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We’ve all had those days where we show up to an appointment and think, “I have nothing to say.” But in the therapy room, silence isn't just a lack of words, it’s often a protective shield.
While it’s tempting to wait for your therapist to "find" the problem, the most transformative work happens when you, the client, bring the raw material. Here’s why:
Showing up is half the battle but speaking up is where the healing starts.
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 We’ve all seen the ads: “Transform your life in 4 weeks!” “Heal your trauma in 3 sessions!” “The 30-day breakthrough system!”
It sounds efficient. It sounds modern. It also sounds like a lot of bullshit. When we treat mental health like a tech upgrade, we are applying factory logic to a living system. Think about a tree. You can give it the best soil, the right amount of water, and plenty of sunlight, but you cannot "speed up" its growth. You can’t "hack" a sapling into an oak by Friday. If you try to force it to grow faster than its fibers can support, you’ll end up with a brittle, broken plant. Healing follows biological pacing, not a quarterly earnings report. Your nervous system sets the pace, not the treater. These "quick-fix" schemes are built on capitalist predatory logic. They want a high-ticket, front-loaded fee to "fix" a "broken" part of you. They sell you a product, but they don't offer a relationship. Once the four weeks are up, you've used their product, the "expert" moves on to the next customer, whether you're feeling better or not. Psychotherapy doesn't work that way. When I charge a client, I’m not selling you a "fix"; I’m providing a foundation. A weekly rate honors the reality that some weeks are for breakthroughs, and some are just for staying upright in the wind. By opting out of the "4-session transformation" myth, we create a stable, human-scale container where you have the actual time required to grow deep roots. You aren't a project to be optimized; you’re a person to be integrated. And that takes as long as it takes.  Photo courtesy of M. Khalid Hasan. Let’s be clear: releasing files that expose survivors while shielding perpetrators is not accountability. It is institutional betrayal. It is the system doing what it has always done - protecting power while demanding visibility, restraint, and silence from those it has harmed.
For survivors around the world, this latest Epstein file release is not news. It is a re-enactment. Names of victims disclosed. Names of perpetrators concealed. The message is familiar and brutal: you will be identified; they will be protected. This is retraumatizing. Not only for those named, but for survivors everywhere. Trauma does not require proximity. The nervous system doesn't care whether you were involved. Many survivors are feeling rage, despair, grief, numbness, and deep hopelessness that says, nothing ever changes. If that’s you, you are not weak. You are responding normally to an unjust and abnormal reality. We are witnessing narcissistic abuse and dysfunctional family systems. In these systems, truth-tellers are punished, scapegoated, or exposed, while abusers remain insulated by status, money, secrecy, or process. Survivors are made visible without protection, a hallmark of narcissistic dynamics. Accountability is inverted. Harm flows downward. Silence is enforced upward. Sound familiar? Many survivors were raised in families where speaking up made things worse. Where naming abuse meant becoming the problem. Watching this play out on a global stage is not just infuriating, it's destabilizing. It tells the body, once again, that power is untouchable and safety is conditional. Let’s be clear about something else: survivors are not responsible for the crimes committed against them. Not because they were young. Not because they were groomed. Not because they froze, complied, dissociated, stayed, or survived. Shame belongs to the perpetrators and to the systems that continue to protect them. Anger in response to this moment is not pathology. It is clarity. It is the nervous system rejecting a lie. And if you need to step back from the news, do it. That is not avoidance; it is self-protection. If you feel activated, you don't owe the world composure while injustice is dressed up as transparency. Here is the rally point. Say it with me: They do not get to win by breaking our spirits. Survivors are not collateral damage. We are witnesses. We are truth-bearers. We are not ashamed and we are done being quiet for the comfort of systems that failed us. If This News Activated You, Do This Now: Some of us are feeling incredibly hopeless, having suicidal thoughts, feelings of despair, and/or panic. This is a normal response to threat and it's helpful to stay grounded.
You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to protect yourself. And you are allowed to feel everything this brings up without turning it against yourself. We need you here. Grounded. Angry. Alive.  Photo courtesy of Chot Studio. I just finished reading Ultra-Processed People, which explains why modern food leaves us anxious, inflamed, and disconnected from our bodies and one another. Then during a period of doom scrolling one night, I stumbled upon an interview with Jon Steward commenting on the impact of social media and thought how apropos. What we’re consuming daily through social media isn’t conversation, it's ultra-processed speech.
Ultra-processed speech is language engineered for scale, speed, and our immediate attention. It’s flattened into slogans, weaponized into memes, and pumped full of emotional additives: fear, moral superiority, outrage, certainty. Like ultra-processed food, it’s cheap, omnipresent, wildly profitable, and available, and like junk food, it hijacks our nervous systems while pretending to nourish us with legit info. In today’s political climate, this kind of speech thrives. Algorithms don’t reward accuracy or wisdom; they reward escalation and attention. The loudest, angriest, most absolutist voices rise to the top, while nuance is buried. Everything becomes a binary: good vs. evil, us vs. them, agree or get canceled. There’s no room for ambivalence, grief, or honest uncertainty - only allegiance. The result is a population that’s emotionally dysregulated and chronically overstimulated, convinced we’re “informed” while feeling increasingly hopeless and hostile. We’re not talking with one another, we’re consuming pre-chewed ideological products designed to keep us reactive and divided. That’s not civic engagement. That’s political fast food. Whole speech - slow, relational, imperfect - doesn’t go viral. It doesn’t fit neatly into a reel or a tweet. But democracy, like digestion, depends on the ability to tolerate complexity without immediately attacking it. If we want less overwhelm and less hatred, we may need to radically change our media diet. Not everything that’s loud is nutritious. And not everything worth saying can be swallowed in one bite. A lot of people carry deep shame about their habits - what they do repeatedly, automatically, or when they’re overwhelmed. But habit is not the same thing as nature, and confusing the two is one of the fastest ways for shame to take root in a person's psyche.
Human nature refers to our core capacities of self: connection, care, creativity, curiosity, and the drive to survive and belong. Habits, on the other hand, are learned responses shaped by environment, stress, modeling, trauma, culture, and what once helped us get through tough times. Habits are adaptive strategies, not moral verdicts. When someone says, “This is just who I am,” they’re often pointing to a habit that’s been reinforced over time, not their essence. The nervous system loves efficiency and doesn't want to work harder than it has to. If something reduced pain, soothed anxiety, or created safety at one point, the brain will keep reaching for it, even after it stops serving us. That doesn’t make someone broken, it makes them human. Shame collapses this distinction. It tells us our behavior reveals a bad core. And I love it when clients argue this point because it means they're thinking about it and applying it to their life. My stance is that compassion and understanding restore it when we say “Something learned this. Something needed this.” It focuses on the many parts of us and their maladaptive ways of coping. We are products of our habits and environments, but not defined by them. Habits can be interrupted, reshaped, and replaced. Nature doesn’t need fixing. At our core, most of us are not dangerous or defective. We’re tired, conditioned, and trying our best with the tools we've been given. And that’s a very different story. When people doom-scroll or witness terrifying and illegal actions in their community, the nervous system often shifts into threat mode. The amygdala flags danger, the sympathetic nervous system revs up, and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline surge. This prepares the body to fight, flee, or freeze. The problem is that scrolling doesn’t resolve the threat, so the body stays activated even after the phone is put down.
Completing the stress cycle means helping the body discharge that energy so it can return to baseline. This isn’t about “calming down” cognitively or justifying why you feel afraid or stressed, it’s about sending the nervous system a signal of safety through the body. Effective ways to do this may include:
I took a trip last year to visit my mom on the East Coast with the intention of saying goodbye. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2017 and moved into a memory care community mid‑2024. I thought I knew what I was walking into and absolutely did not. I was ill prepared to say the least.
Mom is really good at mimicking comprehension. She nods, responds mostly appropriately, even appears engaged, until she has to reflect back what she’s heard. In person, the tells are more obvious: a shuffling gait when tired, vacant stares, hallucinations and delusions, repetitive obsessions, and confusion. She thinks she just moved into the community and cannot reliably find her room, the toilet, or place the phone back on its receiver. Watching this is real time is brutal and I have no idea how my stepfather managed to take care of her as long as he did. She didn’t recognize me when I walked in. I was "too late." Our history is complicated so part of me was relieved. The next day, she told my stepfather she “spent the afternoon with the nicest lady.” She was talking about me. There was something deeply reassuring in the proof that the sharp edges of our past had faded and what remained was a felt sense of who I am now. She was unable to connect that I was both her daughter and Hillary. My analytical mind was fascinated by her brain’s inability to integrate past and present. I committed to showing up with an open heart - and that decision ushered me straight into grief. I'm learning that Alzheimer’s slowly erodes the patient's ego. In my mom’s case, it dismantled her understanding of us as mother and daughter. And here’s the part I didn’t expect: there was relief in being met without the weight of our history. No roles. No expectations. No old narratives running the show. In the absence of memory, something simpler emerged - connection. As memory fades, the constructs that once defined relationships weaken. This is undoubtedly devastating to someone whose memory is still intact. But in the wreckage, something unexpected can surface. When labels fall away, what sometimes remains is emotional recognition: kindness, warmth, familiarity - unburdened by story. Connection becomes less about being correctly known and more about being genuinely felt. This is where grief and beauty coexist. There is sorrow for what has been lost and for what will never be repaired or restored. And there is beauty in connecting and being seen without the past attached, without accumulated conflict, misunderstanding, or unmet longing. Love, here, doesn’t arrive through recognition. It shows up as being acknowledged in the moment. Like all grief, it doesn't resolve neatly. It doesn’t offer closure through insight or explanation. It asks for witnessing. It requires us to stay present without fixing, reframing, or rushing toward meaning. Grief is often treated as a problem to solve or a process to complete, but some forms demand something else entirely: patience, acceptance, sustained attention, and a willingness to release roles. Grief teaches us how to love without conditions and how to meet people where they are, not where we wish they could be. The beauty of grief is not in the loss itself, but in what it strips away. Defenses and old narratives soften and fall. What remains is humility, compassion, and a kind of grace. There is a Sufi saying that feels especially true here: you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens. Grief breaks us - not all at once, but again and again - and in doing so, it creates space. Grief not only marks an ending, but also becomes an opening. Have you ever walked away from a perfectly ordinary interaction and felt terrible about it? You replay the conversation in your head. Pick apart what and how you said what you said? But nothing actually happened. No one was cruel. No boundary was crossed. And yet you feel like a turd, insecure, and/or mad.
This is what I call hurting your own feelings. Buddhism has a name for it too: the second arrow. The first arrow is the thing that happens, which we have little to no control over. The second arrow is what we tell ourselves about it. It might look like...
The second arrow lands fast and hard, and most of the time, we don’t even notice we're responsible for firing it. Our brains are experts at filling in the blanks. When there’s uncertainty, we look for familiar stories, usually shaped by past experience, old hurts, or fears. The problem isn’t that we tell stories, it’s that we forget that they are stories. They feel like facts, so our bodies react as if they are. And suddenly we’re anxious, ashamed, defensive, or withdrawn - all without new information. If this sounds familiar, there’s nothing wrong with you. It's as human as sneezing. At some point, your nervous system learned that anticipating pain was safer than being surprised by it. That strategy may have been useful at one point, but now it just makes life harder. The work isn’t about never feeling hurt. Pain happens. The work is learning to pause between the first and second arrow with curiosity by asking:
This isn’t about positive thinking or talking yourself out of your feelings. It’s about creating a little space - enough to choose curiosity over indulging your inner critic. You don’t have to stop caring. You don’t have to toughen up. Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do is notice the story forming and kindly say to yourself, I don’t actually know that yet. And maybe - just maybe - put the bow down.  For many, therapy becomes a sophisticated form of procrastination. We call this Passive Processing. The client isn't necessarily lying or trying to be difficult; rather, they have unconsciously substituted talking about a problem for solving it.
When someone is passively processing, the therapy hour acts as a weekly "exorcism" of frustration. They vent about the "same old shit," feel a temporary sense of catharsis, and leave the session feeling lighter. However, that lightness isn't growth, it just releases a pressure valve because the discomfort has been temporarily relieved. Clients no longer feel the necessary friction required to actually change their behavior in their day-to-day lives. Then there are those who soak up everything there is to know about the human psyche, treating therapy and the therapist like a national geographic special. They can recap lessons learned in therapy, share new insights, connect it to their family of origin trauma, and still do nothing to change. This intellectualizing is another defense mechanism devoid of emotion, which also keeps clients stuck. To understand why this happens, let's look at the Stages of Change. Most stagnant clients are stuck in a loop between Contemplation and Preparation, never crossing the bridge into Action:
When a client stays in the Contemplation stage for years, therapy becomes a defensive maneuver. By "being in therapy," they can tell themselves and their loved ones, "I’m working on it!" This protects them from the terrifying vulnerability of actually changing, which might involve ending a relationship, quitting a job, taking accountability for their part in a relationship, or facing a deep-seated fear of failure. Why do clients repeat the same stories? Because familiarity, even when painful, is safer than the unknown. Psychologically, this is a form of Repetition Compulsion. The client reenacts their trauma or frustrations in the safety of the therapy hour. The therapist offers an intervention or practical tool, and the client responds with the "Yes, but..." maneuver. The "Yes, but..." is the ultimate shield. It acknowledges the therapist’s attempt to assist while simultaneously rendering it useless, ensuring that the status quo remains undisturbed. If you're a therapist stuck with a client in a "performative" therapeutic alliance, the most clinical (and kindest) thing you can do is hold up the mirror.
If you're a client and feel stuck, talk to your therapist directly about it. You're feeling the friction that precedes change. Psychotherapy isn't a spectator sport. It's a laboratory where the experiments must eventually be taken out of the lab and into the wild. Without the "Action" phase, therapy isn't a bridge to a new life, it’s just a very expensive and comfortable waiting room.  One of the most common questions I hear, either directly or indirectly, is: “How long is therapy supposed to last?” Behind that question is usually something deeper: Am I doing this right? Shouldn't I be ‘done’ by now? The short answer is: There is no single right way to be in therapy. In fact, there are two very different and equally valid ways to think about it: The medical model and the wellness (or maintenance) model. Understanding the difference can help you feel more assured in your process.
Most of us are familiar with the medical model because it’s how we approach our health concerns. Something hurts. Something isn’t working. You seek professional help to diagnose and treat the problem. In therapy, the medical model may look like:
The wellness (or maintenance) model views therapy less like medicine and more like preventative care, reflection, and growth. In this model, people may:
Most people don’t stay neatly in one model forever. Life doesn’t work that way. You might:
One of the harms of the medical-only view of therapy is the pressure it creates:
When therapy is viewed as a lifelong resource rather than a last resort, something shifts. The therapist becomes a witness to your story across chapters, not just emergencies, and you don’t have to choose one model forever. You have every right to use therapy when you need relief. You have every right to use it when you want growth. You have every right to leave and come back. If therapy has been part of your life for years, that’s not something to explain away. It may simply mean you value tending to your emotional world with the same care you give other parts of your health. And that is a strength. |