What Does 'Processing' Mean?

We’re often encouraged to “process” our feelings, and to seek help if we can’t do it alone. But what does processing actually involve?

More Than Just Understanding
Processing is sometimes thought of as understanding. That makes sense when investigating a policy failure or a broken system: gather the facts, fit them together, draw a conclusion.
But emotional experiences don’t work that way. When you’re left feeling confused, unsettled or “not yourself,” logic alone rarely helps. Something more is needed.

The Warehouse of Memory
Neuroscience suggests that ordinary events become memories we store easily, ready to use when needed. Opening your front door to the smell of good food can remind you that you can relax, while the skill of brushing your teeth doesn't interrupt your ability to drive.

But unusual or difficult events don’t slot in so neatly. Imagine a warehouse carousel:

        Regular boxes → ordinary memories → stack easily and stay stable.
​         Irregular boxes → fragile or unusual experiences → take more effort to store.
        If too many arrive at once, they bash into each other, spill, or circle endlessly. That's what it feels like when 
        experiences remain unprocessed: intrusive, unstable, overwhelming, difficult to put down.

What We’ve Lost
Across cultures, rituals once helped to contain life’s irregular boxes. Bereavement, birth, coming of age, accidents . . . each was marked by shared practices that gave shape and meaning to experience. Many of those rituals came with an unspoken cost, and in the (often proper) rejection of those costs we also rejected the purpose of rituals, reducing them to empty financial outlay and performances.  Without meaningful symbolic events, we're left unsure how to respond to events, with fewer containers for memory and fewer opportunities to process unusual experiences.

What Processing Involves
Processing isn’t limited to extreme or traumatic events. Everyday strains, sometimes genuinely pleasant events, can create their own backlog.

Processing can look like:
     Taking time to reflect on events.
     Talking it through to find language that fits.
     Becoming curious about how it might connect to other experiences.
     Expressing it through writing, painting, etc

Processing is a way of understanding events so that they can be understood more deeply and carried more lightly.

Where Psychotherapy Helps
An inquiry gathers evidence but does not attend to its visceral impact. Psychotherapy does both.

Psychotherapy offers a space where events can be spoken about and remembered with care, feelings can be expressed and symbolised, and where meaning can begin to form. It is not about “getting over” events or returning to a pristine, untouched version of yourself. That is neither possible nor desirable.

Instead, psychotherapy helps you make deeper sense of what has happened. It allows you to create containers that fit more comfortably, so that memories no longer rattle around or circle endlessly.

The Work of Growth
Processing isn’t a quick fix. It takes time. But when experiences are attended to in psychotherapy - without judgement or blame, with careful attention - they can inform new choices, different boundaries, and sometimes altered opinions.
They stop destabilising the whole system and instead become part of who you are, not as burdens to be carried but as sources of perspective.
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Processing, in this sense, is not simply repair. It is the slow work of growth, the making of wisdom. 


If This Speaks to You
If you recognise something of your own experience in this, psychotherapy can provide a steady place to begin working with it. Together we can begin to make sense of what truly feels unsettled, so that it can be processed, integrated and carried with greater ease.