EMDR for Grief and Loss in Remote Sessions

Grief is not trauma, but for some clients it behaves like it — intrusive images of the death, avoidance of reminders, and a loss that won't settle into a normal course. EMDR has a place in that work, and delivering it over video adds a few considerations of its own. Here's what the research says and how it holds up remotely.

When grief becomes a clinical target for EMDR

Most people who lose someone grieve without needing clinical treatment. A minority develop a more persistent, disabling pattern — often called prolonged or complicated grief — where the loss stays acute well past the period most people would expect. Estimates in the literature put this at roughly 7–10% of bereaved people (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for prolonged grief: theory, research, and practice, PMC). That’s the population where EMDR’s grief protocol is usually considered, rather than every client who is simply grieving.

EMDR’s grief and mourning protocol treats prolonged grief the way EMDR treats trauma more broadly: it targets specific distressing memories tied to the loss — the moment of hearing the news, an image from the death itself, unresolved arguments or regrets — rather than “grief” as a diffuse feeling. The EMDR International Association’s overview of EMDR for grief and mourning frames the work around processing past memories, current triggers, and future fears connected to the loss, which lines up with EMDR’s standard eight-phase structure — see our walkthrough of those phases if you want the fuller picture.

What the evidence says

Beyond symptom reduction, part of what the research highlights is that EMDR for grief doesn’t only aim to reduce distress — it can also help clients regain access to positive memories of the person they lost, rather than having recall dominated by the distressing final images. That distinction matters clinically: the goal isn’t to make the loss feel smaller, but to let the whole relationship be remembered again, not just its ending.

Why remote delivery is a reasonable fit for grief work

Grief work over video carries a few real advantages. Clients dealing with prolonged grief are sometimes avoidant of leaving the house, especially if the loss is recent or the death was traumatic — remote sessions remove that barrier. Clients can also do this work from a space that holds meaning: a childhood home, a room connected to the person they lost, or simply wherever they feel safest, which isn’t always your office.

The mechanics don’t change: your client follows the moving dot or other bilateral stimulation on screen while working through target memories, the same as any other remote EMDR session. What changes is pacing and preparation.

Practical notes for remote grief sessions

• Build in more resourcing time. Grief memories often carry heavy emotional weight from the first session. Before you move into reprocessing, make sure the client has practiced grounding they can use alone if the call drops or the session needs to pause — see our grounding techniques for remote sessions.
• Expect anniversary and trigger sensitivity. Prolonged grief often has predictable trigger points — anniversaries, holidays, a particular song. Ask about these directly during history-taking so you’re not caught off guard mid-session.
• Slow the pace when memories include positive material. Unlike a pure trauma target, grief targets often mix distressing and positive memories of the same person. Give clients room to sit with positive recall rather than rushing back to the next set.
• Plan the close carefully. A session that surfaces acute grief needs the same unhurried closing as any activating remote work. If you’re not confident you’ll have time to close well, it’s better to stop the reprocessing early than to end mid-activation.

When the loss was sudden or traumatic

Grief following a sudden, violent, or otherwise traumatic death often carries a heavier trauma component than grief following an anticipated loss, such as a long illness. In these cases, you may find yourself working two threads at once: the trauma of how the person died, and the grief of the person being gone. It’s worth treating these as related but distinct targets rather than assuming resolving one automatically resolves the other — a client can process the traumatic memory of a loved one’s death and still have unprocessed grief left to work through afterward, or the reverse.

This distinction matters more, not less, over video: without the in-person cues that might tell you a client has shifted from grief material into trauma material mid-session, it helps to check in explicitly about which thread you’re both currently working on.

A note on anxiety that follows loss

Anticipatory anxiety — fear of another loss, hypervigilance about a surviving loved one’s health — is common alongside prolonged grief. If that’s a significant part of the presentation, it’s worth reading alongside our piece on EMDR for anxiety and what the evidence shows, since the two can respond differently to the same protocol.