I spoke to someone this week who was braced for tears, a few big ticket items were happening at the same time. She could feel the emotional storm right under her ribs, the kind that arrives when someone she loves says goodbye maybe never to be seen again at the same time as the anniversary of a family members passing. Normally that goodbye undoes her for days. When I called to checking, executive a puddle of tears, she said she feels tears inside but nothing came. Just the storm insider her, circling, with nowhere to land or release.

It made me look at her differently. Not as someone who was fine because if you're not crying then hey, you must be ok. But, as someone who has spent a lifetime being the one who seems to cope, who seems to manage, who never quite lets anyone underneath the surface, least of all a counsellor. Somewhere back along the way, her mind learned that holding it together was safer than letting it out. And it has been running that program ever since, quietly, automatically, without her ever agreeing to it.

The same week, I overheard someone talking through a decision that genuinely had nothing riding on it. No deadline. No one watching. No real cost either way. And still, every few minutes: ‘it’s just so hard.’ Not because it was. Because hard was the groove her mind already knew how to fall into.

Two different women. Two completely different situations. Running the exact same mechanism underneath.  An unconscious bias.

Your brain is not built to find the truth of a moment. It’s built for efficiency. Every time you think, feel, or react a certain way, the pathway for that response gets a little stronger, a little faster, a little more automatic. Neuroscience calls this use-dependent wiring: neurons that fire together, wire together. It doesn’t ask whether the pattern is serving you. It just asks whether the pattern is familiar. Familiar wins, every time, unless something interrupts it on purpose.

Which means the woman who can’t cry isn’t broken, (she is holding trauma though) and the woman who collapses into ‘it’s too hard’ over minor things, isn’t weak or dramatic or somehow less capable than the people around her who seem to move through life lighter. Not laziness. Not weakness. Not evidence that something is "wrong" with her. Just a mind doing exactly what minds are built to do: repeat whatever is fastest, not whatever is truest.

And it never stays contained to the one moment you notice it in. The bias that decides decisions are ‘too hard’ is the same bias that decides asking for help is 'too exposing', that being fully seen is too risky, that wanting something bigger is too dangerous to admit out loud. It shows up in what you’ll let yourself want, who you’ll let yourself be honest with, whether you reach for support or quietly manage alone one more time.

So here’s a small practice, if you want one.

Next time something lands as instantly, automatically hard, pause before you agree with it.

Ask yourself:

is this actually hard, or is this simply the shape my mind already knows how to make? And if you’re the one holding a storm that can’t find its way out, ask something gentler: what did I learn, a long time ago, about what happens when this gets seen? What happens if stop avoiding or denying and I am instead deeply honest with myself?

This is the quiet work underneath everything I do. Not forcing positivity over the top of a hard pattern, but tracing where the grooves were actually laid down, and clearing enough of the old wiring that a different default finally gets the chance to run.

That’s the heart of the Spiral Process, ten sessions built for exactly this kind of unwinding. If some part of you recognised itself in either woman above, you’re welcome to come and find out what’s actually running underneath your own automatic ‘hard.’

You can read more about the Spiral Process here: https://www.roslynloxton.com.au/thespiralprocess