Hi Reader,

There’s a version of healing we’re often sold that looks a lot like becoming less human.

Less emotional. Less sensitive. Less affected. Calmer. Harder to rattle.

So when you begin doing the work and somehow find yourself crying more, noticing more, feeling more — it can be easy to assume you’re going backwards.

But what if feeling more isn’t evidence that you’re becoming less resilient?

What if it’s evidence that you’re no longer abandoning yourself in order to cope?

For many high-functioning women, strength has quietly become synonymous with overriding ourselves.

We compartmentalise. Stay busy. Think our way through feelings instead of feeling them. Tell ourselves something isn’t a big deal. Keep working. Keep achieving. Keep moving.

And because we’re still functioning, we assume we’re coping.

But functioning and feeling are not the same thing.

Sometimes functioning is simply what we learn to do when there hasn’t been enough room to feel.

I know this pattern intimately. For years, I could move through incredibly stressful periods of my life and remain remarkably productive. Long hours, pressure, difficult situations — I could keep showing up through all of it.

Then burnout happened, and my body stopped cooperating with that strategy.

Suddenly I cried more. Things affected me more. I felt more sensitive. I missed the woman who seemed able to handle everything, and for a while I thought getting better meant becoming her again.

Eventually, a different question emerged:

Was she really coping — or had she simply become exceptionally good at overriding herself?

That distinction changed something for me.

Because maybe you’re not suddenly feeling too much.

Maybe you’ve finally created enough space to feel what was already there.

When there is always somewhere else to put an emotion — work, achievement, busyness, exercise, problem-solving, the next goal, the next person who needs you — you can go a very long time without asking:

What am I actually feeling right now?

And staying long enough to hear the answer.

Healing makes self-abandonment harder

Once you start paying attention to yourself, it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend you can’t hear what’s there.

You notice when something hurts. When you’re overwhelmed. When you’re angry or lonely. When something doesn’t feel right. When your body is asking for something. When “I’m fine” isn’t actually true.

You also notice the things you used to brush aside because acknowledging them might require a boundary, a conversation, a change, a rest, or an uncomfortable truth.

And yes — sometimes that means you cry more.

But crying isn’t always evidence that something is wrong.

Sometimes it’s evidence that something is finally being allowed.

Regulation is not becoming unaffected

I think this is where our idea of emotional regulation can become distorted.

The goal isn’t to become the person who remains perfectly calm regardless of what happens. A regulated nervous system still experiences sadness, anger, fear, disappointment and overwhelm.

The shift is in what happens after the feeling arrives.

Can you experience an emotion without abandoning yourself inside it?

Can you feel sadness without immediately trying to make it disappear?

Can you notice fear without treating it as a prediction?

Can you let anger give you information without handing it control of everything you do next?

Can you cry without attaching the story:

I’m weak. I’m going backwards. I’m too sensitive. I should be over this.

This is the distinction I keep coming back to:

The goal isn’t emotional control. It’s emotional capacity.

The capacity to feel something deeply and still remain connected to yourself.

To have an anxious day without deciding you’ve undone months of healing.

To be upset without deciding your life is falling apart.

To let something be uncomfortable without immediately numbing it, fixing it, analysing it or demanding that it disappear.

To cry and still know: I am okay. I am here. I can stay with myself through this.

That is a very different kind of strength.

The old version says:

Nothing gets to me.

The new version says:

Things get to me. And I know how to stay with myself when they do.

Feeling more can actually mean reconnecting

This is why healing can be confusing.

If you’ve spent years suppressing, performing, coping and pushing through, becoming more emotionally available can initially look like becoming less resilient.

But perhaps it isn’t regression.

Perhaps it’s reconnection.

And there is another side to this that we don’t talk about enough: when you stop numbing the painful parts of life, you become more available to the beautiful parts too.

Joy. Connection. Love. Gratitude. Awe. Sunshine on your face. A walk somewhere beautiful. A conversation that makes you feel seen. Laughing until your stomach hurts. Tiny moments you might once have rushed straight past.

We don’t get to selectively shut down emotion.

When you stop protecting yourself from the full depth of being human, you don’t only become more available to pain.

You become more available to life.

So if you’re in a season where you feel more tender than you used to, I wouldn’t rush to make that tenderness mean something has gone wrong.

Ask a different question.

Am I less resilient — or am I simply more present with myself than I used to be?

Because healing may not make you harder to hurt.

Perhaps it teaches you that you don’t need to become harder at all.

You can remain open. Feel deeply. Listen when something hurts. Let emotions move through you. And trust yourself not to disappear when they do.

Maybe the goal was never to become someone who doesn’t feel.

Maybe the goal is to become someone who no longer has to leave herself when she does.

Your shift this week:

What feeling have you been trying to fix, suppress or “get over” that might simply need some space to be felt?

Before you solve it, see if you can sit beside it.

Bex x