215 Why We Resist The Inner Work And How To Make It Feel Less Overwhelming

Often times, clients will see me for an assessment, they'll read their treatment plan and then quietly disappear.  It's like their mind convinces them that this is going to open up a whole world of trouble. Of course your mind does that!  It's standard.  It's doing exactly what it’s designed to do.  Protect you.  It wants to keep things predictable and contained.  So when the invitation to go deeper starts to become a possibility, it makes sense that your mind wants to pull you back.  It believes "this inner work malarky might be too much"  And yet, there’s another part of you which is quieter and deeper but just as important.  It's the part of you that knows an intervention is needed because it wants to release something, it wants to come home to itself.   In this week’s episode, I gently demystify what “doing the inner work” actually looks like in reality and why it doesn’t have to be as intense or overwhelming as you might imagine

Work with me 121:  www.sallygarozzo.com

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Transcript

Sally (00:00)
I think the phrase inner work has become a little bit loaded, if I'm honest. I think the phrase inner work has become a little bit loaded, if I'm honest. It can sound really heavy, especially if it's not your thing or it's not part of your world. It can often feel like something you need to brace yourself for, something that might ask more of you than you have to give. Like once you start, you might not be able to stop. Opening a can of worms, that sort of thing.

And I think because of that, a lot of people just stay on the edge of it, kind of close enough to be aware, close enough to know there's something there, but not quite fully stepping in. Because there's a question underneath all of this, right? What will happen if I really go there? And what's interesting is this whole season of this podcast,

because it feels like there's a question underneath all of this and that is what will really happen if I really go there? what's really in... and what's interesting is...

And what's interesting as a kind of parallel process is this whole season, all these solo episodes of this podcast haven't been planned in, haven't been planned in the way you might've expected. I didn't sit down at the beginning and map out every episode. I didn't decide exactly what I was going to say week by week. It just unfolded based on what's been alive in me, what I've been noticing, what I've been sitting with.

what I've been becoming. And in many ways, this is exactly what the inner work looks like. It's not something that you need to control into existence or something that you necessarily initiate with willpower. It's something that begins to reveal itself as you're willing to stay in relationship with what's there. So rather than this episode being about here's how to do the inner work properly,

I want this to feel more like this is how it actually happens in real life, gently, gradually and often quite differently to how we expect. But before we even get into how this unfolds...

But before we even get into how this unfolds in these often surprising ways, I think it's really important to understand why so many people resist entertaining the idea of inner work, or maybe they don't stay with it when they finally do entertain the idea of doing the inner work. It's very easy to assume that we're avoiding inner work because we're not disciplined enough or that

we don't have it in us to try harder or that we're afraid or that there's something fundamentally wrong with us because we feel avoidant of it. But honestly, that is not what's happening. Most people don't avoid this work because they're lazy or unmotivated or undisciplined. They avoid it because something in them has learned that it's safer not to go there. It's better not to go there at all.

For many people, what sits?

So the first layer of resistance is often a lack of awareness of grief or a denial of grief. For many people what sits underneath... ⁓

So the first layer, for many people what sits underneath everything is grief, which isn't always obvious. Many people believe grief only happens to us when we lose someone, but grief can be experienced at the realization of support that wasn't received. It can be experienced when we realize that the burden that was placed on us was just too much, when we finally understand what we had to adapt around.

We can experience grief at a life that we are living that's unexpected, that we didn't imagine.

But here's the thing, there's an unconscious agreement in all of this and that is not to feel that fully. Because somewhere in the system, there's often a belief.

Because somewhere in the system, in our unconscious patterning, there's often this belief, if I let myself feel this, it might be too much for me. It might never end. It might undo me. It might stop me from functioning. So instead, we suppress it and we just stay above it, functional, capable, holding it all together. When we don't trust the body and our own ability to process emotions naturally,

doing the inner work and experiencing the grief that's in there can feel so overwhelming and it can feel like something we have to stay on top of, we have to control, we have to keep a lid on it. So that's one reason why we often avoid the inner work. The second reason is this belief, I need to be strong. A lot of people move through life with a very subconscious but powerful belief like this.

I need to be strong. And what that often means in reality is don't fall apart, don't feel, don't need anything. This is especially true for people in their family system who became the capable one, the reliable one, the one others could lean on. And so inner work can feel like a massive threat to that identity. Because if you start to feel more

can't be there for everyone else. Who are you? If you derived a certain level of meaning from always being there for others, what happens when you realise that behaviour isn't conducive to your health anymore? And so this is about reforming the identity without those patterns. The third reason why we don't entertain the idea of inner work is this belief

I have to do this alone.

I should be able to handle this myself. And this doesn't come out of nowhere. It often comes from early environments where emotional needs weren't consistently met or there wasn't space for them or the adults around you just didn't have the capacity to regulate themselves. And so your system adapts. It learns, I have to do this by myself. I'm alone in all of this. I can't rely on anyone.

I won't need too much. I won't expect too much from other people. And sometimes this shows up in people who were very attuned as children, very sensitive to other people's moods, very aware of the emotional atmosphere in the room or had to grow up a little bit too quickly because parents were too busy or emotionally unavailable themselves. And what that creates is a kind of self-

reliance that feels like safety. But it also makes it very hard to soften into this kind of work to allow ourselves to feel vulnerable. Again, not your fault, but it's a pattern that prevents us from doing the inner work, from going there. Because it prevents your body metabolizing what it needs to. It makes emotions feel overwhelming.

The fourth reason why we don't entertain the idea of inner work is really a misunderstanding of what inner work actually is. When people hear the word inner work, it doesn't land with neutrality, often gets filtered through these different layers. It becomes this idea, I need to fix myself quickly. I need to stay in control while I do it. I shouldn't feel too much. I need to do this on my own.

It's about fixing, optimising. Which means the very way that they approach inner work actually prevents the work from happening. Because inner work isn't something that responds to pressure tactics at all. Inner work responds to a felt sense of safety, to a sense that there is space for you, a space to be honest with yourself, and also a willingness to feel. So...

It helps to redefine what inner work actually means so that you can approach it with the right attitude, with the right perspective. And that is one of allowance and flow rather than control. So to conclude this little section, inner work.

So to conclude this little section, it's not that people don't want to understand themselves or feel better, but it's that the system they're using to approach it was often designed to avoid feelings and to avoid inner work in the first place. And when you see that, when you recognize it, hopefully it softens a little bit from you. Hopefully it softens a little bit for you. And from that place, we can...

And from that place, we can begin to approach this idea of inner work differently. It's not something that we're aiming to get right. It's something that we're watching unfold as we begin to actually relate to ourselves in a new way. It's inner work. And anything that's inner means we have to go inward into ourselves, relating to ourselves, building and developing

a new relationship with ourselves.

So what I want to offer here is a slightly different way of looking at it. Inner work isn't something that you do to yourself, but it's something that unfolds as you begin to relate to yourself differently. And I know that might sound a bit vague or a bit flippy floppy at first because we're so used to steps, structure, and this idea of just tell me what to do. But this true long lasting inner work

isn't that kind of process. It's much more like you set an intention to understand yourself and then you start paying attention to what naturally begins to come up. And this is where that idea of becoming comes in. If you've been listening to these solo episodes for a while, you'll know that I've created a new membership called Becoming. And I've noticed a parallel process happening

in what becoming actually is and how this podcast has unfolded. So what I've noticed with this podcast is that I didn't decide in advance what every episode would be or what order they would come in or even exactly what I thought about things. Everything just revealed itself in the moment based on what I was noticing, what I was feeling, what I was sitting with, what becoming.

and what was becoming clearer to me week by week. And that's actually how this process of inner work functions internally as well. You don't sit down and go, right, today I'm going to process this specific thing. It doesn't work like that. What happens is something shows up, a reaction to something, a feeling, a moment where something feels off or a situation that lingers in your body.

longer than it used to perhaps and instead of overriding it instead of moving past it or

And instead of overriding it, instead of moving straight past it, like a Formula One racing car, you start to pay attention to it. And this is where I want to introduce something that might feel a bit counterintuitive, but actually becomes very freeing when you understand it. There's a kind of choicelessness to this process.

Not in a passive way, not in a you have no agency way, but in this sense that something emerges into your sphere of awareness and you recognise that it's something significant. There's no choice, you don't have a choice about it. It just emerges, it comes in to your sphere of existence. And it waits there. It waits there for you to bring your awareness to it.

So you decide not to ignore it or override it or push it back down again. Something in you knows and that knowing starts to shape your choices going forward. So from choice less ness is born choice. Something in the unconscious emerges within you and we recognise it because we are becoming someone who pays attention.

That's inner work. So it's less about what should I do and more about what is already showing me something that I'm now willing to stay with. That's a really different starting point because now you're not trying to manufacture insight or perform insight. You're responding to what's already in you. So inner work begins somewhere much more ordinary.

than people expect. It begins with noticing. And I don't mean noticing in a hyper analytical or cognitive way where you're trying to figure everything out. I mean noticing in a much simpler, more somatic way. Noticing things like your general speed, the speed with which you approach life, the speed with which you do things. What happens in your body when something feels off?

how you feel in someone else's home, how you feel in your own home, how you feel in relationship to other people, what it's like when the attention is on you, what it's like when the attention is not on you, your reaction to boundaries that you set or other people set. And this might sound almost too basic, but most people skip this because we've been conditioned to move very quickly into

fixing, explaining, justifying and overriding. So instead of

So instead of noticing, didn't feel good, we go straight to it's fine, it's not a big deal, I'm probably overreacting.

And that gap between what you feel and what you tell yourself is where a lot gets lost. So this first part of the process is really about closing that gap, slowing it all down, letting yourself register what you actually felt, what actually happened in your body, what your immediate response was without rushing to change it or trying to make it better or without turning it into a project either.

And this is where people often get uncomfortable. Because when you start noticing more clearly, you also start seeing patterns more clearly too. You might notice how often you override yourself or how quickly you accommodate other people's needs at the expense of your own. How much you minimize your own reactions or how certain dynamics affect you more than you realized. And there can be a moment of realization where we go, ⁓

I didn't realize it was like that. And that in itself is in a work. It's the beginning of change. And let's think about this. You haven't physically done anything differently. You've just slowed down. You've stopped yourself moving past yourself so quickly. You've paused. You've dropped down into your body. So what now? What do you do with what you are aware of?

because this is usually the point where we start to move away again, but instead, right here in that moment, there's a real juicy invitation to move to the next level. And the next level is just staying. Staying with it, staying with what is without necessarily doing anything. We're so used to moving to the next step. Speed is a habit of the world that we live in. We revert back to old patterns of distraction.

rationalization, minimization, discounting ourselves, being strong, et cetera, et cetera. So you might notice something like, well, that didn't feel good. And almost immediately something else comes in to override it. I'm fine. They didn't mean it. I'm probably overreacting or I'm overthinking. And this happens so quickly that most of the time we don't even realize we've done it.

So this next part of the process is incredibly simple in theory, and it's where things start to shift. It's about staying just for a few seconds longer than you normally would. Just staying with the feeling, the sensation, the reaction. We're not rushing to resolve it. We're not trying to make it go away. We're not turning it into a thought. We're not feeling the feeling and suddenly telling a story about it.

And this is where often people feel really uncomfortable because we're so used to going back up into the mind to tell a story. And of course, this is where anxiety lives in this loop.

But actually we can break anxiety when we just stay with the feeling. When we start to...

But what often happens is we think that when we stay with the feeling, it will get bigger. We won't be able to handle it. What if this doesn't pass? And it's so important to understand.

And this is where it's really, important to understand something. What you're staying with isn't something new. It's something that was already there, but was being moved past. So you're not creating more intensity. You're allowing yourself to become aware of what is already present. And when you stay with something without overriding it, something really natural begins to happen. You start to metabolize it because the system

your system finally has space to process it. So this is where we start to move out of control, suppression, micromanagement and into something more like allowing, noticing, processing. And again, we're not doing this to do it right. And again, this isn't about getting it right. You might stay for a few seconds and then override, then notice that you overrode and then come back.

That's the work, toing and froing around this awareness and habit change. It's not about getting it perfect, but it's about returning to mindfulness. Remember, we're changing habits of a lifetime when we're undoing. And we can't do that without slowing down a lot. And this is why talking about this stuff with someone on a...

And this is why talking about this stuff with someone or in a group can really help because it increases awareness. So noticing awareness, staying with what is trusting your body, more noticing. And then what? I guess this is the question on everyone's lips right now. How do we actually feel what's there when it's really uncomfortable?

How do we stay with discomfort, especially in a world whose systems are designed to take us away from comfort? Well, emotions can be confusing. When you start to feel more, you realise that emotions can be like different coloured clouds of smoke in a jar all mixing together, a kind of internal hurricane of ambivalence. You might feel sadness, frustration, anxiety, guilt.

maybe bit of anger in there as well, all at once. And the instinct for most people at this point is, how do I stop this? How do I calm this down? How do I get back to feeling okay? Which makes complete sense, of course, especially in the world that we live in that seeks to bring us back to operational comfort and functionality as quickly as possible.

And of course, the interesting thing is that most of us were never actually shown how to be with difficult emotions. So when they come up, it can feel like, my God, I need to control this before it gets bigger and before it overwhelms me or eats me alive. But this is where the process starts to shift because self-regulation is not about overriding or shutting down emotion.

It's about allowing the body to process what's already there. And that often looks much more physical than people expect. It might look like rocking backwards and forwards in a chair, letting yourself cry and wail without cutting it off halfway. It might look like discharging the anger in your body by screaming into a towel or punching a pillow.

might look like just taking a breath and just bringing your awareness down into the feeling where the sensation sits. Not analysing it, not explaining it, but letting it be there and move. And this links back to something really important. Emotion isn't just a thought. It's something happening in the body. It's energy. An energy that doesn't move gets blocked. That's not woo, that's just physics.

So if we stay purely in our heads trying to understand, trying to gain clarity, we often don't give the body a chance to actually process the energy that's there. And this is why something like crying can feel so relieving. Not because you figured something out analytically but because the energy is moving through you. We are energetic beings.

energy has to move through us. And it's the same with anger, healthy anger that is allowed.

And it's the same with anger, healthy anger, allowing that energy to be felt in the body without suppressing it can be incredibly regulating, especially for women who have been taught that their righteous anger is vulgar, something to be avoided, something to be suppressed. So feeling and expressing these feelings helps us to complete something that was previously held back.

And then there's something else which people often underestimate. Being witnessed while this is happening. Simply being seen. Facilitated with the energy of, yes, you're right. This feeling that you're feeling is right and it's appropriate. Feel it, I'm here with you. Let it out, let it go.

Because when something is witnessed safely, the nervous system registers, I don't have to do this alone. And that, my friends, is so regulating. Because a lot of what makes emotion overwhelming is not the emotion itself, it's the sense of being alone with it. We want our pain to be seen, recognised. Somehow, this makes it real and valid.

So when there's another person present who can stay grounded for us in the light of this hurricane, our system starts to naturally regulate. It comes back into homeostasis through that witnessing. And this is something I see all the time in my work. People come in thinking, I need to fix this. I need to control this. I need to get rid of this feeling. And what actually creates the shift is much simpler, is much more human.

They feel something deep that they recognise as their humanity and they don't have to do it on their own. They can stay with it. They're allowed to stay with it. Someone is giving them permission to stay with it without being overwhelmed by it. They are taking some of that for them, helping them express that load. And over time your body learns this is something safe actually.

I can move through this. It's not something that I have to avoid any longer. And that changes your whole relationship with your internal world. Because now you're not afraid of what you feel. You know how to be with it. It's a skill you've learned. And once that starts to happen, you're no longer immediately trying to shut things down. You're breaking the cycle.

You're trusting your body. You're building that healthy relationship to yourself. And having a good old emotional clear out becomes as natural as your morning ablutions. It's a non-event.

And when you start to relate to yourself in this way, something begins to change almost invisibly in the background. This isn't a new version of you kind of poster announcement. This is small, almost unnoticeable. You might find yourself pausing slightly before you respond to someone. You might find yourself noticing when something doesn't feel right and not immediately overriding it. You might find yourself

being curious about certain feelings and sensations in your body and allowing it all to be there even briefly. You might notice that boundaries feel easier. You might notice that you feel safer in the discomfort of bigger feelings and emotions. And these moments can feel, and these moments can seem insignificant, almost unnoticeable, but they're not.

Because this is where your life actually starts to reorganize at ground level. This is where those deep habit changes take place. Not through big decisions, but through these small shifts in how you relate to yourself that almost go unnoticed. You might still say yes when you mean no, but now you feel it. You might still override something, but now you notice that you've done it. And that awareness is gold.

Because once you see something, once you feel something, it begins to shape what you're available for. It shapes your new identity gradually, slowly. You start to become someone who listens to yourself a bit more, who overrides a bit less. You start to become someone who trusts yourself. You start to become someone who wants to create your value system.

consciously, intentionally. Maybe you start to become someone who has a great deal of faith in positive outcomes because now you're creating the evidence that positive outcomes exist. And this isn't something, I hate to tell you, that you really ever finish. This isn't a process you complete and move on from. It's something that unfolds alongside your life in conversations with others.

in the supermarket in ordinary boring moments that in and of themselves become less ordinary and this is where life really starts to get more magical actually because the more you stay with yourself in those moments the more coherent things begin to feel because you're no longer moving against yourself in the same way you're moving in alignment with yourself

And as I said at the start, this is exactly how this season of the podcast has unfolded. Not perfectly planned or mapped out in advance, but shaped by what has been real within me, by what's been present, by what's been emerging in real time. And that's also how I believe life can be lived. We just move through life, allowing things to unfold in response to what's actually there.

We're letting clarity reveal itself rather than scratching around searching for it. And if you've been listening to these episodes, maybe you felt that shift happening. Not as something that I've been explicitly teaching you how to do, but as something you've been experiencing alongside me, having your own unique experience. And that's very much the ethos behind my membership becoming.

It's about creating the space to stay with yourself as things unfold, to be witness to that, to understand what's happening in your system without needing

to understand what's happening in your system without needing to rush or control it. And on the 27th of March, 2026, the doors to the wait list will close. And I will invite everyone on that list to join me in a private salon experience style event where we will flesh out how we want this membership, this space to work for everyone.

So if you've been getting some light bulb moments while listening to this and becoming feels like the kind of space that might be nourishing for your soul, please do get yourself on the wait list. Just head on over to sallygorosso.com forward slash becoming. And I'll leave you with this final thought.

You don't need to go searching for the inner work or trying to figure out where to start. It's already showing itself within you right now. Look around you, feel into yourself. What's there? What's emerging? What wants to be known? What is alive in you right now? Maybe noticing is the only thing required to get you started on this journey of deep inner work, which is nothing more.

than simply coming home to yourself and rebuilding that relationship to your natural processes. So that's it for this series. I hope you've enjoyed these solo episodes. Come and find me on Instagram or inside my membership, or maybe even I'll meet you, or maybe I'll even meet you on a connection call for some one-to-one work. And if none of,

And if it's none of those things, I'll see you again in the next podcast, When the Mood Takes Me. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Thank you for listening and I'll see you next time.