“Bring your full self to work.” “Feel your feelings.” “Listen to what your emotions are telling you.”
Good advice. Until it isn’t.
We don’t talk about this often enough: sometimes your feelings are not serving your best interests. Sometimes they’re not messengers, they’re disturbing noise. And if you let every feeling vote on your next move, you will not move. At least not where you want to go.
Many clients come to me struggling with feelings that get in the way of them doing the right thing — asking for a promotion, having a hard conversation, making the cold call, showing up on the dating scene bruised and imperfect, hitting publish, putting themselves out there. Stopped or delayed not by circumstance.
By feeling.
Shame. Inadequacy. Not enoughness. Too pushy. Too needy. Too unqualified. Too much like an imposter who’s about to get found out.
The feeling shows up. The action stops.
I share with them the insight that changed everything for me, and for a lot of the people I work with:
You can have the feeling and do the thing anyway.
You don’t have to listen to what it’s saying, just like you can leave the room when someone speaks to you disrespectfully.
The feeling doesn’t get a voting voice on your actions.
There’s a technique from trauma therapy called Emotional Containment. It’s one of the most practical, effective tools I know for self-transformation beyond your perceived limits.
Here’s how it works:
1. Locate it. Where does the feeling live in your body? Chest? Throat? Gut?
2. Give it form. Visualize it as an object. A heavy stone. A dark, tangled knot. What color? What texture?
3. Name it. “This is fear of rejection.” “This is shame.”
4. Box it. Imagine a container — a vault, a chest, something solid. Open it. Place the object inside. Close the lid. Lock it up if you need to.
5. Make a deal. Tell yourself: “I see you. But right now I’m doing the call / the meeting / the task, and you are not helpful here.”
6. Take the action.
You’re not suppressing the emotion. You’re not pretending it isn’t there. You’re creating a small gap between what you feel, who you are, and what you do. That gap — that tiny, deliberate space — is where your choices for change live.
After the task, you can go back to the container.
Or not. Let it collect some dust.
Sometimes the feeling has already shrunk. Sometimes it’s gone entirely, replaced by something better — momentum, pride, relief.
This isn’t magic. It’s neuroscience in action.
Neural circuits are like muscles: use them or lose them.
Every time you feel the fear and make the call anyway, you’re weakening that fear circuit. You’re building a different one.
Which is very good news if your current circuits are driving unhelpful thoughts and emotions forward.
Over to you, dear reader,
What’s sitting in the way of your next move, what feeling? And what would change if you put it in a box, just long enough to take the action?