Coping with the Loss of a Pet: Gentle Moments of Comfort

Coping with the loss of a pet means treating it as real grief. When a wave of missing them hits, ground yourself first, then bring one memory to mind and add a short round of bilateral stimulation, the left-right technique EMDR is built on. Go slow, and stop if distress climbs past 7 out of 10.

Maybe it’s their leash still hanging by the door, or the specific quiet of the house at the time they used to bark at the mail carrier. Maybe you reached for their food bowl before remembering. None of that means you’re grieving too hard, or too long, for “just a pet.” It means you loved them, and love like that doesn’t check what species it’s allowed to miss.

Why does missing them hit so hard, out of nowhere?

Because it’s real grief, not a smaller version of it. A January 2026 study in PLOS ONE surveyed 975 UK adults about their most distressing losses and found that among those who’d lost a pet, 21% picked that loss as more distressing than any human loss they’d experienced. About 7.5% met criteria for prolonged grief disorder after losing a pet, a rate similar to grieving a sibling or close friend. The researchers found no real difference in how that grief looked, whether the one lost had two legs or four.

What makes it feel so unpredictable is how it surfaces. EMDR’s own theory, the Adaptive Information Processing model, holds that a few specific, intense moments, the vet’s voice, the quiet car ride home, the exact second you knew, can get stored in a raw way that fires at close to full strength whenever something brushes against it, according to EMDRIA, the professional body for EMDR. That’s why a park bench or a bag of their food in the pantry can undo you on an otherwise fine day. Pet loss gets dismissed more than it should, exactly because of that unpredictability; the same wave pattern shows up in grief and life transitions generally, and in breakup grief too.

Keeping their collar somewhere you’ll see it, or still thinking of the house as “ours” with them in it, isn’t a sign you’re stuck. It’s just how people carry a bond like this forward.

How do you do a bilateral stimulation practice for a pet-loss wave?

Grief like this deserves more care up front than routine stress. Read through all three steps before you try anything.

1. Stabilize first. Spend a minute somewhere calm before touching anything painful. Picture a real or imagined safe place, or try a quick grounding check: name five things you can see, feel your feet on the floor, slow your exhale. Don’t start already flooded.

2. Go slow, one moment at a time. Pick a single memory or ache, the vet’s office, the empty side of the doorway they used to wait by, not your pet’s whole life at once. Keep the round short.

3. Know your stop point. If distress rises above a 7 out of 10 and won’t settle, stop. Ground yourself, and consider a grief-informed therapist rather than pushing through alone.

With that in place, here’s the practice:

• Rate it. On a 0–10 scale, how intense is this wave right now?
• Bring the moment gently to mind. Touch it lightly, not the hardest version of it.
• Add bilateral stimulation. Move your eyes smoothly left and right for 20 to 30 seconds, alternate tapping your knees or shoulders, or use alternating left-right audio tones.
• Pause and notice. Breathe. Notice whatever shifted, without forcing anything.
• Repeat 3 to 5 short rounds, checking in with yourself between each.
• Re-rate. Many people notice the wave ease, sometimes alongside a warmer memory surfacing. If it climbs instead, stop and ground yourself again.

The mechanism isn’t mysterious. Recalling a painful memory while doing something else demanding, tracking a moving target, alternating taps, seems to compete for the same limited mental workspace, leaving the memory feeling duller afterward. A 2020 meta-analysis of 15 laboratory studies in the Journal of Experimental Psychopathology found eye movements meaningfully reduced how vivid and emotionally intense a distressing memory felt when held in mind this way.

This isn’t about loving them less, either. A 2001 trial in Research on Social Work Practice compared EMDR with guided mourning therapy in 50 people with complicated grief and found EMDR eased four of five measures faster, in fewer sessions, while positive memories of the person who died actually increased. That trial involved human loss, not pets specifically, but the same idea likely holds: softening the sharpest moments, not the bond itself.

Counting rounds while you’re missing them is one more thing to manage alone. EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, runs this same left-right technique for you, with a moving on-screen target or alternating tones, in the web app.

When is a self-guided practice not enough?

This practice is built for the everyday waves, not for a loss that hasn’t started moving at all. Consider working with a licensed, grief-informed therapist if:

• It’s been a year or more and missing them still disrupts most days, or it’s getting worse instead of easing.
• Their death was sudden, violent, or something you witnessed, like an accident or a medical emergency that went wrong.
• Guilt over a euthanasia decision won’t ease and keeps replaying on a loop.
• During the practice above, distress climbs past a 7 out of 10 and won’t settle back down.
• You notice dissociation, intrusive images you can’t shake, or grief tangled up with hopelessness. If that includes thoughts of harming yourself, please use our crisis resources page or call or text 988 (US) right away.

None of this means you’re grieving wrong. It means this particular loss is asking for more support than a self-guided practice can give, and reaching for it is the right move.