Data Collectors,
Happy July,
I know I know I have been behind but, I also need to give myself a bit of a break as well. I am not a machine. I have recently been traveling and am currently back home in California. My heart feels full again. I just do not belong in the desert at all😩.
I have been sitting with something lately and I want to share these thoughts with you all. I have had to pull back from the amount of time I consume social media or just media content in general. Now that I am back in my home state I have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather California has been dishing out. Going on my 4-6 mile walks has been such a gift for my soul. Not being on the algorithm really clears out the noise that lives in the mind. I know that is true for some of us. But…
I can’t help but wonder how much of the chaos we keep witnessing outside our homes is displaced energy from the chaos we refuse to address inside them. All the stuff we see online, robberies, killings, toxicity, and people telling you what you need to do. It’s becoming too much noise. When I think about the drama on the roads, the drama in the workplaces, and the drama literally in stores. I keep thinking to myself.
“How does society have all this energy to do this ruckus but have no energy at home to tend to themselves, their families, and their relationships?”
Many of us are drowning in dynamics we know aren’t healthy. We know the conversation that needs to happen. We know the boundary that probably needs to be set and reinforced by our behavior. We know something has to change. But we avoid it because we already “know” how it’s is going to go.
“They’re going to react.”
“They’re going to tell me what I meant instead of listening to what I actually said.”
“They’re going to project their own story onto me.”
“They’re going to make me the bad guy.”
So we say nothing.
What we don’t realize is that avoiding conflict doesn’t eliminate suffering. It simply relocates it. Psychology has long recognized displacement as our tendency to redirect emotions away from the place they belong and toward somewhere that feels safer (American Psychological Association, n.d.). Thats why people are fighting in their cars on the highway, stealing from stores and hard working mom and pop shops, murdering each other, infidelity, family gridlock, and more…. It is getting ridiculous at this point. Now, pair that with what we know about experiential avoidance, that avoiding difficult thoughts and emotions often amplifies distress over time instead of resolving it. We are all becoming pressure cookers and suddenly a lot of our behavior starts making more sense (Hayes et al., 1996).
Does it make sense though?
The pressure cooker energy is building up BUT that energy has to go somewhere.If it isn’t moving toward repair, it usually moves toward projection. We see this everywhere especially online. Why do you think that is?
My theory…
Instead of confronting the partner, the family, the boss at work—we snap at the cashier. Instead of setting the boundary, we pick fights online. Instead of addressing the relationship that continues to wound us, we scream at strangers in traffic. What I am noticing in humans is we found a loop hole for exercising our agency where it actually matters, we rehearse control in places where it costs us very little.
I see it every day.
Everybody has something to say.
Everybody has an opinion.
Everybody is ready to tell someone else what they’re doing wrong.
We’re policing each other’s language, telling people what they should and should not be doing. That their relationships are wrong and to decenter so and so. We’ve become hall monitors of humanity, telling complete strangers how they should think, speak, vote, parent, heal, and exist. Yet many of us walk back into homes where we haven’t exercised our own agency in months—sometimes years. The fire is large there which makes sense why we exert our control outside the home. That’s the part that fascinates me. We call ourselves powerless while exercising power everywhere except the place we’re actually responsible for.
Now let’s pause… Before someone reaches for a vine to “explain” their why.
I’m not saying every conversation is safe to have. Some relationships are emotionally abusive or just physically and emotionally dangerous OR— draining. These dynamics require an exit plan, not another attempt at communication. Discernment matters with this work. My work is not for everyone. But many of us really have to get clear on the situations we are drowning in. Not everything is abuse, not everyone is a narcissist. Sometimes we are simply over staying our welcome in dynamics we have yet to build the courage to walk away from. Sometimes exercising your agency doesn’t look like speaking louder— it looks like staying silent or even removing yourself. Consequences aren’t about changing another person and their behavior. Sometimes they’re about refusing to continue participating in a dynamic that is slowly drowning you. The hardest part is recognizing that you’re drowning and the side effect of that is emotional spillage. Which doesn’t stay contained.
It leaks.
Emotional leakage is a term introduced by Paul Ekman to describe the involuntary expression of genuine emotions despite a person’s conscious attempt to suppress or conceal them. Ekman’s research demonstrated that emotions often “leak” through subtle, involuntary channels such as microexpressions, changes in vocal tone, facial tension, posture, and other nonverbal behaviors, revealing an emotional state that differs from what is being verbally communicated (Ekman & Friesen, 1969). While Ekman’s work primarily focused on nonverbal communication and deception detection, I believe the concept extends beyond the face. We must understand that the pressure cooker of unresolved emotions that are never processed do not simply— poof—disappear. These emotions are sneaky sneakersons and they often find expression elsewhere. They leak into our parenting, our romantic relationships, our workplaces, our interactions with strangers, and even the way we move through traffic. What begins as emotional suppression in one environment can become emotional expression in another. In that sense, emotional leakage is not only something we see on someone’s face; it can also be observed in the patterns of behavior that emerge when unresolved emotional experiences remain unaddressed. This is where displacement enters the chat. I have mentioned displacement numerous times in my work.
If all this emotional leakage is out polluting the air, how are we so confused why the world feels so angry? Maybe it’s because so many people are carrying emotions that don’t belong to the moment they’re currently standing in? They’re carrying conversations they never had. Boundaries they never set. Decisions they never made. Grief they never processed. Resentment they never addressed.
The energy has to go somewhere.
For myself, I am choosing to take that energy and for me it goes internally and it looks like this….
I giggle because this is something I show many of my clients and wanted to get framed for my office that way I can just point to it any time my clients immediately jump right back into the pull of the spiral. We don’t realize how much prefrontal cortex energy it takes to live in this constant state of hyper vigilance. For me it always feels like an urgency energy and it’s exhausting. I realize it’s my baseline for functioning simply because it’s what’s familiar to my childhood. How many of us rushed to get chores done just so we can be free from the home and go play outside? I lived my life rushing. So much so that my walking pace through out college was hyper speed😅. Living in that energetic state I did not realize when I was younger how it keeps my baseline for functioning in cortisol island. it becomes so normalized that we don’t even realize that we are stressed. Over time we tend to not consider the implications that does to our body.
I am learning to slow down, and boy oh boy is it uncomfortable. being online has a way of igniting that urgency energy as well. Now that people are following, watching, waiting. The pressure is on. But where did the pressure come from? Where does that pressure go? For some of us like myself— it goes inward. The Brain That Changes Itself reminds us that the brain becomes efficient at whatever it repeatedly practices. Neuroplasticity doesn't judge whether a pattern is helpful to us or harmful. It simply strengthens the pathways we use most often— this is what I keep repeating in my work. Especially when I connect Macro to Micro mechanisms of behavior and brain pathways. If we've spent years rehearsing vigilance, anticipating problems, and scanning for what could go wrong, those highways become incredibly well-developed. The brain starts choosing them automatically because they've become familiar. Meaning, we start internalizing the belief that it’s others outside of us that needs to change rather than the pathway we keep repeating. We have to develop the capacity to rewire out of our own behaviors.
So, Maybe the question isn’t whether you have the strength to do that. Maybe the question is whether you’re willing to use that strength where it actually matters. At home with yourself.
Why won’t the collective use it inside the one place where it might actually change our lives?
I don’t have the answer for that—maybe you tell me.
Below I placed some refection questions for us to ponder on.
Till next time Data collectors.
Reflection
Where am I repeatedly choosing temporary comfort over long-term freedom?
Is there a conversation, boundary, or decision I’ve been avoiding because I’m trying to manage someone else’s reaction?
Where does my frustration usually end up when I don’t express it where it belongs? (zoom in here boucle sometimes that energy can look like self neglect.
Am I exercising my agency where it matters most, or only where it feels safest?
What would change if I stopped asking, “How do I make them understand?” and started asking, “What choice is mine to make?”
