A simple four part process created by Jin Ong to help you move beyond understanding your emotions and actually experience and process them.
You can know why you feel the way you do. You can understand your childhood, recognise your patterns, journal about them, talk about them and become incredibly self aware, yet still find yourself reacting in exactly the same way.
Because understanding an emotion and processing an emotion aren’t necessarily the same thing.
The Release Process® gives you a structure for moving out of your head and into the experience of what you’re actually feeling. It allows you to express what may never have been expressed, experience what wasn’t fully felt and begin processing emotions that may have been suppressed.
It is simple and structured, but what unfolds through the process can be incredibly individual.
Most of us have become very good at understanding ourselves. We know why we’re triggered. We can identify where a pattern came from and explain why an experience affected us. We may understand why our parents behaved the way they did or have reached a place where we believe we’ve forgiven the person involved.
But your mind understanding something doesn’t necessarily mean your emotional experience has moved with it.
You can cognitively understand that someone did the best they could and still feel your body react every time you’re around them. You can know you’re safe and still experience fear. You can know you’re capable and still hold yourself back. You can completely understand a pattern and continue repeating it.
This is one of the reasons I created the Release Process®.
It isn’t another way to analyse what happened. It gives you a structure to actually experience and process what is still there.
Scream Therapy creates an immediate outlet for emotional pressure without requiring you to first identify, explain or analyse everything you're feeling.
I often describe this as your emergency release button. It creates space when your emotional cup feels full and can be used as part of the Release Process® or as a tool in its own right.
The One-Way Conversation creates space for the things you didn't say, the emotions you didn't express, the needs that weren't met and the words you swallowed. Instead of waiting for another person to understand, apologise or validate what happened, you give yourself permission to express what was there. This is where you begin taking responsibility for your own emotional experience rather than requiring somebody else to change before you can move forward.
The Two-Way Conversation introduces another perspective and moves the process beyond expression into understanding, compassion and receiving. This isn't about excusing what happened or pretending somebody behaved differently. It's about creating the opportunity for you to hear, experience and receive something that may have been missing in the original moment. This is also where I often see how difficult it can be for someone to receive what they say they need. That information becomes incredibly valuable, because the same patterns can be playing out in their life outside of the release.
The Inner-Child or Younger-Self Conversation brings the focus back to you. You meet the version of yourself who experienced the event with the wisdom, support and perspective you have now.
Your younger self doesn't necessarily mean you at five years old. It could be you at fifteen, thirty five, last year or last Tuesday. What matters is that you are able to reconnect with the version of yourself who moved through the experience and offer what may have been missing at the time.
The purpose isn't to keep returning to the past. It's to process what happened so you can move differently in the present.
Together, these four parts form the basic structure of the Release Process®. But knowing the structure isn't the same as knowing how to use it.
I often compare emotional processing to riding a horse.
You can read every book about riding. You can watch hundreds of videos and learn about position, pressure, timing, feel and communication. You can even take an online course. But eventually, you have to get on the horse.
There is also an enormous difference between getting on a horse alone and having an experienced horseperson beside you who can see what you can’t.
The Release Process® is similar.
The structure itself is simple, but experiencing it is different. As humans, we are incredibly good at bypassing without even realising we’re doing it. We change a word, skip the part we don’t like, stay safely in our heads, rush to forgiveness or give the answer we think we’re supposed to give. We can unconsciously steer ourselves away from the very place the process is trying to take us.
Often, you don’t know you’re doing it.
This is why I am such an advocate for learning emotional processing with support. Not because you’re incapable of doing the work yourself, but because another person can often see the place you’re avoiding long before you can.
I also describe the Release Process® as being a little like a scone recipe. A basic scone only needs a handful of ingredients, but anyone who has actually made scones knows that having the ingredients doesn’t guarantee the result. How you combine them matters.
Temperature matters. Timing matters. How much you handle the dough matters. Experience matters.
The four parts of the Release Process® give us the basic recipe. From that structure, countless variations can unfold depending on the person, the experience and what presents during the process.
It can be adapted for experiences involving other people, your younger self, your relationship with yourself, parts of your body, organs that aren’t functioning the way you want them to, parts of the body that are no longer physically there, foods, medication, inanimate objects, animals, grief and loss.
Although people often arrive at emotional processing because of a negative or challenging experience, the process can also be used around positive experiences. Emotional capacity isn’t only about your ability to hold what is difficult. It also influences your ability to experience and receive more of what you desire.
This is why the Release Process® is much bigger than four steps on a page.
One of the most important parts of my work happens as a result of using the Release Process®.
You may begin processing because somebody triggered you, a pattern keeps repeating, an experience from years ago still creates a reaction, you’re navigating a physical challenge, your relationships aren’t where you want them to be, or you know what you desire but can’t understand why you keep getting in your own way.
You begin with the emotional experience, but through processing, incredible insights and truths can surface. You may suddenly understand something about yourself, your relationships, your behaviour or the way you’re leading your life that you simply couldn’t see before.
This is what I call Deciphering the Message.
The Release Process® isn’t simply about feeling better in the moment and then returning to exactly the same patterns. The message allows you to become curious about what the experience is actually showing you.
Sometimes the message is about what needs to change. It may reveal something you haven’t been willing to see, something you need but aren’t asking for, an area where you’re struggling to receive, or a place where you’re waiting for somebody else to change before you’re willing to lead yourself forward.
It may reveal the gap between what you say you desire and how you’re actually behaving.
This is often where the work becomes much bigger than the emotion or trigger you started with.
This is one of the things I find most fascinating when I facilitate or see someone’s Release Process®.
I can often hear where someone struggles to ask for what they need or where they won’t allow themselves to receive it. I notice where they minimise themselves, protect another person at their own expense, stay in blame, bypass what they’re feeling or refuse to say what they really want. The process can reveal where they don’t trust themselves or where they already know what needs to change but aren’t willing to act on it yet.
These patterns rarely exist only inside the release.
The same patterns can be playing out in their relationships, health, communication, business, leadership, money, boundaries and their ability to receive what they desire.
This is why my work has evolved far beyond simply releasing emotions.
The way you engage with your emotions can reveal the way you engage with your life.
The Release Process® becomes a place to practise things that extend far beyond emotional work.
Through the process, you practise expressing what you actually feel, identifying what you need, asking for it and allowing yourself to receive. You experience what it is like to listen, communicate, take responsibility, offer yourself support and access compassion without abandoning yourself in the process.
Then you take those skills into your life.
You may become clearer in conversations and more comfortable asking for what you need. You begin noticing your reactions and patterns sooner, recognise when something doesn’t feel right and become less reliant on other people magically knowing what you want. You develop trust in your ability to experience difficult emotions rather than needing to avoid them.
And as your emotional capacity expands, it isn’t only the difficult things you become more able to hold.
You create capacity for more love, connection, visibility, leadership, success, joy and freedom.
This is where emotional processing becomes something much bigger than emotional work.
It changes how you show up in your life.
Two people can work with the same structure and have completely different experiences. One release might feel enormous while another may take only a few minutes. Sometimes there is a lot of emotion. Sometimes there is resistance. Sometimes an unexpected memory surfaces. Sometimes there is an incredibly clear message, and sometimes you simply feel complete.
The goal isn’t to force yourself into your deepest memories or spend your life endlessly searching for something else to heal.
It’s about developing your ability to recognise what is present, experience it, process it and move forward.
With practice, something that initially feels unfamiliar can become a tool you know how to access in everyday life. You may use it after a challenging conversation, when a trigger appears or when you simply recognise that emotional pressure is beginning to build.
Not so you can spend your life endlessly processing.
So you don’t have to spend your life carrying everything.
If you want to understand the philosophy behind my work and explore the Release Process® in your own time, begin with Healing Beyond the Diagnosis.
The book takes you through the foundations that sit underneath the process, including why emotions can remain unprocessed, how you engage with emotional work and why deciphering the message matters, before introducing you to the Release Process® itself.
If you want to move beyond reading and begin experiencing the work, The Gateway is an accessible entry into The Art of Listening to Your Body.
It gives you the opportunity to understand and most importantly feel into the foundations of my work, begin experiencing emotional processing and move beyond simply knowing that your emotions matter into understanding what to actually do with them.
If you’re ready to learn the Release Process® with live guidance and support, RELEASE is my signature program that comes with an integration period + six weeks live support.
This is where the nuances become visible, the bypasses can be picked up and you’re supported through the places you may not be able to see yourself.
It’s also where the Release Process® begins to move beyond something you “do” and becomes something you know how to integrate into the way you communicate, respond, lead and live.
You may already understand yourself incredibly well.
The question is whether everything you’ve understood has actually changed the way you feel, respond and live.
The Release Process® isn’t another theory to collect. It’s something to experience.
Just like riding a horse, there comes a point where reading about it, understanding it and watching someone else do it can only take you so far.
Eventually, you have to get on.