One of the most common challenges people bring into sessions with me is grief.

There is a common perception that when we lose someone we love, we will always remain in grief. I see it differently.

We may continue to miss the person deeply, love them, and think about them often — but people do not have to remain overwhelmed by constant pain, emptiness, or emotional suffering.

This is where EFT Tapping can be profoundly supportive.

 

Grief Is Not a Problem to Eliminate

Grief itself is a natural human response to loss and love.

The goal of EFT is not to erase healthy grief or emotional connection to those we have lost. Rather, EFT may help reduce traumatic intensity, unresolved shock, helplessness, guilt, or limiting beliefs that keep people emotionally stuck.

People often continue loving and missing those who died while no longer feeling consumed by suffering.

 

Beginning With the Overall Feeling

When working with grief, I usually begin by tapping on the overall emotional intensity around the loss and shock itself.

Once the emotional level begins to reduce — often to around a 5 out of 10 — I ask the client what specific scene or moment from the experience still stands out most strongly.

These “frozen scenes” often hold the emotional charge.

There may be one scene or many:

• receiving the phone call
• being in the hospital
• seeing a loved one for the last time
• the funeral
• a particular conversation
• the moment of realization
• seeing their loved one suffering

At this stage, EFT can be used very gently and specifically around the sensory aspects of the memory:

• what they saw
• what they heard
• what they felt in their body
• even particular smells or environmental details

As the emotional intensity reduces, deeper beliefs often emerge.

Working Gently with Grief

When working with grief, it is important not to push clients into overwhelming emotional intensity too quickly.

Often I begin with global tapping and gradually approach more emotionally charged memories only when the client feels sufficiently regulated and resourced.

Signs a client may need slowing down include:

• dissociation
• emotional flooding
• rapid breathing
• inability to stay present
• extreme activation

In these moments, it can help to:

• return to present-moment grounding
• use gentler language
• tap “around” the issue
• focus on body sensations
• pause detailed storytelling

Grief work is rarely about forcing catharsis. Often the deepest healing happens when clients feel emotionally safe enough to process slowly.

When Trauma Is Embedded in Grief

Sometimes the intensity people describe as grief is actually unresolved trauma connected to the loss.

For example:

• witnessing a traumatic death
• sudden or unexpected loss
• medical trauma
• helplessness
• unresolved guilt
• frightening hospital experiences

In these cases, EFT may need to address both grief and trauma aspects separately or in an interlinked way.

The Beliefs Beneath Grief

In my experience, grief is frequently connected to painful conclusions people form during or after a loss.

Examples include:

• “I was abandoned.”
• “Life is unfair.”
• “I am alone.”
• “I am powerless.”
• “I will lose people I love.”
• “This should not have happened.”

These beliefs can continue affecting people long after the original loss.

Sometimes current grief also connects to unresolved grief from earlier experiences in life.

Helpful EFT Language Around Grief

Some gentle setup statements might include:

• “Even though part of me still feels overwhelmed by this loss…”
• “Even though I still carry the shock in my body…”
• “Even though I feel abandoned and alone…”
• “Even though this grief feels frozen inside me…”

Reminder phrases may include:

• “this pain”
• “this emptiness”
• “the shock”
• “the grief in my chest”
• “feeling abandoned”

Often simple, emotionally attuned language works best.

Always use the client’s words – and if you add any of your own words always check with the client that it is true for them. Also it is essential to test a scene or memory after having worked on it.

 

When Earlier Grief Is Still Present

One client originally came to me because of depression. She explained that nothing specific had happened — she simply felt exhausted and hopeless about the situation in the country where she lived.

As we explored when the depression had begun, she eventually mentioned that her husband had died about a year and a half earlier.

She believed she had already “moved on,” but when we gently tapped while she described the overall experience, intense grief and anger surfaced.

A core belief emerged:
“I was abandoned.”

As we worked through layers of grief connected to her husband’s death, I sensed there may have been an earlier experience connected to the same emotional pattern.

While tapping slowly and quietly around grief and abandonment, she remembered that her father had died when she was eight years old.

This became the deeper layer of the work.

Using Matrix Reimprinting or Inner Child Healing, she connected with her younger self and processed aspects of the trauma that had remained emotionally frozen:

• the shock
• the funeral
• witnessing her mother’s grief
• feeling abandoned and alone

As part of the process, her younger self reconnected with her father in spirit form in a peaceful place of her choosing.

For clients who are spiritually oriented, you can guide them to reconnect with loved ones in spirit form in a beautiful place of their choosing and this may feel comforting and healing for them. Other clients may prefer a symbolic or purely emotional process instead.

It is important that practitioners remain client-led and avoid imposing spiritual interpretations onto the work.

In some cases, clients may simply place a hand on their heart and express what they wish they could say to their loved one.

After one session, her depressive symptoms lifted completely, and she reconnected with her passion for painting and engaging in life again.

 

Grief After Stillbirth

Another client came to me after the trauma of a stillbirth.

She was experiencing overwhelming grief, devastation, and constant crying. She had also become pregnant again and was terrified of another loss.

Over three sessions, we worked gently with:

• the overall grief
• the shock and unexpected nature of the loss
• traumatic moments in the hospital (being pressured to give up the baby’s remains after one minute of holding it, the plastic box the little one was put in, a terrible doctor who yelled at her when she wasn’t responding to the epidural, etc)
• feelings of powerlessness (especially in relation to the doctors)
• beliefs such as “It’s not fair” and “I am powerless” and “I am alone”

Eventually, she chose to energetically reconnect with the spirit of her baby girl in a peaceful beautiful place of her choice where she could feel love and connection.

For her, this experience felt deeply healing and allowed her to move forward into her new pregnancy with greater calm and hope.

 

Final Reflections for EFT Practitioners

When working with grief, EFT practitioners may want to ask themselves:

• What aspect of the grief feels unresolved?
• Is there shock or trauma beneath the sadness?
• What beliefs formed at the time of the loss?
• Does this connect to earlier experiences of abandonment or loss?
• What would help the client feel emotionally safe enough to process gradually?

Grief work with EFT is not about helping clients forget those they love or forcing them to “move on.”

It is about helping clients process unresolved emotional pain, release frozen trauma, soften painful beliefs, and reconnect with life while still honoring the people they have lost.

If this work resonated with you, and you feel called to work with clients in this way. I will be offering an immersive advanced EFT practitioner training. Here is the link for more info:

https://lenabahou.com/eft-training-certification/

 

With love & blessings,

Lena