What Is a Significant Emotional Event?
(And What It Means When You're In One)
In 2018, my world broke open. My Mum died. And everything I thought was important stopped mattering.
I’d spent 20 years helping people navigate moments like this. CEOs who kept showing up, kept delivering, kept being the capable one, while something inside quietly stopped matching the life on the outside. Clinicians who’d spent decades caring for everyone but themselves. Business owners who had built everything they were supposed to want and felt nothing when they got there. I knew this work inside out.
Being inside it myself? Completely different.
That’s the thing about a Significant Emotional Event. It doesn’t care how capable you are. How much you know. How together you look from the outside. It strips away the way you’ve been living and forces a question you can’t ignore.
What actually matters to me now?
What is a Significant Emotional Event?
Dr Morris Massey, a scholar in values development, defines a Significant Emotional Event as:
“An experience that is so mentally arresting that it becomes a catalyst for you to consider, examine, and possibly change your initial values or value system.”
In simpler terms. Something happens that throws everything you’ve been living by into the air.
All those unconscious beliefs about what’s important get questioned. And you can’t go back to living the way you were living before.
How Significant Emotional Events Happen
In over 20 years of this work, the same question comes up again and again:
Why am I living like this? Why do I keep doing the thing that’s exhausting me?
The answer is almost always the same. You were taught to.
According to Dr Massey’s research on values development, our values are formed during three major periods:
The Imprint Period (0-7 years old)
We absorb everything around us and accept much of it as true. Especially from our parents.
- If Mum always put everyone first → we learn resting is selfish.
If Dad stayed in bad relationships → we learn walking away makes you bad.
If Gran said “don’t make a fuss” → we learn feelings are too much.
The Modelling Period (8-12 years old)
We watch the people around us and copy what we see as blueprints for how life works.
- If Dad was praised for overworking → we learn work = worth.
- If Mum stayed loyal to failing friends → we learn loyalty = staying at all costs.
- If teachers praised helpfulness → we learn your value = being useful.
The Socialisation Period (13-21 years old)
Culture, society, peers, and media reinforce what’s “acceptable” and what’s not.
- If friends were praised for busyness → we learn slow down = fall behind.
- If everyone performed success → we learn not achieving = failing.
- If the message was “work hard, play hard” → we learn rest must be earned.
By the time you’re an adult, you’re living by rules you never chose. You absorbed them. Repeated them. Lived by them.
Until a Significant Emotional Event happens.
And suddenly, those rules don’t work anymore.
Examples of Significant Emotional Events
Significant Emotional Events can include:
The death of a loved one. Divorce or relationship ending. Redundancy or career loss. A health scare or diagnosis. A child leaving home. Family estrangement. Burnout.
And sometimes it’s not a single event at all. Sometimes nothing dramatic happens. You just wake up one day and know, that the life you’re living no longer fits. That you can’t keep going the way you’ve been going.
That’s a Significant Emotional Event too.
The event itself varies. But what’s consistent is, it disrupts your entire system. Emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually.
And it forces you to ask: what actually matters to me?
This is what I help people navigate in my 7-day guided programme
My Significant Emotional Event
My Mum’s last words to me were, “Go and enjoy yourself, and keep improving yourself.”
Twenty-four hours later, she was gone.
She’d been in hospital for a while, slowly deteriorating. I was supposed to go to London for a development programme that week, but I’d already decided I wouldn’t. How could I leave when she was like this?
That morning I went in to tell her.
But she surprised me. She looked brighter. Eyes clear. Voice stronger than it had been in days. She even ate some of the soup my husband had made. We had a proper laugh. And for a few moments, it felt like I had my Mum back.
Then she told me to go.
She knew. She knew exactly what was coming. And with every ounce of energy she had left, she gathered herself up and gave me the one thing I’d never been able to give myself.
Permission.
I took it. I went.
The next day, in the middle of the programme, the receptionist came into the room.
“Your husband’s waiting in reception.”
I didn’t need her to say anything else. I felt it in my body. I phoned my Auntie. She said the words I was afraid to hear. “You need to come home. Now.”
We got in the car.
Drove.
And somewhere along that grey stretch of motorway, two birds appeared in the sky.
Flying side by side.
My whole body reacted. Goosebumps everywhere. An ache in my chest. A knowing that lived somewhere deeper than thought.
Then the phone rang.
She’d gone.
What Happened Next
Three years earlier, when Dad died, I did what I’d always done. I kept going. Organised everything. Ticked the boxes. Held it together. I did what was expected of me.
After Mum died, I did the same thing at first. Took charge. Organised the funeral like a project manager. Made the calls. Filled the forms. Cleared the house.
I knew how to do this part. The doing part. I’d always known how to do the doing part.
But when the funeral was over and the paperwork was done, I walked into my office.
Stopped.
No energy. No pull. No fire. Just stillness.
My Mum used to call me a diva when I said “If I don’t feel the energy, I don’t do it.” She valued practicality. Getting on with things. She didn’t understand why I’d wait for “energy.”
But standing in that quiet room, I felt her there. Not in some mystical way. Just in the kind of knowing that lives deep in your body. As if she was finally saying, “Now I understand. Now I get what you meant.”
The office was empty because I was empty.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t fight that.
I didn’t fill the silence with work or noise or movement. I let it hit me full force. I felt the truth of my own life. And I didn’t move. I didn’t escape.
I just listened.
I made a choice I’d never made before. I stepped away from my business for two months. Didn’t log on. Didn’t send my weekly email. Cleared my diary completely.
It cost me financially.
But I chose me anyway.
Some people said I was “lucky” I was running my own business. That it gave me the freedom to take time out to grieve.
It’s got nothing to do with luck. I was doing what was necessary.
My Gran used to say: “you can’t be a great mum, wife, daughter, friend, or boss if you’re not a great you.” I’d heard it for years. Standing in that empty office, I remembered what she meant. The business wouldn’t fall apart if I took time for myself. But I might.
Because Mum had given me permission with her last words. Permission to question what I’d been taught mattered. Permission to stop conforming. Permission to be real.
What Significant Emotional Events Actually Do
Dr Massey’s research shows, unless a Significant Emotional Event occurs, most people live their entire lives by the values they absorbed in childhood. They never question them. They never examine them. They just live by them.
It asks: Do I still want to live this way? Is this still what matters? Can I keep doing this?
The answer is often: No. Not anymore.
And that’s terrifying. Because you don’t know who you are without those patterns.
But now you can see them. Now you can choose.
If You're Experiencing a Significant Emotional Event Right Now
You might have come to this article because something happened. Or maybe nothing dramatic happened at all. You just can’t keep living like this. You’re tired. Or numb. Or restless. Or quietly questioning everything.
But here’s what over 20 years experience of sitting with people in this moment tells me.
You’re not broken. You’re at a turning point.
Your whole system is telling you the way you’ve been living isn’t sustainable anymore.
And you get to choose what matters now. Not what you were taught should matter. Not what you’ve always believed. But what’s actually true for you in this season of your life.
Want to see what this looks like lived? I’ve written about my two more of my Significant Emotional Events, and what each one taught me about the patterns I’d been living by without questioning them. Read it here
What Comes Next
Understanding Significant Emotional Events is one thing. Navigating them is another.
If you’re experiencing a Significant Emotional Event right now, I invite you to join me for a 7 day guided programme.
When Everything Changes: Choose What Matters
Each day arrives in your inbox with a story, a reflection, and a practice. No overwhelm. Just one question at a time, one truth at a time, one choice at a time.
That’s it. That’s enough.
Remember
My Mum’s last words were “go and enjoy yourself, and keep improving yourself.”
She didn’t say fix yourself. Figure yourself out. Have it all sorted.
Just go. Enjoy. Keep improving.
That’s enough. That’s always been enough.
The choice is yours.
Andrea Goodridge has worked with people navigating significant moments for over 20 years – across three continents, in boardrooms, in businesses, and in the quiet spaces in between. She’s Northern, direct, and warm. She’ll catch you hiding. And she’ll give you permission to choose differently.
If you want ongoing insights and reflections, join me in Shine Softly – weekly emails on authenticity, values, and choosing what actually matters.
© Content copyright owned by “Ad Florem by Andrea Goodridge”
Let me know if you’d like to use or reference this article. I’m always excited to collaborate and appreciate you asking.
Want to share this post? Please do with my blessing and link back here to adflorem.com/blog
Very nice 👌.
Thankyou so much – so pleased you liked it 🙂
Thanks for sharing – it’s so true, these type of significant emotional events really do catch us off guard, and shake us to the core.
SO HELPFUL…….🙂❤️🌟THANKS
You’re more than welcome. When we stop to notice and tap into our inner self, that’s when the real work starts.
That’s so true, and why we need to take time out to process