The Question I Didn’t Answer

A supervisee has been asking me a question for months.

“How has your work with primary emotions changed?”

Each time he asked, I answered partially. I spoke about cultural conditioning. About distance. About survival states.

I implied that nothing, fundamentally, had changed.

But I didn’t speak plainly. It took him getting frustrated with me to see that.

I wasn’t confused at work. I’m in the zone in the room. I have a clear vision of what’s happening and what I’m doing.

Primary emotions are important—precious to find and support.

What I didn’t fully see was that something in me was still organizing around belonging.

I was trained deeply in Emotionally Focused Therapy. I lived inside that map for years. I taught it. I trusted it.

It shaped how I saw couples, how I understood conflict, and how I listened for longing beneath protest.

It also gave me community.

When a model forms you professionally, it does more than offer technique. It offers belonging. Language. A shared way of seeing the world.

No one excommunicated me. No one pressured me to stay loyal. In fact, much of the fear was old and familiar—the same fear many of my clients carry.

If I diverge, will I still belong? If I say this differently, will I be misunderstood? If I move beyond the model, will I be seen as ungrateful?

None of this was conscious. It lived below language.

When my supervisee kept pressing, I didn’t know I was avoiding the question.

My hesitation was relational.

It has taken years to metabolize a shift that had already happened in my body. My work has changed—gradually, over time.

It unfolded as I explored other modalities—IFS, somatic work with the autonomic nervous system, psychedelic-assisted therapy—and as I went further into my own nervous system.

I wrote more about this process of integration in Better Together: Integrating EFT, IFS, and PSIP, where I reflect on how different therapeutic frameworks can deepen rather than replace one another.

It deepened through the privilege of working intensively with couples, not just in fifty-minute hours but in extended, immersive stretches where patterns and positions have nowhere to hide.

And perhaps importantly, I never formalized my teaching role within the model. Had I stepped into that position, I suspect my allegiance to the map might have tightened.

Instead, I remained in conversation with it. I could love it without being contained by it.

But loving something and evolving beyond its edges are not always easy to hold together. There is a subtle fear that evolution equals rejection.

Evolution doesn’t require rejection. It requires integration.

I’ve written elsewhere about how change often depends less on effort and more on the conditions surrounding us in Change Requires New Conditions.

Over time, I began to notice that what I track first in the room is no longer exactly what I was trained to track. My sequencing has shifted. My map has widened.

I’ve known this for a while.

What took longer was the courage to articulate it plainly. Because naming an evolution risks being misunderstood.

And for many of us—therapists included—the fear of not belonging runs deep.

It wasn’t the model I was protecting. It was my place inside it.

This month, I’m naming it.

Next month, I’ll try to describe how my map has expanded. Not in opposition to what shaped me, but in gratitude—and honesty.

Photo by Pavel Martysiuk on Unsplash