When the hardworker in you doesnt want to feel, they just want to do.

When Doing Becomes a Refuge From Feeling

There is a part of you that does not want to feel. It just wants you to do.

Do more.

Be useful.

Be productive.

Stay busy.

Stay needed.

That part of you is not lazy, broken, or wrong.It’s the hard worker. The achiever. The reliable one. The one who learned very early that movement was safer than stillness.

And yet…where does it end?

At what point do we stop doing long enough to come back into feeling?

Because the cost of never stopping is not exhaustion alone —it is disconnection from the emotional body. And over time, that disconnection becomes a kind of numbness we mistake for strength.

Overworking Isn’t Ambition — It’s Often a Coping Strategy

Psychologically speaking, overworking is one of the most socially rewarded coping mechanisms we have.

If you shut down emotionally but show up early, stay late, carry the load and don’t complain — you’re applauded. You’re called “driven,” “strong,” “dependable.”

No one asks what it’s costing you.

Our brains are wired to seek reward. Praise, validation, approval — these release dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin.Little chemical cocktails that say: Good human. You belong.

And if you grew up in an environment where emotional expression wasn’t met — or wasn’t safe — your nervous system likely learned a workaround:

I’ll earn connection instead.

Achievement becomes attachment.

Output becomes identity.

Being useful becomes being worthy.

Over time, we don’t just enjoy the praise —we chase it.

Not because we’re vain. But because those chemicals feel like relief.

Anecdotal Truths We Rarely Name

I’ve worked with people who didn’t slow down until their bodies forced them to.

Burnout.

Autoimmune flare-ups.

Anxiety attacks that came “out of nowhere.”

When we traced it back, there was almost always the same pattern:

• Childhood praise for performance, not presence

• Emotional needs minimised or intellectualised

• Early responsibility or parentification

• A belief that rest had to be earned

One woman told me, “If I stop, I don’t know who I am.” Another said, “Feeling feels like falling apart.”

So they kept moving. Because motion gave them a sense of control.

Even the Quiet Hard Workers May Be Avoiding Something

Some of you don’t seek praise openly.

You’re humble. Stoic. You work behind the scenes. You don’t want recognition.

But it’s still the same strategy.

The focus is still outward. The attention is still away from the inner world.

Whether you crave applause or reject it —both can be ways of avoiding presence with the emotional body. Because presence asks something harder than effort:

It asks you to feel without fixing.

Why We Avoid Our Emotional Bodies

Here are some of the most common reasons — and the mindsets they create:

• Unprocessed grief→ “If I feel it, I’ll drown in it.”

• Childhood emotional invalidation→ “My feelings don’t matter.”

• Fear of dependency→ “If I need, I’ll be weak.”

• Trauma stored in the body→ “Feeling equals danger.”

• Identity built on productivity→ “If I stop doing, I disappear.”

• Fear of stillness→ “Silence brings things I can’t control.”

  
  

Each of these beliefs pulls us further into action and further away from sensation.

Coming Home to the Emotional Body

Your emotional body is not abstract. It’s not poetic language.

It is sensation. Weight. Tightness. Movement. Temperature.

It lives in your chest, your belly, your throat, your jaw.

It communicates long before words arrive. And it does not need to be analysed.

It needs to be felt.

A Guided Practice: Returning to Feeling

You can do this seated or lying down.

Place one hand on your heart. Place the other on your solar plexus (just below the rib cage). Gently close your eyes.

Breath

• Inhale through the heart for 4

• Exhale through the solar plexus for 6

Slow. Unforced.

Imagine the breath entering the heart space and leaving through the belly.

Stay here for several rounds.

Sensing the Emotional Body

Now bring gentle awareness to different regions:

Heart (chest): Often holds grief, love, longing, sadness, compassion.

Ask quietly: What is here right now?

Solar Plexus (upper belly): Often holds fear, anger, powerlessness, anxiety, control.

Notice sensation, not story.

Lower belly: Often holds shame, creativity, desire, old survival energy.

No fixing. No naming if you don’t want to.

Just witnessing.

If emotion arises, let it move like weather. Tears, warmth, heaviness — all are welcome.

Return to the breath whenever the mind wanders.

This Is Where Doing Softens Into Being

You don’t have to quit your ambition. You don’t have to stop being capable.

But you do have to stop using work as a place to hide.

Feeling does not dismantle you —it integrates you.

And the more present you become with your emotional body, the less you will need to earn your worth through exhaustion.

Not because you’ve done enough —but because you finally remembered that you are enough.

Part 2: When Doing Stops Working: Meeting the Feelings You’ve Been Running From