Summary
Joe explains what he calls “the Matrix” — the repetitive emotional patterns we get stuck in throughout life. As children, we’re told certain emotions aren’t okay (boys don’t cry, girls don’t get angry, stop being so excited). When an emotion doesn’t complete its natural cycle back to homeostasis, the body recreates scenarios over and over to try to feel that emotion and return to regulation. This explains why people date the same type of person repeatedly, have the same kind of boss, or keep getting into the same fights.
He outlines a three-part method for noticing when you’re in the Matrix: (1) notice any emotion you’re avoiding, (2) notice how you avoid that feeling, and (3) notice how your avoidance actually brings the feared emotion to you. The solution isn’t just feeling the emotion but genuinely welcoming it — discovering its signal, appreciating its intelligence, and finding the pleasure in sensation itself. Joe emphasizes that the discomfort of emotions comes from resisting them, not from the emotions themselves, using the analogy of needing to go to the bathroom — it’s the resistance that’s uncomfortable.
Key Concepts
- Emotional avoidance creates the very pattern it fears
- Three steps to see your emotional matrix
- Welcoming emotions goes deeper than just accepting them
- Every emotion carries an intelligent signal
Key Quotes
“If somebody keeps on dating somebody who’s emotionally abandoned them, when they fully embrace the abandonment feeling, they fall in love with it and recognize the signal that it’s actually sending them, then they stop dating people who emotionally abandon them.”
“As soon as you’re doing any of these practices to get rid of the emotion, it basically becomes the avoidance that invites it towards you.”
“In a war with yourself you always lose. In a war with your emotions you always lose.”
“Most of the stuff that you feel that’s uncomfortable in emotional experiences — the resistance to it, not the thing itself.”
“If you allow yourself to be sad, if you allow a good cry, you feel better at the end of it. It’s when you resist sadness that depression starts happening.”
Transcript
everybody’s got patterns in their life that they’re stuck in they maybe know about them maybe they don’t know about them but no matter what it causes them pain and that’s what we’re calling the Matrix and so this video is all about how to get out of the Matrix and so that means really understanding how it works learning how to notice when you’re in it and then the third thing is how to get out of those patterns so what happens is when we’re kids we get told that certain emotions aren’t okay and what that means is like we get told hey stop being so excited or boys don’t cry or girls don’t get angry or or maybe we get bribed out of it like we get fed so we don’t feel something or we get told we can’t have temper tantrums or whatever we have these emotional experiences that are built to run all the way through us and get back to regulation and we’re told we can’t have them the issue is that we are like cells and we’re trying to get back to homeostasis if for whatever reason that emotion doesn’t go all the way through us and we don’t get back to homeostasis we start creating these patterns in our life over and over again so that we can feel that emotional experience and get back to homeostasis so a simple example of this that you probably can all recognize is we all know that person who’s been dating the same person over and over and over and over again it’s like different face different driver’s license but it’s the same emotional abandonment over and over again or the same abuse or the same criticism over and over and over again so how does that work so your little kid you have this father or mother who has emotionally abandoned you and of course as a kid you you can’t fully feel that and so that emotion never gets fully felt doesn’t go all the way through and if it doesn’t go all the way through then your body needs to recreate a scenario over and over again to allow that feeling to happen so my work as a coach all the time one of the things that I see is if somebody keeps on dating somebody who’s emotionally abandoned them when they fully embrace the abandonment feeling they fall in love with it and recognize the signal that it’s actually sending them and recognize how it’s protecting them then they stop dating people who emotionally abandon them and they stop creating emotional abandonment in their life so this kind of pattern can work in a ton of ways you might find that you keep on having the same kind of boss you might find that you keep on having the same kind of girlfriend you might find that you keep on getting in fights you might find out that you keep on getting into physically uncomfortable positions in like dangerous situations you might find that you um keep on being criticized by everybody you might notice that you keep on being defensive in a workplace so there’s a lot of ways that this pattern can over and over again repeat itself and the solution is always the same which is fully embracing the emotion that you’re avoiding so now let’s move on to how to notice when you’re in The Matrix when you’re in the pattern itself we often are creating pain in our lives which we can’t even see and so if you can learn how to see when you’re in the pattern you can get to a lot of freedom very very quickly so the way you do it is in three parts one notice any emotion you’re avoiding so you go and jump on your phone what’s the emotion you’re avoiding oh you’re judging somebody what’s the emotion you’re avoiding oh you’re feeling guilt but there’s an emotion underneath it what’s the emotion underneath it what’s the emotion you’re avoiding Second Step notice how you avoid having that feeling so let’s say when I was emotionally abandoned as a kid the way that I would avoid that feeling is I get really hard I’d be like I defend myself that would be one of the ways that I would you know not get abandoned and the other way to say is that I would make people dependent on me so that I would create an environment where they needed me enough where I was not going to be emotionally abandoned so that would be another way I did it so you notice how exactly you’re avoiding that emotional state and then the third part is to notice how that avoidance actually brings the emotion to you it doesn’t actually get rid of it or it doesn’t actually allow you to avoid it so back to my example every time I went because I wasn’t going to be emotionally abandoned by you it pushed you away so of course I’m going to get more emotionally abandoned or every time I tried to make you dependent then there was this moment where I felt all alone like I couldn’t depend on anybody because I was always the helper and I then I’m like oh my god I’ve been abandoned again because I have to do this all on my own again so now let’s get into how to break through the pattern and there’s obviously some part of it that you probably already gr which is to feel the emotion all the way through so that’s one part of it but another really important part of it is actually learning to welcome it and this is a little tricky for a couple reasons so let’s get into it when you start to really invite it it goes away like the emotion stops happening and so you’re like oh cool I’m going to do this thing to make it go away but then you’re not welcoming it anymore and it’s like such a head trip but as soon as you’re doing any of these practices to get rid of the emotion it it basically becomes the avoidance that invites it towards you so the real trick is to have a deep welcoming of the emotional experience so a couple things you can do is one you can find out what the signal is for the emotional experience so angry might mean oh I have a boundary that I need to draw and so wow I I I am I’m allowed to feel anger because it tells me I need to draw a boundary or it gives me a sense of clarity there’s a gift in this emotional experience and so I can actually look forward to it I can welcome it oh I’m anxious that might mean that I’m not saying my whole truth huh I’m like I’m holding something in and since I’m I don’t feel safe that I can be myself of course I have anxiety so that tells me oh here’s a place where I I need to speak my truth so one is to find the signal throughout all the noise of an emotion the second is to really learn how intelligent it is when you really Express anger for a while you’ll notice you get to clarity when you really Express anxiety for a while you notice that the anxiety dissipates and and it brings a new conclusion so to actually express it without any judgment without telling yourself you shouldn’t express it really allows you to see things from A New Perspective all the time I see people having a hard time making a decision they express their feeling and then boom that decision gets made much much more easily the third is to notice that when you’re actually curious about it it’s all just sensation and can all be kind of cool and pleasurable anger can be very invigorating anxiety can be very alive it can it turn into like an excitement sadness and joy they’re really close to each other we notice we will cry over a Sunset and we’ll cry over the loss of say our pet and there’s like there’s something really close to the feeling of those two things it creates a gratitude in the system so if we stop resisting the emotional experience we learn that there’s actually quite a bit of pleasure in them and that we can Savor them and it makes no sense to our head but our body will learn it right away in fact most of the stuff that you feel that’s uncomfortable and emotional experiences the resistance to it not the thing itself so for instance let’s say you need to go to the bathroom and you’re not going to the bathroom it’s not going to the bathroom that’s uncomfortable it’s resisting it that’s uncomfortable it’s exactly the same way with an emotion it’s resisting it that’s actually the discomfort another way to look at it is that the Matrix itself is energized by your resistance and as soon as you become undefended to your own emotional experience you can fall in love with it then you get energized instead of the Matrix getting energized and the greatest phrase that I’ve ever heard around this is I just love this one and it is in a war with yourself you always lose in a war with your emotions you always lose the thing that makes this hard is that a lot of people are scared that they will lose control if they allow their emotional experiences so usually if I allow my myself to get angry I’ll destroy everything I love if I allow myself to be sad I will be sad forever if I allow myself to be scared I won’t be able to do anything but it doesn’t work that way at all as it turns out if you allow yourself to be sad if you allow a good cry you feel better at the end of it it’s when you resist sadness that depression starts happening when you allow yourself to feel anger not at anybody not in a way that creates shame not in a way that destroys anything but just by yourself getting being angry you get to Clarity you get to actually the Creative Energy behind anger because there’s nothing that we get angry about that we don’t care for deeply we wouldn’t get angry otherwise and same thing if you allow yourself to feel the fear completely you courage just falls out of that excitement just falls out of that so if you want to do something really practical around this here’s an experiment that you can try out every day at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day you notice an emotion that you’ve been avoiding and you bring it into the emotional inquiry you just do that every day for two weeks every day for two weeks and notice how much your life changes all right thanks for coming we appreciate you watching the video if you liked it and you want more hit subscribe and like and leave any comments in the bottom of any kind of content that you want us to produce