If You Can’t Talk About it, it Still Controls You. If You Can’t Stop Talking About it, it Still Defines You.

Some people are stuck in avoidance. Others are stuck in narration. And neither is freedom.

It got me thinking...

There are two kinds of emotionally stuck people in this world. The ones who say, "I just don’t like talking about my feelings," as if that’s a charming personality detail and not a full security system. And the ones who can talk about their pain for three straight hours, with subplots, timestamps, and a guest appearance from their attachment style.

One avoids. One narrates. Both are exhausted.

Because if you can’t talk about it, it still controls you. But if you can’t stop talking about it, it still defines you. And unfortunately, neither of these is the same thing as healing, though both have done an excellent job in recent years of masquerading as it.

Take one of my clients, Amelia. Brilliant, high-functioning, funny. The kind of woman who can discuss everyone else’s emotional patterns with frightening accuracy. But ask her how she feels, and suddenly she’s thirsty, making a joke, or remembering an urgent administrative task from 2009. Her whole system learned early that talking about pain was dangerous, so now she keeps it under lock and key and calls that being "fine."

Then there’s Martin, who has the opposite problem. Martin can explain his breakup, his mother wound, his attachment style, his fear of abandonment, and the symbolic meaning of the last text message with the clarity of a man narrating his own documentary. Stunning insight. Beautiful vocabulary. Absolutely no exit.

That’s the catch.

Avoidance looks strong because it’s quiet. Narration looks healthy because it’s articulate. But silence is not peace, and talking is not always processing. One person is trapped in what they refuse to say. The other is trapped in what they keep rehearsing.

It’s like one person has locked the wound in the basement, and the other has given it a weekly column.

Neither is free.

The science here is, frankly, annoying. What we avoid does not disappear; it usually shows up sideways, in the body, in our relationships, in our reactivity, and in the weirdly consistent ability to date the same person wearing different shoes. But over-talking can become its own trap too. Repeating the story over and over can keep the nervous system fused to it. At some point, it stops being something that happened to you and starts becoming the main thing you know about yourself.

And maybe that’s where a lot of people get stuck. Not because they haven’t suffered. Not because they aren’t self-aware. But because they are either hiding from the pain or building an identity around it.

Real healing is much less glamorous. It’s being able to tell the truth without becoming the story. To say, "Yes, this hurt me," without needing to either swallow it whole or serve it as your personality forever. To name the wound without worshipping it.

Maybe freedom is not never talking about it again. Maybe freedom is being able to talk about it without your entire nervous system pulling up a chair. Maybe it’s when the thing that happened to you becomes part of your history, not the headline of your identity.

Because there is a difference between having a story and living inside one.

And maybe that’s healing: when the story is still true, but no longer in charge...

Coco x