Have you ever noticed how the harder you try to avoid certain emotions, the more powerful they become? That insight hit me last month during a particularly challenging client meeting. I sat across from two executives, their faces tense as they argued over budget allocations. The conference room felt suddenly smaller, the fluorescent lights too bright. As the senior VP slammed his hand on the table, I felt that familiar knot of anxiety tightening in my chest, my mouth going dry. My usual script played in my head: "Stay calm. Be professional. Don't show emotion." But as I took a deep breath, ready to intervene with practiced diplomacy, something different happened this time. - Venxina
When we resist our emotions, we're already caught in their grip. If you're afraid of feeling an emotion, you're already experiencing it – just in resistance. It's like trying to hold a beach ball underwater; it takes tremendous energy and eventually becomes more exhausting than simply letting it float.
Neuroscience research confirms this paradox. When we attempt to suppress emotions, the limbic system actually registers increased activity. The very act of resistance amplifies what we're trying to avoid.
The Family of Feelings: Why Joy Needs Company
I discovered this pattern runs deep in my own life. Growing up in a household where "negative" emotions were discouraged, I became an expert at emotional avoidance. The result wasn't greater happiness but a peculiar numbness – a life lived in the shallow end of the emotional pool.
I've come to understand that joy operates like the matriarch of an emotional family. She won't enter a home where her children – grief, anger, fear – aren't welcome. This explains why so many high achievers feel strangely empty despite their success. They've created lives where only "positive" emotions are acceptable.
The work isn't to eliminate our resistance but to welcome it. When you can't embrace the emotion itself, try welcoming your resistance to it. This subtle shift creates space for transformation. As one told me, "I couldn't accept my sadness, but I could acknowledge how desperately I wanted to escape it. Somehow, that was the beginning of healing."
Our egos are defined as much by what we reject as what we embrace. That colleague who irritates you? That political viewpoint that enrages you? They're often reflecting disowned aspects of yourself. The qualities we most strongly reject in others frequently represent shadow elements within ourselves that we've failed to integrate.
