Are you feeling emotionally stuck? Here’s how to get past it (w/ Yowei Shaw)

Yowei Shaw describes her approach as emotional investigative journalism, applying reporting skills to personal feelings rather than external events. On her podcast Proxy, she pairs people facing specific emotional puzzles with strangers who have lived through comparable situations, aiming to surface context, recognition, and new angles without turning the exchange into therapy or direct confrontation with the original people involved.

Investigating Emotions Through Others

Shaw treats feelings as a legitimate subject for inquiry. She gathers input from psychological and sociological research, practitioners, and most crucially, individuals who have navigated the same terrain. The process begins with a detailed account of the guest’s situation, then moves outward to locate a proxy whose experience aligns closely enough to allow genuine exchange. This method rests on the observation that emotional stories often shape behavior more than factual accounts alone, and that hearing a parallel story can loosen rigid self-interpretations without requiring the listener to defend or attack anyone directly involved.

How Proxy Conversations Create Movement