Polly Hayes  Counselling

My Personal Journey With The Weight of Unspoken Emotions: A Journey Through Loss and Healing 

By reading my lived experience I hope to give you some insight into the personal side of me, maybe it will support your decision to start on your own therapeutic journey.

I grew up in a house where the air was often thick with tension, witnessing domestic violence at a young age I became hyper vigilant to adult emotions, keeping my awareness tuned ready to intervene to try to stop the fighting and keep the fragile peace. This sensitivity to emotions - a gift and a curse - followed me into adulthood. I could sense when people were hurting, even when they smiled through the pain and I always wanted to keep the peace sometimes at the expense of my own wellbeing . I became the one who would listen, who would comfort, who would offer an outstretched hand. In many ways, I became the person who fixed and soothed, because fixing and soothing was what I knew. What l later learned through my own therapy was I was in a freeze and fawning state - sympathetic in Polyvagal terms. My nervous system had not processed the early life experiences and had stayed primed to keep the peace.   

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In my mid-twenties after a short battle with cancer my mum passed away. The loss bought up an ocean of emotions that came in waves - sadness, regret, anger, mixed with joy and remembrance. Our relationship had always been challenging, marked by conflict, misunderstandings, and emotional distance. Even though she wasn’t the constant I had hoped for, the grief of her passing was still profound. In many ways, it felt like the loss of someone who I had never fully understood, and yet, someone who had always been there. With her death, I wasn’t just grieving the loss of a person, but the absence of all the unspoken words, the things we never got to say. 

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What shifted for me was the support I received from a wonderful therapist. She offered me the space I needed to process my grief at my own pace, to untangle and make sense of the emotions. It was here I first experienced somatic approach therapy connecting the dots between how my thoughts and body were connected. I learnt to see that healing isn’t linear. There are moments of immense clarity, and there are moments of deep confusion. What matters most is creating the space to feel everything that comes up without trying to control it or push it away. I was the one who was allowed to feel, to express and to release. It gave me autonomy over my life experiences, compassion for my emotions and the strength to hold my own boundaries. 

Through this process of healing, I realised that my experiences had, in some way, strengthened me. They had sharpened my sensitivity to the unspoken, to the deeper currents beneath the surface in my body. They had deepened my empathy and my understanding of what it means to truly hold space for another person’s emotional journey.

This sensitivity, once a vulnerability, has now become a gift in my work as a therapist. It allows me to sit with clients in their darkest moments without judgment, to hold their pain with care, and to help them find a way through their own grief. I understand what it feels like to feel broken, and that understanding makes me more compassionate in my approach. I’ve learned that the most important thing I can offer isn’t just techniques or answers, but the space to be heard, seen, and understood.

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The reflector work I’ve done on myself has made me a stronger, more compassionate therapist. I’ve learned that soothing isn’t always about fixing others, but about creating a safe, open space where healing can begin. And most importantly, I’ve come to understand that healing begins when we give ourselves the permission to feel, and the courage to process the emotions we often try to bury.