Trueform Therapy

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  • Learning to Sit With Your Emotions: How to Feel Without Needing to Know Why

    The Common Moment in Therapy

    “I don’t know why I feel this way.” Have you ever said that out loud while sitting with a friend or a counsellor, trying to make sense of what you’re feeling? I know I’ve been there. Sitting there, feeling the wheels of my mind turning, searching for any possible reason that could explain what I feel. And the thing is, whenever I go looking for a reason, I’ll always find one. I’ll explain a feeling away with whatever makes the most sense in that moment. That’s the left side of the brain doing what it does best: filling in the gaps, not worrying whether it’s true, only that it fits.

    I know I’m not alone in this. (Yes, you — I’m talking to you.) I’ve heard that same sentence from so many clients in therapy, and it’s what made me want to write about it. The idea of not knowing exactly where a feeling comes from often brings up guilt or frustration, as if not knowing is some kind of personal failure. Like being unsure of your feelings means you’ve somehow failed at being a person.

    But not being able to name or explain what you feel isn’t a sign of disconnection. I’d actually argue it might be the opposite. We live in a culture that teaches us to name and categorise everything (maybe because it makes us feel safe, because uncertainty is uncomfortable). And somewhere along the way, we started applying that same rule to emotions. The moment a feeling shows up (especially an uncomfortable one), we’re told to identify it, label it, find it on the emotions wheel (have you ever been shown one of those?), then analyse it, explain it, and make sure we can justify why it’s there. To me, that sounds like an exhausting process for something that, physiologically, only lasts about 90 seconds. Wouldn’t it be kinder to just let ourselves feel it, instead of rushing to understand it?

    Our Obsession With Knowing

    We live in a culture that worships knowing. From a young age, we’re taught that the goal is to figure things out, to analyse, to explain. Uncertainty means you haven’t done enough. Remember school? There was always a right answer, and if you didn’t know it, you just had to try harder. That lesson sticks.

    As adults, we bring that same mindset into our emotional world. We treat feelings like problems to be solved instead of experiences to be felt. We think if we can just understand why we feel something, then we’ll have done it “right.”

    Iain McGilchrist writes beautifully about this — how our culture has become dominated by the left hemisphere of the brain, the side that values logic, categorisation, and control. It’s brilliant at making sense of things, but it also struggles to leave space for what can’t be neatly explained. And when that part of the brain takes over, we start to believe that knowing equals competence. That not knowing means failure.

    So we analyse, interpret, and overthink our own emotions. We chase explanations instead of sitting with the actual feeling. It’s as if we can’t allow ourselves to simply be until we’ve written a full essay on why we’re feeling sad, angry, or lost.

    What Happens When We Overthink Our Feelings

    Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor talks about something called the 90-second rule: the idea that an emotion, as a physiological experience, only lasts about a minute and a half. That’s how long it takes for the chemicals triggered by an emotion to move through the body. After that, what keeps the feeling going isn’t biology — it’s thought.

    Emotions are meant to rise, peak, and pass. They’re waves, not storms. But when we start analysing them (Why do I feel this way? What does it mean? Should I be feeling this?), we keep activating the same emotional response over and over again. It’s like hitting “refresh” on a page we don’t actually want to stay on.

    That’s how sadness turns into heaviness, how anger lingers as resentment, how fear becomes anxiety. Overanalysis traps us in a feedback loop where we’re no longer feeling the original emotion, just the story we’ve built around it.

    And it can happen with any emotion. For some people, sadness feels unsafe. For others, it’s anger or even joy. So the mind steps in to manage it, to think it away, to control it, to make it make sense. But all that thinking just keeps us stuck inside the feeling we were trying to escape in the first place.

    Therapy and the Value of Unknowing

    Even in therapy, the “why” mindset sneaks in. We’re trained to look for root causes, to find patterns, to make meaning out of everything that hurts. And while understanding can be powerful, I’ve learnt that searching for answers too soon can actually pull us away from what’s most alive in the room: the feeling itself.

    There was a time when I thought that was the work. Help people figure out their feelings. Make sense of them. But over time, I started to notice that the moments of real change didn’t come from explanation. They came from presence. From slowing down enough to actually be with what was happening, without rushing to label or fix it.

    I’ve had to learn that myself too. I grew up in the same culture that values analysis over experience, knowing over feeling. So learning to stay with uncertainty, to resist the urge to tidy things up, has been a slow and ongoing process. To this day, I still catch myself trying to decode something instead of sitting with it.

    It’s something I still work on, too. As a therapist and as a person.

    What It Means to “Stay With” a Feeling

    So what does it actually mean to stay with a feeling? It’s simpler than it sounds and harder than it looks. It means noticing what’s happening inside you without rushing to understand or change it.

    You might feel your chest tighten or your stomach drop. Maybe your jaw tenses or your breath gets shallow. Staying with it means allowing those sensations to be there, without turning them into a story. No analysis, no self-critique, no “why”. Just noticing.

    It’s about presence, not understanding. Acceptance, not control. Letting the feeling move through instead of trying to pin it down.

    If you want to try this, the next time you notice a strong emotion, pause before asking, ‘Why am I feeling this?’ Instead, see if you can bring your attention to your body. What do you notice? Where do you feel it? You don’t need to name it or make sense of it. Maybe do a slow scan from your head to your feet, or just follow the rhythm of your breath for a minute. That’s it.

    It’s a practice that doesn’t offer quick answers, but over time, it builds a kind of trust in yourself. The kind that doesn’t depend on knowing, only on being.

    The Reframe: Understanding Comes Later

    Staying with your feelings doesn’t mean giving up on understanding. Insight isn’t lost. It just arrives differently. When we allow ourselves to fully experience a feeling without rushing to explain it, understanding tends to emerge naturally, in its own time.

    This is how the therapeutic process often works. When safety and acceptance are in place, reflection comes on its own. Clarity shows up after presence, not before it. You don’t need to force it.

    So if you’re sitting with an emotion and feel uncertain, remind yourself: it’s okay not to know yet. You’re simply feeling. And for now, that’s enough.

    In therapy, we make space for not knowing. That’s often where the real work begins: in the unknowing, in the pause before explanation.

    If you recognise this in yourself, if you notice the urge to figure things out instead of just feeling them, there’s a way to explore it with support. You can practise sitting with what’s here, noticing it, and letting it pass, without needing all the answers right now.

    If You’re Interested in Reading More

    If you want to dig deeper into the ideas I’ve mentioned here, these are a couple of great places to start:

    • Jill Bolte Taylor’s work on the neuroscience of emotions and the 90-second rule, which explains how emotions naturally rise and pass: My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey (2008).
    • Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary (2019) explores how our culture and left-brain–dominant thinking shape the way we perceive and interpret the world.

    Both offer fascinating insights into how our minds work and why learning to sit with feelings, rather than immediately trying to explain them, can make such a difference.

  • “Fitting in is the greatest threat to belonging.”

    I heard Brené Brown say that on a podcast recently. I nearly skipped past it (she says a lot of things worth writing down), but this one stayed with me.

    It made me think about how often we confuse fitting in with being connected. In therapy, that confusion shows up all the time: people are exhausted from trying to be easy to like, easy to love, and easy to keep. I know that this might sound like manipulation, but in these cases, it’s more about survival. We learn early that approval feels safer than authenticity, and that lesson sticks.

    It took me back to my younger self. The one who didn’t question much, who tried to move in step with everyone else. Back then, adulthood seemed to come with a ready-made script: go out, settle down, buy a house, have a baby, repeat. I thought that was just what being a functioning adult meant.

    It took a few detours to realise how much energy I’d spent trying to keep up. I wasn’t unhappy, exactly… just busy keeping pace. When life started to drift off-script, I expected disappointment. What I felt was relief.

    These days, I choose what fits me, not what looks good on paper. That still raises eyebrows sometimes, especially around the topic of children. People I’ve just met seem oddly invested in that decision. But I’ve stopped explaining. I’ve found people whose lives don’t need to mirror mine for us to feel close. That kind of belonging feels far less like a performance.

    The Psychology of Belonging

    Psychologists have long said our need to belong is as essential as food or safety. Rejection registers in the brain like physical pain. Which explains why we work so hard to fit in.

    But belonging isn’t about being included. It’s about being seen and recognised. And that distinction gets blurry early. We learn which parts of us are welcomed and which are inconvenient. So we start adjusting, smoothing our edges, editing our sentences. Those early edits don’t disappear; they just become habits. People-pleasing, overthinking, and constant self-checking are different flavours of the same survival strategy.

    I learnt to be easygoing, agreeable, and never too certain. It kept the peace, but I often felt like I was watching myself from a distance. There’s a loneliness in being well-liked for a version of yourself you barely recognise.

    Fitting In as Self-Abandonment

    When I think of “fitting in” now, it feels like a slow fade or a series of small, polite disappearances. Saying yes when you mean no. Nodding through things you don’t believe in. Smiling instead of speaking up.

    Individually, none of those things looks serious. But over time, they pull you away from your own preferences until you can’t quite remember what they are.

    Research backs it up: constantly managing how you’re perceived wears you out. It drains your attention, heightens anxiety, and slowly burns through your energy. The mind calls it social intelligence; the body calls it exhaustion.

    I know that exhaustion. I blended in until I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. It wasn’t rebellion I feared (I am a proud rebel); it was isolation. But the irony is that the harder I tried to belong, the lonelier I became.

    Belonging to Ourselves First

    It took me a while to understand that belonging starts with yourself. Not with finding the right crowd, but with knowing your own values well enough to stay loyal to them.

    Self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff found that being kind to ourselves calms the same stress responses triggered by exclusion. I like that: belonging as a physiological state and not a social achievement.

    For me, that looked like saying no when something feels wrong, even when it’s inconvenient. Choosing what feels right in my body, not just what looks sensible from the outside. Each time I practise this, life feels a little lighter, a little more honest.

    When Belonging Looks Unusual

    Living in alignment can look odd from the outside. People notice when you don’t follow the usual route. My lack of maternal instinct, for example, continued to be headline material up to my early 40s. Apparently, I was expected to “change my mind” at some point, as though I’ve misplaced it temporarily. (I didn’t.)

    I used to find those comments uncomfortable. Looking back now, I mostly find them funny. The confusion usually says more about the other person’s expectations than about me. Living differently can be unsettling for people who’ve never questioned the script. It hints that there might be more than one version of happy.

    I’ve stopped trying to make sense to everyone. The people who get it—who understand I’m not rejecting anything, just choosing differently—are the ones I keep close. Real belonging isn’t about matching. It’s about being met.

    Returning to Ourselves

    Hearing Brené Brown that day reminded me how long I spent trying to earn connection through conformity. I used to think I needed approval to feel safe. Now, when I notice myself editing again, I take it as a sign to pause.

    Life didn’t follow the neat timeline I once expected. I’m grateful for that. The detours brought me to a version of life that actually fits me. Not perfectly, but truthfully.

    The friendships I have now are easy in the best way: no performance, no persuasion.

    I still catch myself wondering sometimes if I seem “normal enough.” But the thought passes. Belonging isn’t about being understood by everyone. It’s about understanding yourself enough to stop chasing that.

    Reflection prompts

    • Where do I still adjust myself to stay accepted?
    • What signals tell me I’ve stepped away from my own preferences?
    • Who helps me feel at ease in my own company?

    Want to find out more?

    For anyone wanting to explore these ideas further, Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection (2010) and Braving the Wilderness (2017) both dig into the tension between fitting in and true belonging. Kristin Neff’s Self-Compassion (2015) offers a grounded look at how kindness toward ourselves can regulate the same stress that comes from exclusion. For a more psychological angle, you might look at Baumeister and Leary’s classic paper The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation (1995). Each approaches belonging differently, but all point to the same idea: connection starts with how we relate to ourselves.

  • Why It’s So Hard to Stop Being the Strong One

    When You’re Everyone’s Go-To Person

    You know that evening you’d planned? The one with a home-cooked dinner, a book, and maybe a bit of quiet? Somehow it turns into chocolate cookies and ice cream with a friend who’s having a crisis. You tell yourself it’s fine because you’re a good friend. And you are. You listen, reassure, and nod at all the right moments. By the time you get home, it’s late, your brain’s buzzing, and you’re already thinking about work tomorrow. She gets to fall apart. You get to be the strong one who still shows up.

    There’s pride in that at first… a warm sense of being dependable, needed, solid. But somewhere between the exhaustion and the quiet resentment, it hits you: you wouldn’t know how to ask for the same care if you needed it. And maybe you never do, because you’ve built your place in other people’s lives by being the one who never needs anything.

    Why Being Needed Feels Like Love

    It’s easy to think of it as generosity – being the kind of person others can count on. But for many people, that need to be needed becomes part of how they feel loved. It’s not just that ‘I like helping people.’ It’s ‘They called me, not anyone else; I must matter to them.‘ Being useful becomes proof of worth.

    The problem is, when no one needs you, there’s this strange emptiness that creeps in. Like you’ve slipped out of focus. You might even start scanning for someone else to rescue, just to feel grounded again. It’s not necessarily something conscious. You can think of it more like muscle memory. The comfort of having a role, even if that role is slowly draining you.

    The Invisible Cost of Always Showing Up

    The problem with being everyone’s emotional anchor is that you slowly start to drift from yourself. The more you keep showing up for others, the less space there is to even notice what you need. You get so used to holding everything together that you forget what it feels like to be held.

    It’s not dramatic; it’s quiet. A slow wearing down. You start to notice small things: you’re tired all the time, short-tempered for no reason, or oddly numb when something good happens. It’s like your emotional bandwidth has been spent on other people’s lives.

    It can look like:

    • Saying “it’s fine” when it really isn’t, because it’s easier than explaining.
    • Feeling secretly hurt when no one checks in with you.
    • Struggling to relax unless someone else is okay.
    • Feeling guilty for wanting space.
    • Resentment creeping in, but pushing it down because it feels unfair to feel that way.
    • Forgetting what you even enjoy when no one else is involved.

    It’s a quiet kind of depletion, one that doesn’t get noticed because, on the surface, you’re still functioning. You’re still that dependable, grounded person everyone trusts. You just don’t quite feel like yourself anymore.

    Where This Pattern Comes From

    Most of the time, being the one everyone can rely on doesn’t start as a conscious choice. It grows from early experiences that teach you that your value is tied to how much you give. Maybe you were the sibling who always helped smooth things over, the child who noticed when someone was upset before anyone else did, or the one who kept family peace at the cost of your own comfort.

    Some of this comes from family expectations, some from culture, and some from how we learn to measure love. When care and approval come most often after you’ve been useful, it’s easy to start thinking that being needed is the same as being loved. Over time, it becomes your default way of being — stepping in, taking responsibility, offering support — because that’s what defines you.

    The cost is subtle. Emotional needs get put aside, boundaries blur, and your identity narrows into the role of “the strong one” or “the helper.” You end up measuring yourself by how indispensable you are, rather than by who you are when no one is relying on you. Understanding your pattern isn’t about finding someone to blame. It’s about recognising that your value was never meant to depend on how much you do for others.

    Learning to Make Space for Yourself

    Sometimes it takes something dramatic — like sitting in a hospital gown with a broken leg, realising you have no idea who to call to pick you up. You start rehearsing excuses for everyone you know: She’s busy with the kids. He’s probably at work. I don’t want to be a burden. You’re literally the patient, but somehow you’re still managing other people’s imagined guilt. And, of course, you also feel bad for cancelling on your friend who was counting on you to help her move house this weekend.

    It’s a strange moment of clarity — the realisation that you’ve built a life around being the helper, to the point where asking for help feels like a moral failure. It’s not. It’s a sign that the balance has tipped too far.

    Making space for yourself doesn’t mean turning cold or selfish. It means building small, human pauses into your habits — ways of checking in before automatically saying yes.

    Realistic self-care can look like:

    • Saying “Let me think about it” instead of giving an instant yes.
    • Offering a smaller version of help: “I can’t drive you, but I can help you book the taxi.”
    • Letting someone else handle their own mini-crisis, even if you could do it faster.
    • Not replying to every message straight away — the world will survive.
    • Allowing yourself a full evening off without feeling like you have to “earn” it first.
    • Practising saying no to small things, so the big ones feel less terrifying.
    • Letting a friend take care of you, even if it means sitting there awkwardly while they bring you tea.
    • Reminding yourself that “helping” doesn’t always mean fixing. Sometimes it’s just listening, or sometimes it’s not being available at all.

    These things sound ordinary, but for people who live by giving, they’re radical. Real self-care isn’t about spa days or scented candles. It’s about noticing the reflex to overextend and choosing, even once in a while, not to. The world doesn’t fall apart when you do, though at first it might feel like it should.

    At first, all of this will feel deeply uncomfortable. You’ll overthink every boundary you try to set. Saying “let me think about it” might feel rude. Letting a message sit unread might make your stomach twist. You might even feel guilty for resting, as if you’re doing something wrong by finally giving yourself a fraction of the care you offer everyone else. That discomfort doesn’t mean you’re failing; it only means you’re doing something new.

    Letting Others Be There for You, Too

    It takes practice to stop being the strong one all the time. To let other people lift a bit of the weight, even if they don’t do it exactly how you would. You might still catch yourself trying to manage things from the passenger seat (literally or metaphorically), but that’s okay. It’s hard to unlearn a lifetime of being the dependable one.

    Maybe start small. Let someone else plan the group gift. Ask for a lift home. Let a friend bring you soup without feeling the need to repay them. You don’t have to dismantle your whole identity; you just have to leave a little room for yourself in it.

    Because being there for others is a good thing. It’s what makes relationships work. But being there for yourself, even awkwardly, even inconsistently, is what keeps you from quietly disappearing inside all that goodness.