When Loneliness Is Real: Why EMDR Differs From Just "Fixing" Your Holidays

Feeling lonely around the holidays can make us feel as if something is wrong with us. Everybody else seems to know how to be happy, be together, be festive. But here's the truth: feeling lonely around the winter holidays is extremely common. And for many of us, it's just the reality of how things are this year.

That matters. Because how we approach that loneliness in therapy makes a real difference.

The Difference Between "Taking Action" and Processing What's Underneath

You'll hear a lot of advice around the holidays: join a group, call someone, volunteer, start a new tradition. These are genuinely helpful things, and sometimes they're exactly what people need.

But here's where EMDR work differs from solution-focused therapy. Solution-focused approaches say "Let's identify what's wrong and take action steps to fix it." That can work beautifully for some situations. But for others, especially when loneliness is triggering deeper beliefs about yourself, you need something different.

EMDR doesn't skip the action steps. But it also doesn't start there. Instead, we ask: "What belief about yourself is making this loneliness feel unbearable?"

Because here's the thing: being alone during the holidays is painful, yes. But loneliness becomes crushing when it's tangled up with beliefs like "I am unlovable" or "I am unworthy" or "Something is wrong with me for being alone."

The Belief Matters More Than the Circumstance

This is a crucial distinction that EMDR clinicians listen for. We distinguish between a negative self-referencing belief and a factual statement.

"I am alone during the holidays" might be true. It might be painful. But it's not a negative belief about who you are.

"I am alone because I am unlovable." That's different. That's a belief that EMDR can help process and shift.

This is why two people experiencing the same circumstance (spending the holidays solo) can have completely different experiences. One person feels at peace with solitude, maybe even nourished by it. Another person feels devastated, convinced it proves they're unworthy of connection.

The difference isn't the circumstance. It's the belief underneath.

Pendulation: Moving Through Feelings, Not Past Them

In EMDR work around the holidays, we use something called pendulation. It sounds fancy, but it's actually quite gentle.

Pendulation means we help you move back and forth between the difficult feeling (loneliness, sadness, grief) and a resource or moment of calm or safety. We're not trying to bypass the pain or "fix" it away. We're teaching your nervous system that it can tolerate hard feelings. That you can feel lonely and also feel grounded. That you can feel grief and also feel held.

This is especially powerful during the holidays, when the contrast between what we're feeling and what we're "supposed" to feel can be overwhelming. With pendulation, there's permission to feel it all: the ache of missing someone, the fatigue of keeping up appearances, and the small moments of warmth or rest.

What EMDR Can Process

In an EMDR session around holiday loneliness, we might work with:

• Core beliefs like "I am unlovable" or "I am too broken to have real connection"

• The protective responses your nervous system developed (maybe you isolate before others can reject you; maybe you overextend yourself to prove your worth)

• The grief of how the holidays used to feel versus how they feel now

• Memories of past Christmases that carry both joy and pain

• The sensations in your body that come up when you acknowledge you're alone

  
  

By processing these through EMDR (using bilateral stimulation to help your brain integrate these difficult experiences), people often find that the circumstance of being alone becomes separable from the belief of being unlovable. The loneliness might still be there, but it no longer defines your worth.

This Doesn't Mean Skipping the Other Stuff

Real talk: sometimes people do need to take action. Sometimes reaching out, joining a group, or shifting routine genuinely helps. And we can absolutely work toward those things alongside processing the deeper belief work.

But if loneliness has triggered shame or a sense of unworthiness, jumping straight to "here's what you should do" can actually reinforce the feeling that something is wrong with you for needing to do those things in the first place.

EMDR says: Let's process what's underneath first. Let's help your nervous system understand that being alone isn't evidence of your unworthiness. Let's pendulate between the hard feeling and moments of actual safety. And then, if action steps make sense, you take them from a different place. Not from desperation or shame, but from genuine choice.

Coming Home to Yourself This Holiday Season

This Perel piece reminds us that behind the holiday magic are real

sacrifices, real losses, real pain. That's not something to overcome or fix away. It's something to acknowledge, to feel, and to process.

At Off the Beaten Path Psychology & Wellness, our EMDR clinicians create space for that work. We help you pendulate through the loneliness. We help you identify and gently process beliefs about your own unworthiness. And we help you move through the holidays not by pretending everything is fine, but by understanding that you are fine, even when things are hard.

If you're struggling with loneliness this season, especially if it's tangled up with deeper beliefs about yourself, we're here.

👉 Meet our team and explore therapy options 👉 Book a free consult

👉 If you are an EMDR therapist and are looking to consult, book a session with EMDRIA approved consultant, Kristy 👉 Book now

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At Off the Beaten Path Psychology, we provide counselling and therapy services to individuals, couples, and families in Airdrie, Calgary, and Cochrane, Alberta. Our team supports anxiety, burnout, relationship challenges, and trauma recovery. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support your mental health journey.