Stop Fighting Your Thoughts: How EMDR Can Help You Heal from Anxiety, Grief, and Trauma
When you’re dealing with anxiety, grief, or the lingering effects of trauma, your first instinct is to push it away. You tell yourself to calm down, move on, or stop thinking about it. You may try to distract yourself (with avoidance, drugs, alcohol, doom scrolling, etc.), rationalize your feelings, or tough it out. But the harder you fight your thoughts, the stronger they often become. This is not a failure on your part, it’s how the mind and body are designed to protect you.
Your nervous system reacts to what it thinks are threats, even when those threats are memories, worries, or painful feelings. When you resist what you’re experiencing, your body interprets that resistance as danger. Anxiety intensifies, grief becomes heavier, and trauma memories can resurface unexpectedly. Fighting these thoughts keeps you trapped in a cycle that can feel exhausting, hopeless, and painful!
Suppressing or resisting difficult emotions can create a range of challenges in daily life. You might notice irritability, difficulty sleeping, or tension in your body. Your relationships can feel strained because the stress and frustration you carry inside spill outward. Work performance, focus, and motivation may suffer. Even small daily tasks can feel overwhelming when your internal world is caught in constant struggle.
The paradox is that the very effort to control or eliminate these thoughts makes them more persistent.
Real relief comes from learning to approach your thoughts and emotions differently. This doesn’t mean giving up, ignoring the problem, or letting anxiety, grief, or trauma win. It means noticing what’s happening without judgment, accepting that these feelings exist, and responding in a way that respects your experience. You learn to observe your thoughts as signals rather than commands, and to meet your emotions with curiosity instead of criticism. We accept them (but do not agree with them!).
Therapy offers tools to help you do exactly this. You can learn how to regulate your nervous system, tolerate discomfort in a healthy way, and respond instead of reacting. At Pursuit Counselling & Therapy we have a wonderful therapist, Aly Bird (https://www.pursuittherapy.ca/our-team/p/alyssa-aly-bird), who specializes in EMDR therapy.
EMDR is highly effective for processing trauma, and it can also help with grief, anxiety, and much more. By safely reprocessing distressing memories or intense emotions, EMDR reduces their emotional charge. Over time, this approach helps anxiety quiet, grief become more manageable, and trauma lose its control over your day-to-day life, making it easier to focus, regulate emotions, and engage fully in life.
Self-compassion is central to this process. It’s not about lowering your standards or being soft on yourself. It’s about giving yourself the care, patience, and understanding you need to heal. When you stop fighting against your inner experience, you free up mental and emotional energy for growth, connection, and meaningful engagement with your life.
You don’t need to battle and beat your mind to feel better. You just need a new way of listening, noticing, and responding. Therapy provides guidance and support so you can navigate anxiety, grief, and trauma with strength, clarity, and self-respect.
If you feel caught in cycles of racing thoughts, emotional overwhelm, or unresolved trauma, reaching out for therapy can help you build a healthier relationship with your mind. It’s not about silencing your thoughts — it’s about understanding them, honoring them, and learning to live fully alongside them.'
