Imagine a little kid asking you for candy.
They ask once—you ignore them.
They ask again—you ignore them again.
If they’re anything like my kids, they don’t just stop. They get louder. They start jumping, pulling on your arms, wrapping themselves around your legs, crying, maybe even screaming. The more you ignore them, the louder—and sometimes more intense—their behavior becomes.
Now think about stress.
It’s Monday. Everything is piling up.
I forgot to send that email. Do I need to call the plumber? What about that upcoming work conference? I should have worked out this morning. I’m worried about my daughter—her grades, her friends.
These thoughts don’t land and resolve. They swirl—like flies buzzing around your head that never quite go away.
So what do we do?
Most of us try to avoid them.
My daughter is graduating soon and everything is going to change…
Oh wait—look at these cute shoes from Target.
I’m stressed about this court case with my ex…
Should I buy tickets to that band coming to Utah?
And listen—these things aren’t bad. I’m fully supportive of cute shoes and good concerts. But what they don’t do is quiet the internal toddler.
Because the more we avoid stress, the louder and more demanding it becomes.
The Power of EMDR
When I explain EMDR to clients, I often use this analogy:
EMDR is choosing to go back into painful memories and desensitize them. And yes, on the surface, that sounds terrible. Why would anyone willingly walk back into something that overwhelmed their nervous system?
Because it’s like a sliver.
If you leave a sliver in your foot, it doesn’t just go away. It swells. It festers. It becomes more painful and can even spread into something bigger. The only way through it is to go back in and remove it—even though that part hurts more in the moment.
Stress works the same way.
Avoidance doesn’t shrink it. It amplifies it.
During my internship, I was introduced to Rumi’s poem The Guest House. The idea is simple but powerful: being human is like living in a house where different guests come and go. Some are welcome—joy, excitement. Others—shame, sadness, anger—are not.
But the invitation is the same: greet them all at the door.
“The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.”
It’s a beautiful idea. And also incredibly hard to live.
Getting Curious About Stress
I once heard about a therapist with a terrible toothache. He told himself, I help people sit with pain all day—I can do this. He tried to be present with it.
Within 20 minutes, he had called the dentist for an emergency appointment.
It’s easy to talk about being with pain. Experiencing it—when your body feels lit up and on fire—is something else entirely.
This isn’t about doing it perfectly.
It’s about practice.
Because when we’re in pain, most of us will instinctively kick, resist, distract—like that same child demanding candy.
But what if, instead, we got curious?
What if we knelt down next to that child and said, calmly,
“I know you really want that candy right now. Let’s go home, get some lunch, and then we’ll figure it out together.”
Something shifts in that moment.
The intensity softens.
The same is true internally.
When we stop fighting the feeling—when we turn toward it instead of away—it begins to lose its grip.
Just like the sliver that hurts most when you remove it…
but then, eventually, stops hurting at all.
And this is the work.
Not avoiding. Not numbing. Not pretending it’s not there.
But having a place—and a person—where you can actually turn toward it, safely.
Because doing that alone is hard. Really hard.
And sometimes the first step isn’t even processing the pain…
it’s just finding someone who can sit with you in it.
