A Story of Healing Through EMDR

When Marissa first reached out for therapy, she described feeling like she’d been “moving through fog.” She had lost her older sister two years earlier—an unexpected, life-altering loss that shattered her sense of stability. Even though time kept passing, her body still felt stuck in the moment she got the phone call.

Her symptoms had slowly grown heavier:

*A deep ache in her chest when she woke up

* Trouble concentrating at work

* Waves of sadness that came out of nowhere

* Guilt for laughing or feeling joy

* A sense that she was failing at “moving on”

She wasn’t sleeping well, she had withdrawn from friends, and she described herself as “numb, but also hurting all the time.” Depression had become a quiet companion she didn’t know how to put down.

In her intake session, her therapist invited her to share her story at her own pace. As they explored her symptoms, her therapist gently named something important: *Marissa wasn’t failing to heal—her nervous system was overwhelmed.* Her emotional world and her body were still holding the shock of trauma and the weight of complex grief.

The therapist recommended EMDR.

Beginning EMDR

In their first EMDR session, they didn’t dive into memories right away. Instead, they focused on helping Marissa feel grounded again—learning skills for regulation, safety, and connection to her body. Marissa practiced noticing her breath, identifying what safety felt like in her body, and learning a “safe place” visualization she could return to anytime.

When she felt ready, they began EMDR reprocessing.

As she followed the bilateral stimulation—her eyes moving gently side to side—she noticed memories surfacing with less intensity. She described it as “watching a storm from inside a warm car instead of being stuck out in the rain.” The therapist helped her stay present, returning to grounding whenever things felt too heavy.

During one powerful session, Marissa remembered a moment she had avoided for years—the day she packed up her sister’s belongings. The grief was sharp, but as the bilateral stimulation continued, something softened. She began to feel not only the pain of the moment, but also the love behind it. A memory that once felt unbearable slowly transformed into something she could hold without collapsing.

Shifts in Her Life

Over the following weeks, small but meaningful changes appeared:

* She began waking up without the same pit of heaviness

* She returned to her morning walks—something she hadn’t done since the loss

* She reached out to a close friend and felt herself genuinely enjoying the conversation

* She cried once in session and afterward said, “That felt like release, not drowning”

Her depression symptoms eased—not all at once, but steadily, like the slow return of sunlight after a long winter. She said she felt “more connected to myself, not pushed under by the memories.”

One day, she shared something she never thought would be possible:

For the first time in two years, I feel like the grief is part of me… but it’s not all of me anymore.

Where she is now…

Months later, Marissa still has moments of sadness—because love doesn’t disappear. But she no longer feels trapped by the past. She feels capable, grounded, and present in her own life. She can remember her sister with tenderness instead of only pain. She smiles more. She participates in the world again.

And she often tells people what EMDR gave her:

“A way to finally breathe again.”