Ben Medrano, MD
Healing Grief with EMDR: An Innovative Therapy for Lasting Peace
Grief can manifest in many forms—waves of sadness, surges of anger, feelings of guilt, physical fatigue, or sleepless nights. These reactions are a natural part of the grieving process.
However, for some people—approximately 7-10% of those grieving—grief becomes something more complicated, with intense symptoms that don't ease up and make daily life feel impossible.
Contrary to the idea of predictable, orderly stages, grief often follows a non-linear path. You may feel stable for a period, only to be overwhelmed again by a triggering event like an anniversary or birthday. When grief becomes stuck, it can impact both mind and body, keeping the nervous system in a heightened state of alert.
In such cases, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy offers a targeted approach to help process unresolved grief and support emotional healing.
Why Grief Is So Hard to Treat
Your brain physically changes when you're grieving. The emotional centers light up while the pleasure circuits dim down. When grief becomes complicated—now officially called Prolonged Grief Disorder in the diagnostic manual DSM-5-TR—you might experience persistent yearning, constant thoughts about your loved one, and a genuine inability to engage in everyday life.
Traditional talk therapy often falls short because grief lives in your emotions and body, not just your thoughts. Sometimes talking actually helps you avoid feeling the grief directly. Additionally, grief doesn't follow a predictable path that fits neatly into structured therapy approaches.
People get stuck in grief for many reasons: repeating the same thoughts over and over, pulling away from others, or suffering physical health consequences. Research published in Psychosomatic Medicine found something sobering—people who are grieving have a 21% higher risk of heart attack after their loss.
Even more concerning, a deep dive into the research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology showed that traditional grief interventions only help modestly, with 30-50% of complicated grief cases showing little improvement with standard approaches.
How EMDR Therapy Works With Grief
EMDR isn't just another talking therapy. It follows eight specific steps:
- History Taking: Your therapist gets to know you and your loss
- Preparation: Learning skills to handle difficult emotions (think of it as building emotional muscles)
- Assessment: Pinpointing specific memories that trigger grief responses
- Desensitization: Processing painful memories while your attention moves back and forth (bilateral stimulation)
- Installation: Replacing negative thoughts about never experiencing happiness again with more helpful beliefs
- Body Scan: Finding and releasing where grief is stored in your body
- Closure: Grounding yourself before leaving each session
- Re-evaluation: Checking your progress over time
What makes EMDR different is the bilateral stimulation—your eyes might follow the therapist's fingers moving side to side, or you might hold small buzzers that alternate between your hands, or listen to tones that switch between ears.
This back-and-forth stimulation seems to work in several ways:
- It mimics how your brain processes information during REM sleep
- It divides your attention to reduce the emotional punch of memories
- It activates the brain's information processing center (the thalamus) to help integrate fragmented memories.
Brain scans show EMDR creates real changes. Your amygdala (the brain's alarm system) calms down, your prefrontal cortex (the rational brain) becomes more active, and your hippocampus (memory center) helps file experiences properly.
A study in the Journal of EMDR Practice and Research found EMDR therapy showed faster improvement rates compared to standard grief therapy approaches.
The Potential Benefits of EMDR for Processing Grief
Grief often gets stuck because traumatic memories remain frozen in your neural networks, unprocessed and raw. The EMDRIA blog explains that EMDR helps facilitate the transition from loving in presence to loving in absence—maintaining a connection without being overwhelmed by pain with each memory.
EMDR specifically targets intrusive thoughts (like the belief you should have been there), avoidance behaviors, harsh beliefs about yourself or the situation, and physical symptoms like chest tightness or constant tension.
EMDR therapy sessions may focus on specific difficult moments, such as when you first learned about the death, disturbing images, unresolved issues with the person, or how holidays or anniversaries affect you.
According to the Trauma Therapist Institute, the EMDR process can help transform painful grief emotions during therapy sessions.
EMDR therapy doesn't ask you to move on or let go. Instead, it supports what therapists call continuing bonds with your loved one.
The research suggests that EMDR therapy can help address several aspects of grief:
- Memories carrying emotion without overwhelming the person
- Ability to discuss the loved one with greater emotional regulation
- Reduced triggering from reminders
- Increased capacity to engage with life again
What Happens in EMDR Therapy for Grief
First, the therapeutic process involves becoming comfortable with your therapist and learning emotional regulation techniques, which can be facilitated through online therapy services. Then specific memories are processed using bilateral stimulation, which can gradually reduce the emotional intensity.
Negative thoughts like believing you'll never feel joy again may be addressed and potentially replaced with more adaptive thoughts such as understanding you can carry their love with you. The therapy also addresses how grief manifests physically—sensations like tightness in your throat or heaviness in your chest.
With advances in technology, more therapists now offer at-home EMDR therapy. The goal of therapy is to help clients imagine a meaningful future while still honoring their connection to the person they've lost.
Your Healing Journey Is Uniquely Yours
Grief doesn't follow a checklist or timeline. While EMDR offers tools for working with traumatic or complicated grief, healing paths may include various approaches.
Therapies like EMDR aim to change how grief is processed and carried. The therapeutic goal is to help move from a place where memories trigger pain to one where thinking of a loved one might bring comfort. Healing isn't about forgetting or getting over it, but about integrating the loss while continuing to live fully.
Your grief is real, your journey is unique, and research indicates there is hope for days when memories of your loved one might bring comfort instead of overwhelming pain.
Find Expert EMDR Therapy for Grief Support and Healing
Grief can feel overwhelming, but you don't have to navigate it alone. As we have seen, EMDR therapy offers a powerful, evidence-based approach to processing grief—especially when it becomes complicated or prolonged. This specialized therapy helps transform how painful memories are stored in your brain, potentially allowing you to access memories of your loved one with less distress and more comfort over time.
Innerwell's experienced EMDR therapists specialize in grief support, offering a compassionate space to work through loss at your own pace. Our licensed clinicians are trained in the latest EMDR protocols specifically designed for grief and loss, helping you process emotions that may feel stuck in your body and mind. Whether you're struggling with a recent loss or grief that's persisted for years, our virtual EMDR sessions make healing accessible from wherever you are.
Take the first step toward carrying your grief differently. Connect with Innerwell today to learn about Innerwell's approach, take the free assessment, and learn how our specialized EMDR therapy can support your unique grief journey. Our team is ready to answer your questions about how this approach might work for your specific situation and help you move toward a place where memories bring more comfort than pain.
