08/07/2026
Here is an insightful article regarding accessomg emotions written by Beatrice Ng-Kessler, a Hong Kong and UK-registered Clinical Psychologist. I came across this article as part of my counselling certification studies.
Whilst not written from the lens of Yoga, and not a new understanding for me, as a therapist, Beatrice references how some people are wanting to understand themselves better and that through creating conditions for a person to feel a sense of safety, then embodiment and somatic practices may support an individual.
It also reaffirms the fact that every human being is a unique individual and will experience life differently.
I'm sharing this as I thought it was an easy to understand article and nice juicy read; and perhaps it may shed some light for you or offer you reassurance.
Yours in Yoga
Sue 🌿
When You Can't Feel Your Feelings
Why emotional access is more complicated than you might think.
Difficulty accessing emotions is not always a sign of emotional avoidance.
Our relationship with emotions is shaped by culture and past experiences—not just personality or willpower.
Emotional access often depends on creating the right conditions, rather than trying harder to feel.
What if struggling to access emotions isn't always avoidance?
"How do you feel about that?" As a clinical psychologist, I ask this question almost every day.
Some people answer easily. Others pause. They explain what happened, analyze the situation, or tell me why something mattered. They may understand perfectly well why they reacted the way they did.
Yet the feeling itself seems just out of reach.
Over the years, I have become increasingly curious about these moments.
The usual explanation is avoidance. Certainly, avoidance exists. At times, people actively push feelings away because they are overwhelming, painful, or frightening.
But I have also met many people who genuinely want to understand themselves. They come to therapy willingly. They engage wholeheartedly. They reflect deeply.
Yet emotional access remains surprisingly difficult.
This has made me wonder whether "avoidance" sometimes becomes an umbrella explanation for experiences that may have different origins.
Recently, I came across an interesting paper by Andy Fung and colleagues that gave me another way of thinking about this. They suggest that what we often call avoidance may involve not only avoiding certain situations, but also developing a habitual way of relating to our own inner experiences. In other words, the issue may not simply be what we avoid, but how we have learned to meet our own thoughts, memories, and emotions.
That idea resonated with me because it also reminded me of something I learned through mindfulness many years ago.
One of the most helpful ideas in mindfulness is that there is a difference between our experience and our relationship with our experience.
Sadness is one thing. How we relate to sadness is another.
Some people become curious.
Some become frightened or shameful.
Others judge themselves for feeling it in the first place.
Over time, this relationship can become so familiar that it no longer feels like a choice. It becomes automatic. It simply feels like "this is who I am."
Culture adds another layer.
Growing up in Hong Kong, I learned that emotional restraint was often understood very differently from how it is described in many Western psychotherapy textbooks. Sometimes holding back emotion was not a sign of emotional distance. It could be an expression of respect. Sometimes not speaking about grief was an act of protection. Sometimes expressing less was a way of loving more.
These experiences have made me increasingly cautious about assuming that limited emotional expression necessarily reflects emotional avoidance. They taught me that culture shapes what we feel and what we think we should feel.
Recent developments in affective neuroscience have also changed the way I think about emotions.
Rather than viewing emotions as hidden entities waiting to be discovered, many researchers now understand them as experiences that emerge through ongoing interactions between our bodies, previous experiences, language, relationships, and culture.
If emotions are constructed in this way, perhaps emotional accessibility also depends on more than willingness, and emotional granularity is not just about labels.
Perhaps it depends on whether an emotion feels psychologically safe enough to approach. Perhaps it depends on whether we have learned to make sense of it, or we know how to relate to it, or whether the people around us make it possible to experience it.
This has gradually changed the questions I ask in therapy.
Instead of asking myself, "Why can't this person access their emotions?"
I now find myself wondering, "What conditions would allow these emotions to become accessible?"
Has this person learned that certain emotions are unsafe?
How have they learned to relate to their own emotional experiences?
What has their family—or their culture—taught them about expressing vulnerability?
Does this relationship feel safe enough for these emotions to emerge?
I don't think these questions replace the idea of avoidance. Rather, they remind me to stay curious a little longer before arriving at that conclusion.
Sometimes the emotions we observe at the beginning of therapy are not the emotions that are actually driving a person's experience. Sometimes what looks like emotional avoidance is something else entirely.
And sometimes our role as therapists is not to help people express more emotion, but to help create the conditions in which emotions can finally come safely into view. Sometimes, those conditions involve a lot of practice that's not involved in speaking, but in embodiment and somatic interventions. Emotions will then emerge by themselves so that we can work with them.
Why do some people struggle to feel their emotions despite wanting to? Emotional accessibility may depend on safety, culture, and our relationship with our inner experience.
