Manifestation:
Emotional: Prioritizing others' grief over one's own, suppressing needs.
Adaptive Strategy: Seeking safety through social appeasement.
Physiological Sensations:
Muscle relaxation to appear non-threatening.
Softening voice, avoiding eye contact.
Activated Brain Regions:
Prefrontal Cortex: Social decision-making.
Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Empathy and emotional regulation.
5. 🤝 Attach Cry Response: Seeking Connection for Survival
Grief Manifestation:
Emotional: Yearning for the deceased, seeking comfort.
Adaptive Strategy: Reaching out for support and connection.
Physiological Sensations:
Tearfulness, deep longing, nausea.
Aching sensation in the chest or gut.
Activated Brain Regions:
Insular Cortex: Processes emotion and bodily sensation.
Anterior Cingulate Cortex: Experiences social pain and bonding.
Try This Embodied Reflection
Notice what part of your body responds when you recall a specific loss
Ask: Is this grief encoded in sensation, identity, or memory?
Try writing down what’s changed in you because they existed
Integration is a choice. Encoding is real—but it’s also relational. We can choose to turn toward these imprints or let them rest in quiet form. What matters is how we relate to what we carry.
🪶 Final Thought: We Carry, Not Release
Grief, like information in physics, does not disappear—it changes form.
✔ It is not something we finish.
✔ It is something we learn to live inside of.
When we stop seeing grief as something to get over and start seeing it as something that has restructured us, we can approach it with more grace, less resistance, and a deeper sense of meaning.
🌀 Grief is not something we leave behind.
🌀 It is something we carry forward.
Next in the Series: The Quantum Grief Model
Now that we understand why grief persists through the Holographic Principle, the next step is exploring how grief moves and transforms—which is where the Quantum Grief Model comes in.
🚀 Stay tuned.
📘 Physics Terms Used in the Article
- Holographic Principle: A physics concept that suggests all the information inside a space is stored on its boundary—like a hologram, where the whole image lives in every part.
- Quantum Entanglement: The idea that two particles can stay connected across space, so that when one changes, the other responds—no matter how far apart they are.
- Event Horizon: The “point of no return” at the edge of a black hole—once something crosses this boundary, it can’t escape. It marks the threshold beyond which return is impossible.
⏳ Notes on Grief
Death doesn’t just hurt—it disrupts. It exposes the myth that time moves in a line.
This series is an attempt to trace the nonlinear truth of grief.
Each article is written as a kind of recursive proof:
a reminder that grief lives outside of time, and healing isn’t about going forward—
it’s about learning to live across.