How Mindfulness Helps When Grief Turns Into Mental Loops
In this episode of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, Heather Stang and Amanda Palermo explore how mindfulness supports you when grief turns into rumination and anxiety after loss.
This is Step 2 of the Mindfulness & Grief System: Mindful Awareness.
When someone you love dies, your mind often goes into overdrive. You replay conversations. You question what you could have done differently. You imagine worst-case scenarios about the future. This mental looping is common in grief. But there is a difference between remembering and ruminating.
Mindfulness helps you see that difference.
In this conversation, Heather and Amanda talk about what Heather calls “time traveling” — when the grieving brain jumps into the past or future instead of staying in the present. They explore how these mental add-ons increase suffering and keep the nervous system activated long after the initial loss.
This episode builds on Step 1: Conscious Relaxation and helps you understand why calming the body is not enough on its own. Once the nervous system begins to settle, mindful awareness becomes the gateway to discernment and wise choices.
You’ll learn:
• The difference between pain and suffering
• Why grief rumination keeps anxiety alive
• How mindfulness and compassion work together
• What “time traveling” does to the grieving brain
• How body scan practices interrupt mental loops
• Why you do not need to stop remembering in order to reduce suffering
Mindfulness and grief work together when you learn to notice what is happening without adding extra layers of fear or self-judgment. This is not about suppressing memories. It is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about being present with what is real and responding with wisdom instead of reactivity.
Heather and Amanda also share personal reflections on grief anniversaries, rumination loops, and how simple practices like breath awareness and body scanning can gently bring you back to the present moment.
If you feel stuck in mental loops after loss, this episode offers a grounded and compassionate place to begin.
About the Hosts
Heather Stang, MA, C-IAYT, is a thanatologist, yoga therapist, author, and the creator of the Mindfulness & Grief System. Her work focuses on helping people reduce suffering and live alongside grief with compassion and practical tools.
Amanda Palermo is a grief counselor and mindfulness practitioner who brings warmth, clarity, and lived experience to conversations about loss. Together, Heather and Amanda offer grounded guidance for navigating grief step by step. Find her on Instagram.
Episode Transcript
Below is the full transcript of this episode. It has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
From Rumination to Wisdom: Mindful Awareness in Grief
Heather: The pain is the objective situation. The fact that someone you love is missing is pain. The suffering is, “I’m going to lose everything, all my friends will leave, I will never be okay again, and my life is over.” That suffering has not happened. Add-ons lead to suffering.
Heather over music: This is the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast. I’m Heather Stang, author, yoga therapist, and thanatologist. You didn’t choose grief, but here you’re choosing how to show up for yourself, and I’ll guide you along the way. In each episode, you’ll experience practical tools and sound advice to help you tend to your loss, honor your love, and rebuild a life where grief, hope, and meaning can coexist.
Heather: We’re going to start with the conversation Amanda and I just had about showing up as we are as we move into the second step of the Mindfulness & Grief system, which is mindfulness, or mindful awareness. I think that’s the technical term, but it’s really all about mindfulness. Right off the bat, let’s clear away some myths before we get into what it is and how it helps with grief.
It would be helpful to remember what it is not. It’s not perfection, and it’s not a completely blank mind, although that might be nice if you could get there. Most of us with a human brain aren’t going to get there, at least not for very long.
If mindfulness feels intimidating, as it did for me when I was first learning it, remember this: it’s a practice. And a practice means we aim to be mindful, we notice when we’re not, we’re compassionate with ourselves, and then we begin again.
Amanda, what do you feel mindfulness is not?
Amanda: I don’t think it’s pretending that you’re okay, especially in grief. It’s about showing up as you are and honoring what’s happening with you in the present moment, which can be really hard when you’re grieving.
It’s purposeful awareness. We’re intentionally being aware. We’re not pretending everything is okay.
Heather: That’s really important. And we’re not spiritually bypassing our fears, anxieties, or pain by saying, “Oh, I’m just going to be mindful and not worry about that.” Later, we’ll talk about how to turn toward difficulty in a mindful way.
There’s a part of me that, as a teacher, wants to give everyone everything right away. Here are all the tools. But it’s like riding a bike or learning to drive. You learn step by step. You don’t learn it all at once.
In the last episode, we introduced conscious relaxation, which helps steady your mind on one point. Now we move into mindfulness, which is about opening up to what is real and true, as you were saying. It’s not about pretending you’re okay, but honoring where you are.
Then there’s another layer to it, which is the third step: compassion and self-compassion. You cannot separate mindfulness from compassion.
One of my favorite quotes, not just for mindfulness but for anything, is from Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of mindfulness-based stress reduction, which really launched mindfulness as a tool for health and well-being in the West. He said in an interview that in Asian languages, the word for mind and heart is one and the same. So if you are not hearing mindfulness as heartfulness, you’re missing the point.
That’s a powerful statement. As we talk about what mindfulness is, remember you cannot separate it from being compassionate. Once you put tea in water, you can’t separate the two.
I had a friend once say to me, “Heather, I can be present. I’m mindful. I’m present to my anger at you. If I’m screaming at you and paying attention, that’s mindfulness, right?” That might be awareness. It might be presence. But it’s not mindful. Mindfulness has a quality of kindness, understanding, and tenderness.
It’s also not about excusing hurtful behavior by saying, “Oh, I was present when I did this to myself.” We don’t have to sit around judging ourselves either. Once we catch ourselves not taking care of ourselves or being hard on someone else, we can just begin again. That’s a big part of it, because we’re not going to be perfect at this.
Amanda: In terms of grieving, it makes me think of situations where I haven’t reacted in the best way. Later I’ll reflect and say to myself, “Okay, Amanda, that wasn’t maybe your best reaction. Maybe you didn’t show up as your highest self.” But being aware, being mindful, also means noticing and saying, “I’m doing my best. I’m a human having a human experience. Next time I’m going to do things a bit differently.” There’s accountability there, but also compassion.
Heather: It’s wisdom, isn’t it? It’s not just being present to be present, although that’s lovely. I love when I can wake up, do my morning meditation, and just sit and be present.
This morning I woke up, took care of the pup, made my coffee, sat on my cushion, and I was present. I heard birds. I felt like I was hearing birds for the first time in months because it’s winter and they’re just starting to come back. I just noticed that I was hearing them, and it was quite lovely.
Those moments are wonderful. Nothing dramatic comes from them. I don’t have to do anything about the birds. Maybe it taught me to savor, but that’s it.
What you’re describing, though, is looking back on actions or attitudes and consciously saying, “Oh, that wasn’t skillful.” That’s much gentler than saying, “I’m bad” or “I’m wrong.” Just not skillful. And what can I do in the future to be more kind and compassionate? That’s wisdom.
The tradition of mindfulness I’m trained in is Vipassana, which means wisdom. While we would love to sit and savor every moment, especially during grief, often our sitting is to unhook from a story, unhook from something incredibly difficult, or get closer to truth.
Amanda: I didn’t know much about mindfulness practice until I joined Awaken and started doing these practices during my grieving process. Before that, I was really only familiar with focusing meditations, like mantra, focusing on the breath, counting.
I remember a few years ago hearing a colleague talk about becoming certified as a mindfulness teacher, and I scoffed. I thought, “What do you mean? Aren’t we mindful all the time? You can get certified in being mindful?”
It blew my mind when I realized mindfulness is about letting a little more in. I had been practicing so many focusing techniques, which narrow attention. Mindfulness allows awareness of what’s happening around you and noticing when the present moment slips.
That was huge for me. Sitting in mindfulness and noticing, “Oh, my mind wandered. Okay, bring it back.” Allowing in sound, sensation, and what’s happening around me without going down a rabbit hole. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a challenging practice.
Heather: That reminds me of one of my favorite definitions of mindfulness, which is actually an image. I use this in Awaken often.
Imagine two people walking down a forest path. The person on the left has a thought bubble filled with what’s actually there, the trees, the path, maybe a bird. The person on the right has a thought bubble filled with bills, arguments, stress, maybe even little symbols for curse words. None of that is happening in front of them.
They’re in the same place physically but having completely different experiences.
Most of us are somewhere between those two people most of the time. And that’s normal. Our brains are wired to look for opportunities and protect us from threats, so we think ahead or think back. But when we return to what is real and true, we awaken to this precious life.
That’s why Awaken Grief Support is called that. Many people experience an awakening during the most difficult moments of their lives. It forces us to wake up to what’s in front of us so we can make wise, skillful decisions.
I’ll add another image. Focusing practice is like a flashlight. You’re at a campsite at night and you shine it on one pine cone, one rock, one marshmallow that fell on the ground. Mindfulness is like a lantern. It lights up the whole campsite. You see many things at once. Some rise and fall.
It’s not binary. It’s not focused or distracted. It’s a continuum.
When we talk about grief, it narrows your focus. That makes sense. It hurts. You miss your person. The focus is on what’s absent. That’s normal. But eventually you want to reconnect with friends, walk your dog, feel sunshine, listen to music again. Mindfulness is the pathway because it opens awareness to other experiences.
It’s not this or that. It’s this and that.
You can feel longing and gratitude at the same time. Love and anger at the same time. That coexistence can feel impossible until you practice mindfulness.
Some people ask, “Why would I want to be present when I feel this bad?” That’s why conscious relaxation comes first. It gives you a break. You learn how to move back and forth between what serves you in the moment.
Amanda: Especially early on, when the numbness fades and you start feeling everything. That’s when mindfulness helps you know when to lean into feelings and when it might not feel safe.
You can’t make those decisions unless you’re aware of what’s happening. It’s easy to say, “I’m fine. I’m doing great.” But mindfulness asks you to be truthful with yourself.
Heather: Exactly. And it helps us separate reality from add-ons.
The reality might be, “I don’t know how to handle the finances because my partner handled them.”
The story becomes, “I’m going to end up penniless and alone.”
Sharon Salzberg calls these add-ons. Mindfulness helps us tease out what is actually happening.
I remember teaching my grandmother how to pump gas after my grandfather died. It was sweet and painful. She didn’t know how because he had always done it for her. She asked for help. That’s wisdom.
Mindfulness lets us see the real problem and then seek support.
Amanda: I tend to ruminate. After my mother passed, I would get stuck in loops. I didn’t even realize what was happening at first. I would sit down to meditate and suddenly I was replaying everything over and over.
Eventually I recognized it. “Oh, I’m ruminating.” Then I would ask, “How do I unhook from this?” That became part of my practice.
Breath, body, sound meditation really helped. Also journaling. Writing down the thoughts externalized them.
Heather: That’s powerful. Breath, body, sound weaves together awareness of breath, physical sensation, and sound. Instead of trying to stop rumination, which rarely works, you expand awareness.
Notice the rumination and the temperature of the room. Notice the rumination and a sound in the distance. You’re not fighting the thought. You’re widening the lens.
This leads us back to pain versus suffering.
Pain is the objective situation. Someone you love is missing. That’s pain.
Suffering is the story: “I’ll never be okay. My life is over.” Those are add-ons.
Mindfulness helps us sit with the pain and also notice we’re holding a cup of tea. That may sound small, but it creates space. And space creates possibility.
Amanda: Body scans helped me too. Scanning from head to toe and simply labeling sensations as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. It drops you into the body and out of the story.
Heather: Let’s explain what a body scan is.
Amanda: You move your attention slowly through your body, noticing sensations without trying to change them. You label them as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. That’s it.
Heather: It brings you into the present moment. You’re not trying to fix your body or relax it. That’s what makes it mindful rather than relaxation-based. Ironically, it often still calms the nervous system.
If you notice pain in your knee and start building a story about surgery and groceries and stairs, you simply say, “Unpleasant,” and move on. That’s the practice.
Amanda: It starts to bleed into everyday life. Mindful eating. Mindful walking. Being present with your food instead of scrolling on your phone.
When I was hiking in Sedona on the three-year anniversary of my mom’s death, I stopped and took in the birds, the rain, the temperature. I thought of her and started crying. It was beauty and grief at the same time.
I don’t think I would have experienced that if I hadn’t allowed myself to be present.
Heather: That’s the definition of “and.” You were missing your mother and feeling beauty. For someone early in grief, that may feel impossible. But you embodied it.
And it doesn’t mean forcing yourself to hike. Some years you may need to curl up on the couch. Mindfulness is about knowing what you need right now.
It’s not toxic positivity. It’s not transcending grief. It’s honoring your experience with dignity and kindness.
Let me read from my book, Living with Grief.
“Mindful acceptance invites you to honor yourself and your experience with dignity and kindness. Rather than turn your back on your suffering, you treat yourself as you would a beloved friend. You take time to notice the physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings that accompany your pain. This kind of acceptance means you choose thoughtfully how to respond and temper your response with compassion.”
You can find the middle ground of equanimity, which means a calm and steady mind. It doesn’t mean pretending everything is okay.
Amanda: Equanimity is one of my favorite words. In yoga, we approach each posture with the same value. Not advanced or beginner. Just the next posture. You breathe there. You notice your mind. And when it wanders, you bring it back.
Over time, you cultivate equanimity.
Heather: Except when you can’t. And that’s okay too. You can have equanimity about your ugly tears. Allow them without judgment.
That’s everyone’s homework. The next time you feel a grief wave, if you’re in a safe space, let yourself cry mindfully. Notice the sensation in your chest. The moisture on your face. The sounds in the room. The warmth of a blanket.
Afterward, place your hand on your heart and offer yourself words of comfort.
Amanda: I agree one thousand percent.
Heather: Amanda, I’m so grateful to have you on this journey as we explore these eight steps.
Amanda: Thank you, Heather.
Heather: Where can people find you?
Amanda: On Instagram at AmandaPalermo108. You can send me a direct message.
Heather: And you’re a Mindfulness & Grief certified coach.
Amanda: Yes.
Heather: Next time, we’re talking about compassion for all.
Amanda: Compassion.
Heather: I look forward to being with you next time.
Heather over music: This brings us to the end of today’s episode of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast. If you found it helpful, please follow the show and consider leaving a review. It helps others find their way here when they need support most.
Visit HeatherStang.com to join the Awaken Grief Support community free for 14 days. You’ll meet with Heather and other kindhearted members several times a week, gain access to the Mindfulness & Grief course, guided meditations, journaling prompts, and more.
If you’re a grief professional or volunteer, you can learn about the Mindfulness & Grief Coach Certification. You’ll learn how to share the system with others and care for yourself along the way.
I’m so glad you chose to show up for yourself today. May these teachings benefit you and those you love. Be gentle with your heart and come back soon.
