PSA: stop rejecting your humanity!
... a memo from the 'mental health crisis'
The dangerous message we're sending when we pathologize our navigational system
Today, I offer a mind-bending point of view: The mental health crisis isn't about people having too many emotions. It's the way we learned to reject the very system designed to keep us alive.
Every day, well-meaning influencers, therapists, coaches, and healers tell us to "release" our emotions. To breathe them away. To tap them out. To let them go. While these approaches are well-intentioned, they preserve a devastating message: There's something wrong with you that needs to be expelled.
For those of us raised to contain our emotional reactions—to be seen and not heard, told there's nothing to cry about, that we're "fine" when we're clearly not—the suggestion that we do away with our emotions reinforces the original constraint. It confirms what we learned as children: these sensations are inappropriate, dangerous, and unwelcome.
The Night Terrors That Taught Me to Hide
As a very young child, I suffered from hallucinations at night—much like night terrors that made sleep nearly impossible. My head filled with terrifying people and scenes that appeared absolutely real. Instead of being comforted, I was told to "sleep" in the room “where these mirages were” and ordered to "settle down."
The message was clear: these emotional reactions are unnecessary. Contain them. Hide them. Fix them.
I wasn't the only one learning these lessons. "Laugh at 7, cry at 11," another family rule, keeping our joy at bay, attending to the comfort of others'.
Many of us learned that emotional reactions are inherently wrong. This led me to feel unsafe in my own head and body—something I unknowingly transmitted to everyone around me, including my children as they grew up.
The Energy We're Rejecting
Here's what we've gotten catastrophically wrong: emotions aren't symptoms of something bad about us. They're part of our energy system. They're how we navigate the world.
Look at the rest of the animal kingdom. When a gazelle escapes a lion, it doesn't develop PTSD. It shakes off the stress energy and continues grazing. Animals don't get stuck in their emotions because they don't judge them. They experience them, use them, and move on.
Humans are the only animals that entertain these energies long enough to get hooked by and judge them. We've taken our natural emotional navigation system and turned it into evidence of our brokenness.
The Survival System We're Calling Pathological
Depression and anxiety aren't diseases. They're symptoms of a person who is tired of hiding and acting like something they're not.
When we mask our humanity—when we pretend our emotional reactions don't exist or shouldn't exist—it literally kills us from the inside out. We're exhausted from rejecting the very system designed to move us through life.
Think about it: when your car's dashboard lights up, do you try to "kill” them? Or do you understand they're letting you know something needs attention?
Our emotions are our dashboard. They're telling us about our environment, our relationships, our needs, our boundaries—ourselves. When we try to cancel them instead of listening to them, we're essentially ripping out our navigational system and wondering why we feel lost.
The Neurobiological Truth About Emotional Energy
Every emotion carries energy and information. Fear alerts us to potential danger. Anger signals boundary violations. Sadness indicates loss that needs processing. Joy and enthusiasm show us what aligns with our authentic self.
When we accept emotions as valuable sources rather than symptoms of dysfunction, everything changes. We stop fighting our humanity and start working with it.
This is where genuine essential oils become powerful allies—not to "release" emotions, but to gain neurobiological momentum. Their cumulative effects help elevate our awareness so we can observe our humanity with the ability to determine how we want to act upon what we're feeling.
The Therapeutic Revolution We Need
What if, instead of helping people release emotions, we helped them develop a relationship with their emotional guidance system?
What if we taught them that their humanity—including all their messy, inconvenient feelings—is a valuable resource rather than something to overcome?
When I work with clients from this perspective, I'm engaging with my whole self rather than trying to manage my humanity while simultaneously supporting someone else's. It's like watching two people wildly run from a tornado (both in survival mode) versus one person helping another know how to safely navigate the storm.
The Message That's Killing Us
Every time we tell someone to release their emotions, we're reinforcing the message that created their distress in the first place: "Your natural responses are wrong. Your humanity is too much. You need to be fixed."
For those of us who heard variations of this message as children—who learned that being seen and not heard was the safest way to exist—therapeutic approaches focused on emotional release can activate protective patterns and inhibit their recovery.
Instead of feeling supported in reclaiming our emotional intelligence, we unknowingly feel confirmed in our belief that we're fundamentally flawed.
Emotions as Navigation, Not Pathology
Here's the paradigm shift that could transform mental health care: emotions aren't the problem. The rejection of emotions is...
These sensations are how our Being communicates through our humanity. They're how our essence navigates physical existence on this planet. When we're taught to suppress, release, or fix them, we're essentially cutting off communication between our Being and our human.
This disconnection is what creates the walking hypocrites discussed in another post—people operating from unconscious patterns because they've lost access to their internal guidance system.
The Cumulative Effect of Acceptance
When we stop trying to be free of emotions and start accepting them as valuable information, something remarkable happens. We develop a "neurobiological momentum"—the capacity to observe and feel our guidance rather than sinking into it and caving to the directives.
This isn't about Being emotional. It's about Being emotionally astute. It's about recognizing that our humanity, including our emotional reactions, is the vehicle through which our Being experiences and navigates life.
What Genuine Healing Looks Like
True healing isn't about managing our humanity better. It's about restoring the connection between our essential and human nature.
When we stop rejecting our humanity and partner with it, we naturally become the observer which opens us to witnessing our emotional reactions without being hijacked by them.
This is the difference between emotionally existing and Living with them. Between fighting our humanity and receiving the gifts it holds.
The Cost of Emotional Rejection
The current mental health crisis isn't happening because people have too many feelings. It's happening because they, like most of us, have been taught to reject the very system designed for our own good—also known as your highest good.
When we mask our humanity—when we deny our emotional guidance system—we create an inner conflict that manifests as anxiety, depression, and a profound sense of disconnection.
We become exhausted from the effort of being something we're not, depleted from hiding and fighting our own nature, lost without access to our internal compass.
The Revolutionary Approach
What if mental health care focused on helping people restore their relationship with their emotions instead of teaching them to manage or release the unwelcomed ones?
What if we understood that helping someone accept their humanity—including their emotional responses—is a step toward genuine healing and wholeness?
What if we recognized that the goal isn't to have fewer emotions, but to bear witness to ourselves that and work with these sophisticated navigational “tools?”
Your Emotions Are Not the Enemy
The energy of emotions isn’t a symptom of brokenness. It’s evidence of your aliveness.
Your emotional reactions aren't pathologies. They're guides to be honored.
Your humanity—messy, inconvenient, and beautifully human—isn't something to transcend. It's something to integrate.
The Message We Really Need
Instead of "release your emotions," what if the message was "tune into your emotional intelligence"?
Instead of "let go of your feelings," what if we said "discover the language of your inner guidance system"?
Instead of treating emotions as the problem, what if we recognized them as the solution—the very system designed to help us navigate life with wisdom, authenticity, and connection to our true self?
The Choice That Changes Everything
You have a choice: continue believing that your emotional reactions are evidence of dysfunction and dis-ease, or realize their value.
You can keep trying to release, manage, and fix your humanity, or you can love the fact that:
emotions are the signs you’ve prayed for.
The mental health crisis will continue as long as we're teaching people to reject the very system designed to lift them from existence and LIVE. But it could transform the moment we start helping ourselves and others become emotionally astute and restore our humanity to its rightful place.
Your emotions aren't the enemy. The rejection of your emotions is.
Your feelings aren't pathology. The denial of your feelings is.
Your humanity isn't something to overcome. It's something to allow as the magnificent navigational system it was always meant to be.
What would change if you stopped trying to release your emotions and tuned into them?