Why Feeling Your Hard Emotions Is the Key to Breaking Old Patterns
- Sarah Laverty
- Apr 28
- 9 min read
Many of us find ourselves stuck in the same frustrating patterns — in friendships, work, or relationships — and wonder why they keep repeating. What if the answer isn't in thinking harder, but in feeling deeper? In this post, we’ll explore how sensation and memory are the missing links to lasting change.
We all have turning points in our lives, when something so big happens that we can’t carry on as we have before. Like when I ended up getting a pacemaker in my mid twenties and it transformed my relationship with my body.
These times touch us so deeply that it’s impossible to forget the lesson they arrived to teach us.
We learn life’s lessons through experience.
And we receive this experience in our body, not in our minds.
This is why the question “what would you tell your younger self” is often fun to play with, but not all that realistic. Because we know perfectly well that the younger version of us would ignore us completely! Just like the children and young people in our lives do when we try to tell them what we know.
How We Really Learn: Sensation, Not Thought
When I was learning to drive, I learned over and over again about the importance of checking my blind spot before changing lanes. I knew exactly why this was necessary, and I always did it in my lessons with my instructor.
On the first week of owning my own car, I was driving some friends of mine to the nearby town, and changed lanes just before a small roundabout. I looked in my rearview mirror and I was clear. But as I began to pull towards the left I heard an angry honk from the driver behind me.
My insides froze up with fear and my heart was beating furiously as my friend in the front seat asked “did you check your blind spot?”
“No.” I uttered quietly.
Nowadays checking my blindspot is so automatic and ingrained into my muscle memory that I find myself checking it even when I’m on a completely empty road.
When I started my role as a lead campaigner for the national students’ union the first task I was given was to organise a lobbying trip to Brussels with the leaders of the UK, Northern Ireland and Irish student movements, in a few months time. I had a minimal budget and very few resources.
I ended up asking two very, very senior leaders for meetings, never in a million years expecting them to agree to one. In fact in my notes I had scribbled them under a “We Might As Well Ask” list, because it was so unlikely.
Both of them said yes. And you better believe that my nervous system spent that entire trip in a state of utter panic.
Confronted by the reality of this goal coming true, I felt completely unprepared and stressed about making the most of the opportunity. But I was also completely elated. People kept asking me how I managed to secure such important meetings, and the only answer I could give them was, “I just asked.”
By the end I was completely exhausted, but my manager was delighted, as were the student presidents themselves. And since that time, I’ve never forgotten the importance of just asking for what you want. But also being prepared for it coming true.
The Connection Between Sensation, Memory, and Change
I learned to always check my blindspot and to just ask for what I want because the experience I had around them was visceral.
When something is visceral it is connected to our gut feelings, our nervous system and our emotions. The learning wasn’t simply an intellectual or conceptual understanding - it was grounded in strong sensation.
Sensation and memory are deeply interconnected.
When we experience sensation, those inputs are carried to the brain and processed. The brain may then store the information it receives from sensation in the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning.
Over time, some information gets passed from the hippocampus to the neocortex, where we store “general knowledge”, like knowing that when we drink coffee, we get a boost of energy.
The amygdala, the part of our brain associated with emotional process, also gets involved with this. That’s why a certain smell can evoke a feeling of comfort and home, or a song can remind us of a painful breakup.
Sensation and memory are two sides of the same cognitive process—sensation provides the raw data for memories, while memories shape how we perceive and interpret sensory experiences.
Their interaction is crucial for learning, adaptation, and emotional experiences.
This is why life becomes so challenging when we numb ourselves to sensation. We’re no longer connected to the life we’re living, and so we’re not able to learn from it in the way that we’re designed to.
If we learned to cut ourselves off from pain or strong sensation at a young age in order to protect ourselves, meet others’ expectations or conform to societal expectations we are interrupting the vital process of experience, response and adaptation.
And it's why we can end up seemingly repeating the same lesson over, and over again, getting stuck in a cycle which creates results we don’t want.
Common Patterns That Signal Avoidance
Denial
Maybe you always seem to have friends that make critical comments about you or put you down. Even when you say goodbye to old friends and make new ones, this pattern seems to play out again.
If this has been happening from a young age, you may have learned to soften the blow of these insults by explaining them away or blaming yourself. “Oh she’s just in a bad mood today, she’s been stressed at work lately.” or “Well she does have a point, I have gained a few pounds.”
Although you still feel the dull ache of feeling unseen or lonely in your friendships, you’ve protected yourself from the depth of the pain and anger you feel about being treated in this way. And without the strong experience your nervous system needs in order to make a change, the pattern continues.
Numbing
Perhaps you constantly find yourself in workplaces that are extremely busy and stressful.
Under late stage capitalism this has become the norm, but amongst your family and friends you always seem to have one of the most demanding jobs.
Although at the beginning you enjoy the buzz, after a while you begin to feel drained, exhausted and sick by the constant pressure, and your mind becomes an anxious stream of chatter.
But you’ve come to expect this and see it as normal, so you chug an extra coffee and keep pushing on, promising yourself that “next week things will calm down”. You’re moving so fast that you never stop to take stock of just how badly this way of living is affecting you.
Limiting beliefs
At home you make all the decisions. Your partner is kind and loving, so you tell yourself it doesn’t bother you that he rarely takes initiative. After all, he usually seems happy to go along with what you say - whether it’s about where to live, where to go on holiday, what to do at the weekend or how to handle a crisis.
When you see some of the problems your friends have in their relationships you feel you should be grateful that yours are more minor. But deep down you’re bubbling with anger that it sometimes feels like you’re more of a parent than a partner.
Not that you’ll ever let yourself admit that - nice girls don’t get angry.
If you recognised yourself in one of these patterns, or if it brought one of your own to mind, let’s take a moment to wrap that pattern (and you) up in a thick blanket of compassion.
The most common reaction that most of us have when we see these patterns playing out is shame. We may start to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with us and either work harder to try and change it, or give up and believe that this is just the way life is.
Shame becomes yet another protective layer, keeping us far away from the root of what’s really going on.
Compassion allows shame to melt. It offers us the space and the support to tip toe towards the things that we normally turn away from. And that’s really what these patterns are all about in the first place - the behaviours we’ve developed which allow us to avoid the strong, uncomfortable sensations that these scenarios evoke, but which don’t create the results we really want.
Explaining away your friends’ hurtful comments may soften the blow, but it means you learn to tolerate meanness and put up with unsatisfying friendships.
‘Keeping going’ through punishing work environments protects you from the damage you’re causing yourself and the fear that another way might not be possible, but it means that the subtle damage to your body and mind keepings piling up day after day.
And keeping your frustrations to yourself may help to avoid an argument and protect your self image, but over time it leads to resentment and loneliness.
The behaviours we develop to avoid feeling our anger, hurt, exhaustion and pain help us to keep going through life, but they don’t lead to the fulfilling and satisfying outcomes we really want.
The answer to that lies in the very sensations we have been avoiding.
How to Begin Healing: Feeling 10% at a Time
The core feeling at the root of these patterns are often ones that we experienced in childhood before we had the skills to handle them or a fully developed nervous system.
Even if we had wonderful parents who did help us with our emotions, they can’t be with us all the time, and it’s highly likely that along the way we picked up some experiences that our young bodies just weren’t yet able to handle.
And so we develop certain behaviours, beliefs or responses (often called ‘adaptions’) which allow us to avoid feeling this hard feeling.
When we grow into adulthood we have more resources and strength at our disposal. But our bodies may not have realised this yet, and so we continue the game of avoidance, running in fear from the pain that we’re more than capable of handling now.
It’s kind of like the story of the elephant that was tied to a stump as a baby and learns that pulling at the rope to try and escape is pointless. When it becomes an adult it could easily escape with one pull of its strong legs, but it never tries. Instead it stays bound by the small stump and piece of rope, because it has learned that escape is hopeless, and believes it is trapped.
Facing our hard feelings does take time, patience and skill. But as an adult we have more freedom to seek resources and ask for support. And our nervous systems are stronger and more fully developed.
By slowly, and gradually allowing ourselves to feel the hard feeling we have been avoiding we can teach our system that we are more than capable of handling it.
When we do this…
We no longer need to avoid the pain so we can let go of the adaptive behaviours that help us avoid it - like explaining away poor treatment or clinging to false hope.
We can directly experience what is really happening. Which allows us to learn, adapt and grow in a healthy way.
The energy which has been going into avoiding the pain is released from its task, and instead can go into creating the results we really want.
And best of all we can finally access the gold that comes along with the raw sensations we have been avoiding.
My clients are often surprised to find that when they really let themselves feel the pain they have been avoiding, it often brings with it a deep source of inner love and compassion.
When they stop avoiding their anger, they suddenly build the conviction to stand up for themselves, and when they face their fear of the unknown, they summon the courage to trust the flow of life.
The pain carries the medicine.
And the pattern starts to dissolve all by itself.
Self-Reflection: A Gentle Exploration Exercise
Explore one of your patterns by using these questions.
Self compassion and patience is essential as part of this process to take your time, and make a promise to yourself that you will not criticise yourself for your honesty.
Name the pattern, clearly stating your role in the dynamic, for example, “I often choose romantic partners who aren’t able to meet my emotional needs.”
Place a hand over your heart, close your eyes, and ask yourself, what hard feelings often come up in me when this pattern is playing out.
Write a short list of ways you notice yourself ‘softening the blow’ of these hard feelings. For example, perhaps you make excuses for your partner, tell yourself they will change over time or try to control how they show up in the relationship.
Return to the hard feelings we discovered in question 2. Notice what physical sensations come with these feelings, and allow yourself to sit with just 10% of the pain for about a minute. Breathe, and focus on the physical sensation, rather than any stories that come to your mind.
If you no longer had to avoid this feeling, what would you be free to do?
Next time you notice yourself reaching for a ‘softening the blow’ action, how could you pause and let yourself feel the feeling for one minute first?
As we gradually practice this over time, we allow the pain to teach us what we need to learn about this experience so that we can stop recreating it over and over.
If you’re ready to explore these patterns more deeply in a supportive space, I invite you to learn more about working with me. Healing is possible — and it begins inside your own body.
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