Difficulty accessing emotions is not always a sign of emotional avoidance.

Our relationship with emotions is shaped by culture and past experiences—not just personality or willpower.

Emotional access often depends on creating the right conditions, rather than trying harder to feel.

What if struggling to access emotions isn't always avoidance?

"How do you feel about that?" As a clinical psychologist, I ask this question almost every day.

Some people answer easily. Others pause. They explain what happened, analyze the situation, or tell me why something mattered. They may understand perfectly well why they reacted the way they did.

Yet the feeling itself seems just out of reach.

Over the years, I have become increasingly curious about these moments.

The usual explanation is avoidance. Certainly, avoidance exists. At times, people actively push feelings away because they are overwhelming, painful, or frightening.

But I have also met many people who genuinely want to understand themselves. They come to therapy willingly. They engage wholeheartedly. They reflect deeply.

Yet emotional access remains surprisingly difficult.

This has made me wonder whether "avoidance" sometimes becomes an umbrella explanation for experiences that may have different origins.

Recently, I came across an interesting paper by Andy Fung and colleagues that gave me another way of thinking about this. They suggest that what we often call avoidance may involve not........

© Psychology Today