Your Emotions Are Alarms: What Cary's "I'm Married and I'm Lonely" Teaches

4 min readPublished on November 7, 2026

In one therapy session, Cary said through tears: “I’m married and I’m lonely. I have a husband who sleeps next to me, but I wake up feeling lonely.” A little later: “I sleep with someone and I’m lonely.”

What the session shows

Asked what she noticed in her body, Cary answered: “It’s a feeling in my chest, as if I want to explode. And in my stomach, some tension. And then I feel like my heart starts to race.”

In the same session Ian said: “I’m afraid to open my heart because I think I will be hurt.”

The chapter’s reading is that Cary “hides behind an emotion of sadness (secondary emotion) to hide her primary emotion,” the anger of feeling lonely and abandoned. From this the author draws a picture: “I see emotions as alarms that show us that something is going on.”

What an alarm is

“Alarms show us that something important is happening that we should pay attention to.” The chapter tells of a church fire-alarm system that went off many times, always falsely, though “the discomfort and worry were always overwhelming.” Then: “Pain is no different than an alarm.” And: “God is the Creator of our emotions, they are not the result of sin.” Feeling an alarm is not the failure. What deserves attention, and what we bring to God and to the people we love, is what we do with it: our words and our actions. The chapter describes the emotions as “internal alarms.”

Two routes through the brain

The amygdala, the chapter says, “acts as a kind of bodyguard that is continuously alert and scans every experience looking for any sign of danger.” The first route is the short, fast one, which the book calls pre-cognitive. The author tells of a dog that chased him on an early-morning walk, and how fear set off survival actions before he had time to think. The second route is longer, “the path of cognition,” and the chapter says: “This is the process we need to activate to respond instead of just reacting to adverse situations that produce insecurity in our lives.”

Four kinds of alarms

Primary adaptive emotions are “a direct reaction of the amygdala that is usually consistent with the immediate situation.” Primary maladaptive emotions are primary responses that have become dysfunctional, often learned in childhood. Secondary emotions follow a primary one: “Secondary reactive emotions follow a primary response.” This “reaction to the reaction” obscures or transforms the original emotion; for example, Cary “often turns her hurt into anger.”

What the alarms tell you

“They identify problems for you to solve.” “They are a sign of communication in intimate relationships.” And: “When you don’t pay attention to what you feel and what you need, your relationship begins to deteriorate.”

Before you try any exercise: if you are hurt, threatened, controlled or afraid of your partner, skip the shared exercises. Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 (or text START to 88788), and use a safe device your partner cannot see. In immediate danger, call 911.

A practice for the week

The exercise at the end of the chapter says: “Three times a day, write down the last emotion you felt and describe your experience.” The questions include: what name you give the emotion, whether your body felt anything, which thoughts came, what produced it, and “What information is your emotion providing you with?”

Keep reading

Chapter 6 opens its plan with: “In this chapter, we will learn how to pay attention to and act on the emotional alarms sounding in our hearts.” In HEAL. LOVE. CONNECT. each chapter gives a description of a problem, some key concepts to understand it, and practical solutions.

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Dr. Efrain Duany is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT-S) and the author of HEAL. LOVE. CONNECT. (Amor Seguro).

This article is education, not therapy, and results vary. It describes the book’s methods and does not promise any outcome. If you feel your relationship needs support, seek out a licensed therapist.