How EMDR Can Help in Cases of Complex Grief

Grief is a natural process and a normal response when we experience loss and bereavement. Whether our loss is someone dear or it is something significant to us, grief is our reaction.

Grief is a very personal journey. Its stages, its timing, its impact are individual to each person, with no 'correct' way to grieve and it can draw on a range of emotions and affect both our physical and our mental health with its unpredictability and its intensity.

Sometimes we can work through our grief with the support of family and friends and sometimes some outside help is needed in the form of bereavement therapy. And there are times, when there is complex grief, where trauma therapy needs to play a part.

Whilst grief is a personal experience, there are some shared physical and emotional symptoms and there can sometimes be distinct stages to go through or to overcome. Again, these are not necessarily linear. There are ebbs and flows in each of the stages and indeed between them.

As well as feeling sad, emotional symptoms can include:

• Shock, numbness and an inability to accept a death.
• Anger, with yourself or the person you've lost or with other people.
• Guilt, no matter whether these emotions are founded in fact. We can feel guilty about the person's death or their ending. We may feel guilty about the things we said or didn't say. We may feel guilty because we may feel in some way responsible. All of these a normal emotions.
• Fear about our own mortality or being on our own; a fear about a future without the person we have lost or fear of being helpless and overwhelmed by our feelings.