One of the biggest aha moments I had from you when I first came across your work was the idea that "If you’re scared of feeling an emotion, you’re already in it". It really shifted my perspective and I understood why not-feeling was so darn tiring. It's like the emotion we don't want to feel is a pebble, so we pick it up and put it in our pocket, then there's another situation where we don't want to feel it, so we pick up that pebble and put it in our pocket, then before you know it, our pockets are full and it's taking an awful lot of effort!
Oh, Polly, they are so heavy. But I’m learning to lighten the load. Slowly, slowly.
Often with little interludes of picking up pebbles again - perhaps a different colour or shape, or some other reason I fall back into hoarding. Or many times I think I’m attentively discarding pebbles with my left hand only to find my right hand is picking them up.
Sometimes the pockets feel unmanageable even to open and consider looking inside because they’re crammed. It feels easier to carry a weight you’ve forgotten what it’s like without than to start opening pockets you don’t know what’ll come out of.
"Don't believe your emotions" initially triggered me. How can I not believe something I'm currently feeling intensely?
I keep getting attracted to emotionally unavailable people since my mother was emotionally unavailable in my childhood. I wonder if it's just a story or the truth?
Anyways, I realise in the end it's about welcoming and leaning into what comes up.
I really appreciate the way you think about these things. There's a curiosity in your comments that feels very different from trying to arrive at a quick conclusion.
And I wonder if sometimes the question isn't whether it's a story or the truth.
Maybe it's whether the pattern is trying to show us something we still haven't fully seen.
What do you think emotionally unavailable people allow you to avoid feeling?
Yep, I also had a similar feeling that what's true is what's alive right now, irrespective of the story being true or not. And what's alive right now is what needs my attention.
I read this slowly and sat with it for a while before I could respond.
The image of each emotion as a young child undid me a little. Ignore it and it will find a louder way to be known. I know that one in my body. I've experienced trauma and for years I tried to think my way out of it. To understand it, to name it, to outpace it. None of it worked, because the mind cannot release what the body is still holding. What I've learned, slowly and at real cost, is that there is no way around the feeling. The only way to keep healing, to let the trauma actually move and be released, is to get into the body and feel it the whole way through. To stop narrating the pain and let it be felt.
I spent so long chasing joy, wondering why she wouldn't stay when what she was waiting for was for me to make room for the grief, the fear, the shame. You've taken what the productive world treats as a problem to be managed and reframed it as a child to be loved without rushing it to be anything else.
I really appreciated both this guide and the comment above about “already being in the emotion.”
It feels like such a rare thing to name clearly: that the suffering often isn’t the emotion itself, but the constant effort of resisting it, carrying it, managing it.
And reading all this, I kept thinking about another layer underneath it: emotions often aren’t just states to regulate — they’re signals trying to bring us back into contact with something alive in us.
Anger restoring a boundary.
Grief keeping us connected to what mattered.
Emptiness revealing where we disappeared from ourselves.
It makes emotional work feel less like “fixing ourselves” and more like returning to contact with ourselves.
The practical difficulty is earlier than the techniques suggest. The actor knows beforehand they're playing a role. In life the pattern fires unexpectedly, and awareness usually arrives after the reaction, not during it. The gap between trigger and awareness is what makes these techniques accessible. Developing that gap is the foundation everything else builds on.
This is incredible. I’ve experienced for myself and also feel like this is something we have over complicated, when the solution isn’t easy but practices are simple to integrate. This is life changing stuff right here if we focus on consciously choosing to practice these in the moments when we’re struggling.
every emotion is like a child, if this is not true I do not know what is! and the part about taking them seriously but not literally is also so helpful because many times we get fooled into believing they are reality, but they are mostly fear!
I also appreciated the language you shared about emotional resistance: “if you’re scared of a feeling an emotion, you’re already in it.” As a mental health therapist, I have grappled with explaining this aspect of resistance to clients and to myself, but this is more succinct and helpful and so true.
One of the biggest aha moments I had from you when I first came across your work was the idea that "If you’re scared of feeling an emotion, you’re already in it". It really shifted my perspective and I understood why not-feeling was so darn tiring. It's like the emotion we don't want to feel is a pebble, so we pick it up and put it in our pocket, then there's another situation where we don't want to feel it, so we pick up that pebble and put it in our pocket, then before you know it, our pockets are full and it's taking an awful lot of effort!
I love it. So well put!
Thank you! I’m a big fan of a metaphor 🤍
Amazing analogy, love it.
Thank you! I’ve carried a lot of pebbles around in my life. How are your pockets doing?
Oh, Polly, they are so heavy. But I’m learning to lighten the load. Slowly, slowly.
Often with little interludes of picking up pebbles again - perhaps a different colour or shape, or some other reason I fall back into hoarding. Or many times I think I’m attentively discarding pebbles with my left hand only to find my right hand is picking them up.
Sometimes the pockets feel unmanageable even to open and consider looking inside because they’re crammed. It feels easier to carry a weight you’ve forgotten what it’s like without than to start opening pockets you don’t know what’ll come out of.
But I’m getting there.
"Don't believe your emotions" initially triggered me. How can I not believe something I'm currently feeling intensely?
I keep getting attracted to emotionally unavailable people since my mother was emotionally unavailable in my childhood. I wonder if it's just a story or the truth?
Anyways, I realise in the end it's about welcoming and leaning into what comes up.
I really appreciate the way you think about these things. There's a curiosity in your comments that feels very different from trying to arrive at a quick conclusion.
And I wonder if sometimes the question isn't whether it's a story or the truth.
Maybe it's whether the pattern is trying to show us something we still haven't fully seen.
What do you think emotionally unavailable people allow you to avoid feeling?
Thank you :)
Yep, I also had a similar feeling that what's true is what's alive right now, irrespective of the story being true or not. And what's alive right now is what needs my attention.
I read this slowly and sat with it for a while before I could respond.
The image of each emotion as a young child undid me a little. Ignore it and it will find a louder way to be known. I know that one in my body. I've experienced trauma and for years I tried to think my way out of it. To understand it, to name it, to outpace it. None of it worked, because the mind cannot release what the body is still holding. What I've learned, slowly and at real cost, is that there is no way around the feeling. The only way to keep healing, to let the trauma actually move and be released, is to get into the body and feel it the whole way through. To stop narrating the pain and let it be felt.
I spent so long chasing joy, wondering why she wouldn't stay when what she was waiting for was for me to make room for the grief, the fear, the shame. You've taken what the productive world treats as a problem to be managed and reframed it as a child to be loved without rushing it to be anything else.
Thank you for this. So so good.
I really appreciated both this guide and the comment above about “already being in the emotion.”
It feels like such a rare thing to name clearly: that the suffering often isn’t the emotion itself, but the constant effort of resisting it, carrying it, managing it.
And reading all this, I kept thinking about another layer underneath it: emotions often aren’t just states to regulate — they’re signals trying to bring us back into contact with something alive in us.
Anger restoring a boundary.
Grief keeping us connected to what mattered.
Emptiness revealing where we disappeared from ourselves.
It makes emotional work feel less like “fixing ourselves” and more like returning to contact with ourselves.
"Grief keeping us connected to what mattered. Emptiness revealing where we disappeared from ourselves." - thank you.
The practical difficulty is earlier than the techniques suggest. The actor knows beforehand they're playing a role. In life the pattern fires unexpectedly, and awareness usually arrives after the reaction, not during it. The gap between trigger and awareness is what makes these techniques accessible. Developing that gap is the foundation everything else builds on.
yes. "when you avoid an emotion, you actually invite more of it in the exact way you try to avoid it."
feeling the emotion is the antidote, not the poison.
This is incredible. I’ve experienced for myself and also feel like this is something we have over complicated, when the solution isn’t easy but practices are simple to integrate. This is life changing stuff right here if we focus on consciously choosing to practice these in the moments when we’re struggling.
This is such a good piece about emotions and the importance of getting to know your. Very well explained.
This really speaks my language. 💚
So much of what I've come to understand on my own journey points in a similar direction.
We spend so much time trying to think our way through our emotions, analyse them, fix them, or avoid them.
Yet often what they're asking for is simply to be felt.
Thank you for sharing this. 🙏💚
I appreciate this. Your emotions are a terrible compass for reality, but they’re a perfect map for where your nervous system is currently stuck.
every emotion is like a child, if this is not true I do not know what is! and the part about taking them seriously but not literally is also so helpful because many times we get fooled into believing they are reality, but they are mostly fear!
I also appreciated the language you shared about emotional resistance: “if you’re scared of a feeling an emotion, you’re already in it.” As a mental health therapist, I have grappled with explaining this aspect of resistance to clients and to myself, but this is more succinct and helpful and so true.