Carla discovered that as she got older and her emotional suppression deepened, decision making became increasingly difficult. She would loop and get stuck. Through the work, she learned this was a sign of emotion that needed to be moved.
Once she gained access to fear, grief, and anger, clarity arrived. The emotions she’d been trained to suppress — first as a woman in the South (“don’t get angry, don’t cry”), then in 90s tech culture (“emotional woman = career over”) — were actually essential data for making good decisions.
“Once I learned to have access to things like fear and grief and anger it was immensely clarifying and it enabled me to make better decisions.”
She had told herself that separating from her feelings made her more effective. The opposite was true. The suppression didn’t eliminate the emotions — it just cut off her access to the information they carried. And with that came a tremendous amount of joy and love as bonuses.
Related Concepts
- All decisions are emotional
- Indecision means unfelt emotions
- Bad decisions come from fear of emotions
- Willingness to feel any emotion is the key to clear decision-making
- Decisions are made in the emotional center of the brain, not through analysis