As a therapist, I spend my days encouraging people to ask for help, to lean on their communities, to stop shouldering everything alone. I can cite the research. I know all the reasons why asking for help is healthy, necessary, and deeply human.

Content Warning: This post discusses suicide and suicidal ideation. If you’re struggling right now there are people who want to help: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text, 24/7). Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741. Trevor Project for LGBTQ+ youth: 1-866-488-7386.

I hit 100,000 followers last week, and it didn’t feel the way you might expect.

After seven years of struggling to come up with unique ideas, to post consistently and on time, to collaborate and educate and entertain, and admiring people who had accounts with large dedicated followings... after I finally hit my milestone, I didn’t feel overwhelming joy. I didn’t cry happy tears. If I’m being completely honest with you, it felt a little hollow.

Happy Halloween. Choose your horror: dying alone or getting walked all over.

Door #1: You have no friends.

Door #2: You can’t say no.

Picture this: It's 2018, and I'm one of the few psychologists brave (or foolish) enough to be on Instagram. Most of my colleagues are still treating social media like it's radioactive sludge and keep a wide berth. The self-imposed pressure is intense - every post needs to be valuable, every caption needs to be profound, every piece of content needs to prove I'm a legitimate therapist worth following.

Like many of you, I'm in a torrid love affair with productivity. But something I don't talk about nearly enough is how free time can trigger the same fight-or-flight response as an actual emergency.

I'm a therapist. I literally make a living helping people work through their struggles and encouraging them to seek support when they need it. I preach about the importance of connection and vulnerability on a daily basis.

And yet, two weeks ago, I found myself staring at a half-finished speaking outline at 11 PM, paralyzed by the thought of asking anyone to look at it.

I'm a therapist who helps people be better humans. Last week, I caught myself being absolutely terrible to a stranger on TikTok.

For three minutes, my brain ran a completely different commentary than what was happening on screen.

Alice (name changed) was the rare friend who could share a tiny dorm room with you and somehow make it feel spacious. She was my ride-or-die, my automatic plus-one to everything, the person I just assumed would be standing next to me at my wedding someday. I remember countless nights where we’d stay up late talking about anything and everything. You know that friend who feels like family? That was Alice.

If your nervous system has been running on caffeine and existential dread lately, congratulations. You’re responding appropriately to current events. If you've been doomscrolling until your brain feels fried, quietly carrying this simmering sense of dread every time you glance at the headlines, or just feeling the urge to stay in bed all day to hide from it all, that’s 100% correct. It’s a lot.

When I was living in Los Angeles, I didn’t realize how much of my time I spent feeling afraid. Like so many women, I was taught to lace my car keys between my fingers like little Wolverine claws because apparently, if someone attacks me walking to my car at night, I’m supposed to stab them with my Honda keys and hope for the best.

I’m a therapist and let me admit something, after 15 years of sitting with people in their most vulnerable, painful chapters of life, I’ve learned most of the misery in my life has come from me.

When I first discuss mindfulness/meditation with clients, a few weeks in I almost always get the same response:

“I’m just not good at this”
“I suck at meditating”
“My mind constantly wanders, don’t think I’m cut out for it”

And honestly, whenever they say this, I want to hug them. Because SAME.

Last week, I could not focus for the life of me. I scrolled, I stared into my fridge even when I wasn’t hungry, I walked on my walking pad and stared at my computer screen. Cycle, rinse, repeat, yet this unsettled feeling in my chest and stomach, and this weird shaky feeling that you couldn’t see but I could feel would NOT go away.

May always feels like a hopeful month. The daylight invites us to enjoy dinner outside, flowers are out here main-character-energy-ing all over the place (hello cherry blossoms and jacarandas), and the people I pass by on the street even seem more cheerful. Heck, London in May feels like a completely different place than it did in December! 

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have “a thing” like I saw so many other kids had.
You know the type:

• The kid who picked up a camera at age 5 and knew they’d be a photographer.

• The one who always wanted to be a doctor and actually became one.

• The one obsessed with hair who became a hairstylist.

Meanwhile, I wanted to be everything from a news anchor to President of the United States to a therapist-slash-writer-slash-coffee-shop-owner.

There are times when the things that are supposed to help just don’t. One of the most challenging things about healing is that it’s different from person to person. And even with the same person, what helps us heal can change from moment to moment.

You know that feeling when something’s changed in a friendship, but you can’t quite put your finger on it? You used to feel close. Seen. Safe. But lately, something feels… off. You replay old memories and wonder if you’re being dramatic. You miss them but also dread their texts. And no matter how many times you try to push the feeling down, the truth keeps surfacing: