Why We Struggle to Trust Our Feelings in Relationships

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In relationships, many people become highly attuned to the emotional responses of others. They learn to monitor tone, mood, facial expressions, or possible reactions in order to maintain connection, avoid conflict, or keep emotional balance. Over time, this can create a subtle but important shift away from their own internal experience. When asked how they feel, some people instinctively answer with what their partner thinks, what their partner needs, or how their partner might react. Their attention moves outward before they have fully recognised their own response. Often, this happens so automatically that the person barely notices they are doing it.

Losing Contact with Our Own Inner Voice

For some people, particularly those who have experienced criticism, emotional unpredictability, or conflict within relationships, it can begin to feel safer to monitor the emotional environment than to remain connected to their own feelings. Rather than asking, “What am I experiencing right now?” the mind shifts towards:
“How will this affect the other person?”
“Will my feelings be accepted?”
“Do I need to defend myself?”

Over time, this can weaken trust in one’s own internal world. A person may become uncertain about whether their emotions are valid, whether their needs are reasonable, or whether they are allowed to experience something differently from their partner.

Emotional Reticence and Emotional Over Functioning

In some relationships, these patterns can become organised between two people in ways that feel familiar but exhausting. One person may become emotionally reticent, finding it difficult to identify, express, or stay connected to their feelings. Emotional experience may feel vague, distant, or uncomfortable to engage with directly. The other person may begin compensating by carrying more of the emotional awareness within the relationship. They may try to interpret feelings, maintain communication, anticipate problems, or encourage emotional openness. Although this dynamic can develop in any relationship, many couples describe having unconsciously fallen into more traditional emotional roles, where one partner becomes the emotional processor while the other withdraws from emotional engagement. Over time, this can create frustration for both people. The emotionally expressive partner may begin to feel alone, burdened, or responsible for the emotional life of the relationship. They may long for reciprocity, openness, or emotional presence. Meanwhile, the more emotionally withdrawn partner may feel criticised, overwhelmed, inadequate, or pressured to respond in ways they do not fully understand within themselves. Neither person is necessarily “wrong.” Often, both are responding to emotional patterns that developed long before the relationship itself.

When Emotional Monitoring Replaces Emotional Awareness

One difficulty with constantly monitoring another person’s emotional state is that it leaves very little room to notice our own. Instead of experiencing emotions directly, a person may begin evaluating them through the imagined response of someone else. This can create an exhausting form of inner self-surveillance where thoughts and feelings are filtered, softened, defended, or edited before they are even fully understood. At times, people can become so focused on managing the emotional atmosphere around them that they lose connection with what they genuinely think or feel.

A Small Reflective Practice

In therapy, it can sometimes help to gently pause and notice where attention is going in moments of emotional tension. A simple reflective practice might involve asking:

Am I in my own mind right now, or second guessing what my partner thinks?

Do I have my own response, or am I preparing to defend myself?

Is it possible for me to own my feelings, while allowing the other person to have their own reaction?

This is not about becoming detached or uncaring. It is not about ignoring the emotional reality of another person. Rather, it is about creating enough internal space to recognise that our own thoughts, feelings, and reactions also deserve attention.

Relearning Emotional Ownership

For some people, reconnecting with their inner experience can feel unfamiliar at first. They may notice uncertainty when asked what they feel. They may instinctively seek reassurance, approval, or confirmation before trusting their own perspective. Learning to validate our inner experience often begins very gradually. It can involve noticing emotions without immediately explaining them away, allowing feelings to exist without rushing to justify them, and recognising that disagreement does not automatically invalidate personal experience. Over time, this can help strengthen a more stable and grounded sense of self within relationships. Leaning into an internal Locus of Evaluation helps foster stability and balance individually and as a couple.

A More Balanced Emotional Connection

Healthy emotional connection does not require one person to carry the emotional responsibility for both people. Nor does it require emotional withdrawal in order to maintain independence or safety. A more balanced relationship allows room for both people to remain connected to themselves while also staying emotionally available to one another. This creates space for honesty, difference, vulnerability, and mutual understanding without either person needing to abandon their own internal experience.

A Compassionate Perspective

Many people who struggle to trust their feelings learned, at some point, that it felt safer to monitor others than to remain fully connected to themselves. These patterns are often thoughtful adaptations to earlier emotional environments. With awareness and support, it becomes possible to gradually rebuild trust in one’s own inner world. And from this place, relationships can begin to feel less like a process of emotional management, and more like a shared experience between two people who are both allowed to exist fully within themselves.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) May 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.

Digital Detox: Reconnecting With Our Inner Experience

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Many people notice how naturally their attention is drawn towards their phone. Moments of quiet are quickly filled with scrolling, checking, or searching, often without much conscious thought. For some, this has become such a familiar part of daily life that it can feel difficult to step away from it, even for short periods of time. This raises an important question: what makes it so hard to unplug?

The Pull of Constant Stimulation

Digital spaces are designed to capture and hold attention. They offer a continuous stream of information, images, and interaction, often changing faster than the mind has time to fully process. Over time, this level of stimulation can begin to shape how we relate to our own thoughts. Moments that might once have been spent reflecting, noticing feelings, or simply being present can become filled with external input. The mind becomes used to receiving rather than generating. In this way, constant scrolling can begin to replace quieter forms of thinking.

Avoiding the Inner World

For many people, stepping away from digital distraction is not just a practical challenge, but an emotional one. When external stimulation is reduced, internal experience becomes more noticeable. Thoughts may feel less organised, emotions may feel more present, and certain questions about life or relationships may begin to surface. At times, this can feel uncomfortable. It can be easier to reach for something that provides quick distraction than to sit with uncertainty, restlessness, or difficult feelings. In this sense, digital engagement can sometimes act as a way of managing emotional experience, allowing attention to move outward rather than inward.

The Appeal of “Outsourcing” Thought

A client once reflected that if their mind could exist as a phone app, they would choose to use it. They described the appeal of having thoughts that felt clearer, more structured, and easier to access. This idea captures something many people can relate to. Digital tools often provide immediate answers, organised information, and a sense of clarity that can feel reassuring. In contrast, our own thinking can feel slower, more complex, and at times uncertain. It is understandable that people might begin to rely more on external sources, especially when internal reflection feels effortful or uncomfortable. However, this shift can also create distance from our own inner process.

Experiencing Life First-Hand

This pattern can sometimes become visible in everyday moments. For example, when visiting a scenic place or meaningful location, it is common to see people engaging with it through their phones, taking photos or videos rather than pausing to take in the experience directly. The moment becomes something to capture, rather than something to fully feel. While there is nothing inherently wrong with recording experiences, it can gradually reduce our capacity to stay present with them. Over time, this may contribute to a sense of disconnection, even in moments that are meaningful or significant.

Returning to Presence

A digital detox does not have to mean removing technology completely. Instead, it can involve creating small, intentional spaces each day where external input is reduced. This might be as simple as putting the phone aside for a period of time, going for a walk without headphones, or sitting quietly without immediately reaching for distraction. At first, this can feel unfamiliar. Without constant stimulation, the mind may feel restless or unsettled. Thoughts may seem less clear, and emotions may become more noticeable. With time, however, these moments can begin to feel different. There can be more space for reflection, a greater awareness of internal experience, and a renewed connection to the world as it is happening.

A Gentle Rebalancing

The aim is not to reject technology, but to find a more balanced relationship with it. Digital spaces can offer connection, information, and convenience. At the same time, our inner world requires space, attention, and time. Creating distance from constant input allows us to reconnect with our own thinking, our emotions, and our direct experience of life.

A Compassionate Perspective

The pull towards digital distraction is not a failure of discipline. It reflects both how these systems are designed, and the very human tendency to move away from discomfort. In many ways, it is understandable that people turn towards what feels easier, clearer, or more immediately rewarding. A digital detox is not about removing something essential, but about making space for something that may have been gradually lost. With small, consistent shifts, it becomes possible to reconnect with a quieter, more grounded way of experiencing both ourselves and the world around us.

Collette O’Mahony

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

For a free 15 minute free introduction book here.

Navigating Self-Discovery: Understanding Your Inner Identity

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There’s a particular kind of question that doesn’t arrive lightly. It tends to surface slowly, often after years of getting on with things, doing what’s expected, being who you’ve always been. And then, one day, it lands with a weight that’s hard to ignore: Who am I, really?

For many people, this question shows up in their late 20s or 30s, sometimes later. It might be stirred by a life change, or it might seem to come out of nowhere. On the surface, life can look fine; work, relationships, responsibilities all in place. And yet underneath, something feels off. Not dramatically wrong, just quietly out of place. People often describe it as a sense of disconnection. As if they’ve been living a life that looks right, but doesn’t quite feel like theirs. Alongside that can come a mix of emotions that are harder to make sense of. Low mood, restlessness, anxiety, or a kind of flatness where things that used to matter no longer do. For some, it can feel more intense than that, like everything they’ve built their life on is starting to crack. It can feel frightening. It can feel like something is going wrong. But very often, something else is happening.

When the Self You Built Stops Fitting

In developmental terms, our teenage years are when we begin to form a sense of who we are. Not just what we do, but what we value, what we feel drawn to, what seems to fit. In an ideal world, development in teenage years unfolds with enough space to explore, question, and push against expectations. But many people don’t get that kind of freedom.

If you grew up in an environment where approval mattered, where certain emotions weren’t welcomed, or where there were strong expectations about who you should be, you likely adapted. You learned, often without realising it, how to be acceptable, how to stay connected, how to avoid conflict or disapproval. You might have become someone who copes well, achieves, keeps the peace, doesn’t make things difficult. These are not small things. They take awareness, sensitivity, and effort. Over time, though, those ways of being can become less like choices and more like identity. Not because they fully reflect who you are, but because they were what worked.

Until they don’t.

The Quiet Shift That Changes Everything

At some point, often without warning, the fit begins to loosen. What once felt normal starts to feel effortful. What once made sense starts to feel restrictive. You might notice that you’re saying yes when something in you wants to say no, or that you’re moving through your days without a real sense of connection to what you’re doing.

It’s not always dramatic. In fact, it’s often quite subtle at first. A kind of internal friction. A sense that you’re slightly out of step with your own life until gradually, it becomes harder to ignore.

This is often the point where people begin to worry about themselves. They wonder if they’re becoming ungrateful, or unstable, or if something is wrong with them. Especially if their mood dips, or their motivation drops, or they feel more emotionally reactive than they used to. But this shift doesn’t usually come out of nowhere. It tends to emerge when the version of you that was shaped around external expectations no longer fits the person you are becoming.

You Didn’t Get It Wrong

It’s important to say this clearly: the version of you that got you here is not a mistake. It was, in many ways, an intelligent and necessary response to your environment. It helped you navigate relationships, maintain connection, and find your place in the world as it was presented to you. But adapting to an environment and knowing yourself deeply are not always the same thing. And there often comes a point where something in you begins to ask for more alignment. Not more achievement or approval, but more honesty. More congruence between how you live and what you actually feel, want, and value. That’s not failure. That’s development continuing.

Why It Can Feel Unsettling

When this process begins, it can feel less like growth and more like things are coming undone. Part of that is because the roles you’ve relied on for years start to feel less solid. The ways you’ve understood yourself, capable, easy-going, reliable, accommodating, may still be true, but they no longer feel complete. At the same time, what comes next isn’t immediately clear. There can be a sense of standing in between versions of yourself, without a clear sense of who you are becoming.

That in-between space can feel uncomfortable, even frightening. It can bring up questions about your relationships, your work, your direction in life. It can also bring up grief, for the time spent being who you needed to be, and for the recognition or ease that may not have come with it. For some people, the intensity of this experience leads to thoughts about wanting to escape entirely. Not necessarily because they want their life to end, but because the way they have been living no longer feels possible. Seen this way, those thoughts are less about wanting to disappear, and more about wanting something to change at a very deep level.

Moving Toward Something More Your Own

If there is a direction to this process, it’s not about reinventing yourself from scratch. It’s more about gradually noticing what feels true and what doesn’t. That might begin with small, almost quiet recognitions. Realising that something you’ve always gone along with doesn’t actually sit right with you. Noticing that you feel more like yourself in some environments than others. Becoming aware of how often you override your own preferences. These are not dramatic shifts, but they matter. They are signs that your attention is turning inward in a new way.

If you’ve spent years orienting yourself around what’s expected or needed by others, this can feel unfamiliar at first. There may be uncertainty, or even guilt, in paying closer attention to your own experience. But over time, this is where a more stable sense of self begins to form. Not one based purely on roles or expectations, but one that includes your own voice.

You’re Not Losing Yourself

It can feel like that when things start to shift. As if the ground beneath you is less certain than it used to be. But more often, what’s happening is that you are outgrowing a version of yourself that no longer fits the life you’re in now. The discomfort isn’t a sign that you’re broken or that something has gone wrong. It’s a sign that something in you is no longer willing to stay confined to what once worked. That can take time to understand. And it can take time to trust.

But if you find yourself asking “Who am I, really?”, it may help to consider that this question isn’t the beginning of a crisis. It may be the beginning of a more honest relationship with yourself. And while that process can feel uncertain, it’s also where something steadier, and more your own, has the chance to emerge.

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a 15 minute free introduction email me at info@colletteomahony.com

When Intimacy Feels Difficult: Emotional Safety, Pressure, and Connection

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Many people struggle with intimacy in relationships while still deeply wanting closeness and connection. They may love their partner, value the relationship, and long to feel emotionally and physically connected, yet still find intimacy difficult, overwhelming, or emotionally complicated. This can be confusing and painful for both people in the relationship. Often, the person struggling with intimacy begins to wonder if something is wrong with them, while their partner may feel rejected or unsure how to help.

Why Intimacy Can Feel Overwhelming

In many cases, intimacy difficulties are not caused by a lack of love or attraction. Instead, they are connected to emotional safety and the way the nervous system responds to closeness. For people who have experienced emotionally difficult, controlling, or unpredictable relationships earlier in life, intimacy can sometimes activate old emotional patterns beneath conscious awareness. The body may experience closeness not only as connection, but also as vulnerability, expectation, pressure, or loss of control. Even in safe and loving relationships, these older emotional associations can remain active for many years.

Emotional Dysregulation and Relationships

This is closely connected to emotional dysregulation in relationships. When emotions feel overwhelming, the nervous system naturally tries to restore balance and safety. Some people become anxious or hyper-alert, while others emotionally withdraw, shut down, or detach from their feelings. In intimate relationships, this can appear as avoiding closeness, struggling with physical intimacy, becoming emotionally distant, or feeling unable to respond freely when intimacy feels expected rather than chosen. These responses are rarely deliberate. More often, they are protective patterns developed earlier in life when emotional safety felt uncertain or inconsistent. Over time, the mind and body learn to monitor for pressure, criticism, emotional demand, or conflict, even when no conscious threat exists in the present.

The Role of Emotional Safety

These responses are rarely deliberate. More often, they are protective patterns developed earlier in life when emotional safety felt uncertain or inconsistent. Over time, the mind and body learn to monitor for pressure, criticism, emotional demand, or conflict, even when no conscious threat exists in the present. This is one reason emotional connection is often essential before physical intimacy can feel comfortable. Feeling emotionally understood, respected, and free to choose can help the nervous system relax enough for closeness to feel safer and more natural. Without emotional safety, intimacy can begin to feel pressured or performative, even within otherwise caring relationships. Therapy for intimacy issues often involves helping people understand these patterns with greater compassion rather than self-criticism. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?”, the focus gradually shifts toward understanding what the nervous system may be trying to protect against. This shift matters because shame tends to intensify emotional dysregulation, while understanding and self-awareness help create emotional safety.

Rebuilding Trust and Connection

Part of the therapeutic process also involves learning to slow things down. Many people who struggle with intimacy have spent years overriding their own discomfort, disconnecting from bodily signals, or feeling responsible for other people’s emotional needs. Rebuilding trust in oneself often begins with recognising emotional limits, listening to internal responses, and allowing genuine choice within relationships. Over time, intimacy can begin to feel less driven by pressure or expectation and more connected to emotional safety, mutual respect, and authentic connection. Difficulties with intimacy do not mean someone is broken or incapable of closeness. More often, they reflect a nervous system that learned to protect itself carefully in the past. With patience, understanding, and supportive therapeutic work, people can gradually develop relationships that feel safer, calmer, and more emotionally connected.

Collette O’Mahony May 2026

If you would like support exploring intimacy difficulties, emotional dysregulation, or relationship patterns, psychotherapy can provide a safe space to better understand these experiences and develop healthier ways of relating to yourself and others.

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here or email me at info@colletteomahony.com

Finding Your Inner Compass:

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From External to Internal Locus of Evaluation

In my counselling practice, one of the most transformative shifts I witness in clients is the move from an External Locus of Evaluation to an Internal Locus of Evaluation. When we live with an external locus, we are essentially living our lives according to a script written by others. When we begin to develop an internal locus, we start writing our own script. Understanding this transition is essential for anyone seeking deeper authenticity and emotional resilience.

The External Locus: Living for the Audience

Carl Rogers developed this concept to explain how people, through therapy or personal growth, shift from needing external validation to trusting their own internal judgment. An external locus of evaluation occurs when we outsource our self-worth and decision-making to the world around us. It is like trying to navigate a landscape while constantly looking at a mirror held by someone else to see if we are going the right way.

Self-worth fluctuates based on the feedback of others. Praise provides a temporary hit of stability, while criticism feels like a profound threat to your identity. Decisions are often paralysis-inducing, filtered through the lens of “What will they think?” rather than “What do I value?”

You may find yourself morphing your personality, opinions, or behaviours to fit the specific audience you are with, leading to a fragmented sense of self. Because you distrust your own judgment, you rely heavily on authority figures or peers to tell you if you are on the “right” path.

The Internal Locus: Trusting Your Own North Star

Moving toward an internal locus of evaluation is not about becoming cold or indifferent to others; it is about reclaiming your own sovereignty. It is the process of shifting your reference point from the outside world back to your own core values.

Your sense of “rightness” is no longer a public vote; it is an internal alignment. You ask, “Does this feel right for me?”

You can tolerate being misunderstood or disagreed with because your stability is no longer contingent on external consensus. Your identity remains relatively stable across different contexts. You aren’t playing a role; you are simply being yourself. You set limits based on your own needs and capacities, rather than shifting them to accommodate external expectations or fear of rejection.

Understanding the Roots: Why We Adopt an External Locus

Perhaps you are wondering: If an internal locus is more authentic and resilient, why do so many of us start with, and stay stuck in, an external one? The answer is rarely about a lack of character; it is almost always about survival and adaptation.

The Survival Mechanism: Why We Look Outward

From an evolutionary and developmental perspective, our early environment dictates how we learn to orient ourselves. We are social creatures; for a human child, connection with caregivers is not just a preference; it is a biological necessity for survival.

Adaptive Compliance: If you grew up in an environment where your needs were only met when you were “good,” “quiet,” or “compliant,” you learned early on that your worth was contingent on your performance. You had to monitor your caregivers’ expressions and expectations to ensure your own security.

The Cost of Authenticity: In many families, expressing a divergent opinion or asserting a personal boundary was met with withdrawal of affection, ridicule, or punishment. To stay “safe” within that system, you learned to suppress your internal signals and prioritize the expectations of others.

External Anchoring: When caregivers are emotionally inconsistent or preoccupied, a child may struggle to develop a stable sense of self. They turn to external feedback as a way to “check” if they are okay, essentially using others as an external barometer for their own internal safety.

Conditioning Through Life Experiences

Beyond childhood, our environments continue to reinforce an external locus. We are rarely rewarded for being “internally validated”; society, in fact, is often structured to keep us in that external loop.

Educational and Workplace Systems: Many structures are built on hierarchies that prioritize conformity over critical, independent thought. When grades, promotions, and bonuses are tied entirely to how well we adhere to someone else’s rubric, we are being trained to maintain an external focus.

The Echo Chamber of social media: Modern life presents us with a constant, quantified feedback loop. Likes, comments, and views provide an immediate, data-driven “external locus” that is highly addictive. It is easy to start believing that our value is quantifiable, leading to a profound erosion of internal trust.

Moving From Safety to Selfhood

It is important to approach this realisation with profound self-compassion. If you have an external locus, you do not lack individuality; you successfully adapted to a world that demanded your compliance. Your individuality strengthens when the scaffolding of conditioning is dismantled.

The struggle to develop an internal locus is not about fixing a broken part of yourself; it is about realising that the survival tools you needed in your formative years are no longer the tools that serve you as an adult. When you were younger, looking outward was the smartest way to survive. Now, looking inward is the bravest way to thrive.

How the Shift From External to Internal Locus Facilitates Change

This is not a binary switch, but a journey of reclamation. As you practice shifting your locus of evaluation, several profound changes occur:

Reduced Anxiety: You stop carrying the exhausting burden of managing other people’s perceptions.

Increased Agency: When you trust your own judgment, you feel capable of navigating challenges without needing constant external reassurance.

Self-Compassion: You stop the cycle of global self-condemnation. A mistake becomes a data point for learning, rather than evidence of your personal inadequacy.

Deeper Relationships: Paradoxically, by relying less on others for stability, you become more capable of forming genuine, interdependent connections, as you are relating from a place of wholeness rather than neediness.

If you are currently feeling as though you are living for an audience, I invite you to start small. Next time you face a choice, pause. Ask yourself: If I knew that no one would ever know, or if I knew that no one could judge my decision, what would I choose? That small act of inquiry is the first step toward your internal compass.

Collette O’Mahony (Dip.Psy.C) May 2026

Collette O’Mahony is a Psychotherapeutic Counsellor in private practice, working with clients online. She writes regularly on mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a focus on self-discovery, developing self-awareness, and supporting individuals to take meaningful responsibility for their inner lives.

To book a free introduction session click here.