Which "racket feeling"
do you reach for?

Does any of this sound like you?

• You feel guilty a lot, even when you've done nothing wrong.
• A wave of anxiety arrives before you even know what about.
• You get irritated quickly, and it covers something softer underneath.
• A low, flat sadness shows up on cue, and stays familiar.
• The feeling comes, you express it — and nothing actually resolves.
• Afterward you think, "why do I always feel this?"

A feeling that shows up automatically and never resolves is often a stand-in — a "racket feeling" — sitting in the seat of the real one.

What's a "racket feeling"?

As children, we quickly learn which feelings get a warm response and which get punished or ignored. The forbidden ones don't disappear — they get swapped for an "allowed" substitute. Richard Erskine and others in TA call that substitute a racket feeling.

Guilt sitting on top of grief. Anxiety on top of anger. Irritation on top of fear. The stand-in is real to feel — but expressing it never settles anything, because it isn't the true thing.

Here's how it actually plays out

A racket feeling loops. You feel it, you act on it, it doesn't resolve, so it comes back. Knowing your usual stand-in is the doorway: once you can name "this is my guilt-instead-of-grief," you can ask what the real feeling underneath actually is — and that one can move.

What this test will show you

• Your top two go-to stand-in feelings
• What real feeling each one tends to cover
• How to reach the thing underneath