Why Your Emotions Keep Coming Back (And Why That's Actually Good News)

What a client taught me in 2015 that changed everything about how I do this work

A client said something to me in 2015 that I didn't have a good answer for.

"We rolled on that emotion before and it came back."

I was freshly certified in Emotion Code. I believed we were rolling over the governing meridian to permanently release trapped emotions. Find it, identify it, roll it out. Done.

But her words stopped me. And I had to go away and actually think.

Here's where my thinking landed.

Rolling to release a trapped emotion, without any deeper awareness or inner work, is a little like taking a pill and hoping to feel better. There's no real investment. No understanding of what's actually happening underneath. The practitioner finds the emotion for you, rolls it out, and you leave.

But here's the bigger question: if I feel sadness and we roll to release it, does that mean I'll never feel sadness again?

No. Of course not. That's ridiculous.

Maybe the specific event connected to that sadness has shifted. Maybe something loosened. But I am absolutely going to feel sadness again in my lifetime. So are you. So is everyone.

We are human. We are meant to feel the full range of our emotions.

So what's actually happening when we roll over the governing meridian?

Here's my best thinking after years of practice, consultation with mentors, and a lot of pondering:

I think rolling is a method that allows us to scan every organ and limb in the body, to invite the body itself to locate where it stored something. And I believe awareness is the true catalyst to change. We cannot change what we're not aware of.

The body is remarkable at streamlining. What worked before becomes habit internal, automatic, unconscious. The body gets locked in a loop that once served it but may not be needed anymore. The rolling may help bring awareness to what's been sitting there unfelt.

But awareness alone doesn't complete the process.

Here's the truth I've come to after nearly 20 years of this work:

There is no shortcut to feelings. We have to feel them to move through them.

I think that's why we call them stuck or trapped. Not because they disappear once identified, but because they've been sitting there, unfelt, waiting for us to be willing to actually meet them.

And even when we identify them, work with them, release them, those same emotions will come back. Different versions. Different triggers. Different depths.

That is not a failure.

That is the process.

We wouldn't be human without our emotions. We are meant to feel them, to understand what to do with them, to move through them rather than around them.

When we stop being so afraid of our emotions, they can flow. When we resist, suppress, or repress them; when we avoid feeling them by rolling them away or thinking our way around them, they don't go anywhere. They wait.

So how do we actually feel our emotions?

Do we cry? Scream? Hit something? Maybe. But that's not always necessary or even helpful.

Emotions need expression. The body needs to release them. And one of the most powerful ways I've found is through metaphor, dropping into the body and noticing what's there. Sitting with a sensation. Getting curious about it. Letting it show up as an image, a color, a texture, a memory.

There's no right or wrong way. Just go inside for a moment and see what's there. You can come right back out. You can have someone with you if you need support to walk you through it. That's exactly what I do with clients.

I used to think that thinking about my emotions was processing them. I'd analyze them, trace them back, understand them thoroughly.

Then I discovered that going into my body, just for a moment, with curiosity rather than analysis, worked faster and more completely than any amount of thinking.

The first time it happened I couldn't believe how simple it was. How quick. How much I'd been overcomplicating it.

Our imaginations are powerful tools for emotional processing. When we use them, really use them, dropping into sensation and metaphor rather than staying in the head, we often discover it wasn't so scary after all.

We can handle our emotions. We can look at what's there without falling apart. Even one tiny step at a time, getting a little closer to being with what's actually there.

If emotions keep coming back for you after the rolling, the tapping, the releasing, that's not a sign something is broken.

It might be a sign you're ready to actually feel them.

And that's where the real work happens.

If this landed for you and you'd like support in doing this work, summer sessions are open. 

And if you'd like to do this work in a small group setting — the September Inner Listening Circle starts September 10th. Early bird pricing of $397 is available through August 27th.