Grief That Won't Lift: How EMDR Can Help You Heal

Grief is one of the most disorienting experiences a person can go through. In the aftermath of losing someone important to you, it can feel like the world has fundamentally changed — because it has. The pain, the emptiness, the waves of emotion that come at unexpected moments: all of it is a natural and deeply human response to love and loss.

But sometimes grief gets stuck. Instead of moving through, it circles back. The pain doesn't soften with time the way people said it would. Or it lifts on the surface while something heavier stays lodged underneath — unnamed and unresolved.

When grief gets stuck, it usually means something is blocking the natural healing process. Those blocks can be addressed. And with the right support, healing is possible — even from losses that happened long ago, and even from losses that were complicated, painful, or traumatic.

Grief isn't only about death. The loss of a career, a health diagnosis that changes everything, a relationship, or a future you'd counted on can bring the same heaviness and the same need for support. An athlete who suffers an injury that ends their career, someone whose long-held dream suddenly becomes impossible, a person adjusting to a life-altering illness — all of these are real losses that deserve the same care and attention as bereavement.

You Don't Have to Lose Them Twice

One of the most common fears people bring to grief therapy is this: if I let go of the pain, I'll lose them completely. The grief feels like the last connection — and the idea of releasing it feels like a kind of second loss.

This fear makes complete sense. But it's based on a misunderstanding of what healing actually involves.

Healing grief doesn't mean forgetting your loved one or severing the bond you shared. Research and clinical experience both point to something more hopeful: that maintaining a connection with the person you've lost — a transformed, internal bond — is not only possible but actively supports the healing process.

What EMDR tends to do naturally, as grief processing unfolds, is draw forward the positive memories and qualities of the person who died. The love, the warmth, the specific things that made them who they were — these don't disappear when the pain clears. They become more accessible. Your loved one becomes an internal presence — a source of love, memory, strength, and connection that you carry with you.

"As grief lifts, what typically emerges is not absence but presence — the positive aspects of your loved one that the pain had been obscuring."

What Gets in the Way of Grieving

Grief is a natural process, but it doesn't always move naturally. A number of things can interrupt or block it — and understanding them is part of finding a way through.

The Range of Painful Emotions

Loss brings with it a wide range of difficult feelings — not just sadness, but often shock, numbness, loneliness, helplessness, anxiety, and sometimes shame. When any of these go unacknowledged or unexpressed, they can slow or stall the grieving process. One of the first goals in grief work is simply creating enough safety and support for these feelings to be felt and expressed.

Sadness — the Heart of Grief

At the center of grief is sadness — sadness for the loss of the bond, the connection, the love you shared. Sadness for the future that won't happen and the hopes that won't be realized. People sometimes describe it as feeling like a part of themselves is gone. That's not just a metaphor. Processing this sadness is at the core of healing.

Guilt

Guilt is one of the most common obstacles in grief work. It can take many forms — regret about things said or unsaid, time not spent, opportunities that passed. It can also be more specific: feeling responsible for the death in some way, or grief about a relationship that was never repaired. When guilt is present, it often blocks access to the positive memories of the person who died — and working through it becomes an important part of freeing up the grieving process.

Anger

Anger is a natural response to loss. When something important is taken from us, anger often follows. It may be directed at others — medical staff, circumstances, the person who caused the death. It may be directed at the person who died, if the loss feels like an abandonment. It may be directed at life itself. Anger that goes unaddressed can become another block — one that keeps grief from moving forward.

Difficult Relationships

When the relationship with the deceased was complicated — like with a parent who was abusive, neglectful, or emotionally unavailable — grief can be especially painful and confusing. The loss may carry not only sadness but the pain of needs that will now never be met: love that was never given, recognition that never came, repair that never happened. This kind of grief often needs careful, unhurried attention.

Unresolved Grief from the Past

Sometimes the grief that brings someone to therapy isn't recent. People carry unresolved losses for decades — losses from childhood, from long ago, that were never properly grieved. For generations, many people were simply taught to push through, to keep going, to not dwell. But grief doesn't disappear when it's buried. It lives on underground — often showing up as unexplained sadness, loneliness, or a heaviness that's hard to account for. EMDR can address these old losses just as effectively as recent ones.

Secondary Losses

The death of a loved one brings with it a cascade of secondary losses that are often underappreciated — the loss of companionship, shared identity, financial security, daily routines built around another person, and a vision of the future. Grief work that attends only to the primary loss may miss the full weight of what's been taken.

Traumatic Loss

Some losses carry a traumatic dimension that complicates the grieving process. Sudden or unexpected deaths, violent deaths, deaths involving suffering or bodily harm, the loss of a child, or deaths that felt preventable or unjust — all of these can leave traumatic imprints alongside the grief itself. When trauma is present, it tends to block the natural grieving process and typically needs to be addressed before or alongside the grief work. EMDR is well-suited to both.

What EMDR Brings to Grief Work

As EMDR processing unfolds, the pain blocking access to positive memories clears — and what follows is often something remarkable. This is one of the distinctive gifts of EMDR for grief: it doesn't just process the pain. It opens space for the love.

A Clinical Example

A woman I worked with had lost her father to suicide. She came in carrying guilt, shame, confusion, sadness, and anger — emotions so overwhelming that they had all but swallowed her memories of him.

Through EMDR processing, she was able to move through those painful emotions — not suppress them, but actually process them. And as they cleared, something shifted. She began to reconnect with the positive dimensions of her relationship with her father: the love between them, the warmth he had shown her, the memories of good times they'd shared together. Those things had always been there. The pain had just been blocking her access to them.

She left treatment not having forgotten her father's death — but carrying him differently. The love was more present than the loss.

Factors That Shape the Grieving Process

Everyone grieves in their own way and at their own pace. Some of the factors that influence how grief unfolds include:

• The nature of the relationship to the person who died
• The circumstances and cause of the death
• Whether the death was sudden, expected, or traumatic
• Your age at the time of the loss — and theirs
• Your history of previous losses, especially those that were never fully grieved
• Your support system, self-care practices, and coping resources

None of these factors determine whether healing is possible. They shape the path — but the path exists for everyone.

My Approach to Grief Therapy

My work with grief is guided by a few core principles. First, that every person's grief is unique and deserves to be met where it actually is — not moved through a predetermined sequence. Second, that the goal isn't to let go of your loved one but to find a way to carry them that allows you to also carry your own life forward. And third, that even old, complicated, or seemingly stuck grief can move when given the right conditions.

In practice, this means helping you feel genuinely supported and understood in your grieving process; working to identify and address whatever is blocking it — whether that's unprocessed emotion, guilt, anger, trauma, or old unresolved loss; using EMDR to facilitate that processing at a pace that feels manageable; and helping you reconnect with the positive dimensions of your relationship with the person you lost.

"I've worked with many people who had been carrying grief for years — sometimes decades — and had begun to believe that this was simply how it would always feel. In almost every case, when the grief finally had space to move, it did. The capacity to heal is almost always still there."

Getting Started

If you're struggling with grief — whether the loss is recent or long past, straightforward or complicated — I'd be glad to talk with you about whether this approach might be a good fit. I offer a free initial consultation.

Phone: (503) 887-3309
Email: Contact Form

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For EMDR Clinicians

Grief work is one of the most nuanced and rewarding areas of EMDR practice. If you're an EMDR clinician working with clients around loss, consultation can help with identifying and addressing blocks to the grieving process, working with traumatic loss alongside grief, using EMDR to facilitate reconnection with positive memories of the deceased, and navigating the particular challenges of complicated grief — including losses involving difficult relationships.

Grief and traumatic loss are covered in both my group and individual consultation.

Learn more about EMDR Consultation →