The man in this session describes a common paradox: emotions come up when he doesn’t want them (in public, talking to someone) but won’t come when he sits down to process them. Joe names the mechanism directly: trying to make yourself cry is the best way to push the tears away.
This isn’t a failure of will — it’s how emotions work. The effort to produce an emotion is itself a form of control, and control is the opposite of the surrender emotions require. Joe doesn’t try to make the man cry. Instead, he redirects to connection: “What does it feel like to open your heart?” The emotions then arise naturally when the heart opens to the ex-wife.
Related Concepts
- Trying to feel is resistance too
- Questioning feeling destroys feeling
- Resistance changes the emotion
- The pressure-resist cycle is a game to avoid feeling sadness
- Softening, not solving, breaks self-imposed loops
- Resisting an emotion is exactly what invites it back
- Longing and loneliness are love in disguise