Mental Health Is Having A Moment

Mental health is having a moment. And like most things, I have complicated feelings about it.

On one hand, it's a "good thing." We need to be talking about mental health so we can normalize it and reduce stigma around seeking help, or even asking for it. For a long time, struggling meant suffering in silence. White knuckling through it, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, figuring it out alone. We carried our struggles, our trauma, our shame, our insecurities. Terrified what would happen if anyone found out.

And now everyone shares everything on the internet. Which is vulnerable and courageous. But in the mix are people who have positioned themselves as influencers, and licensed mental health professionals who have become influencers and somewhere along the way lost the plot.

My guilty pleasure recently has been getting knee deep in the Threads comments about influencers making mental health content and licensed professionals trying to become influencers. There's been two that have been getting absolutely dragged. One a licensed therapist saying weird shit about s*xual assault, and a prominent life coach misrepresenting her credentials and spreading misinformation about the therapy field, insurance reimbursements, and just making up mental health concepts. And that's the part that actually gets me — it's not just the credential piece, it's that the voices reaching the most people are using language inaccurately, creating concepts that aren't grounded in anything real, and people consume it and think they're learning something. That's where it gets genuinely harmful. People are upset, and I get it. I'm upset too.

The actual problem is that mental health language got trendy way faster than mental health literacy did. So now we have the words but we're losing the meaning. Everything is traumatic. Everyone's a narcissist. Anxiety means nervous, panicked, excited, and apparently just normal human worry. And when we dilute language like that, we take away from the people carrying the heaviest histories, who deserve words that hold the weight of what they've been through.

Here's what consuming generalized mental health content — including mine — can't do. It can't account for your specific nervous system, your childhood, the systems you grew up inside of, the systems you currently exist in, the way trauma lives in your body, or the intersection of all of those things together. A reel doesn't know your history. A self-paced module wasn't built with your particular combination of experiences in mind. That's the thing about nuance — it requires actually knowing someone, not just knowing about them.

It took a lot to become a licensed clinical social worker. Shit, it was even a lot to become a certified therapeutic recreation specialist. A bachelor's degree, internship hours, a certification exam, CEUs, fees. Then my LCSW took years of graduate training, more internships, thousands of supervised clinical hours, including an extra year because of board regulation issues (can we appreciate the irony), and ongoing continuing education.

I believe deeply that healing happens outside of clinical walls all the time. I built a whole business around it. I also don't think you need a license to understand trauma or work with people. But the training, experience, and supervision matters. I know it's where I learned to sit in the discomfort of someone else's pain. Where I refined ethical boundaries, learned what it means to be responsible for someone's care, and most importantly learned about myself and what I bring into the room every time I walk in.

I've spent over a decade sitting with people in their hardest moments and somewhere along the way figured out that my gift is making complicated things more understandable. Helping people find language for how they feel. But accessible isn't the same as comprehensive. A blog post — including this one — even a single sound healing or therapy session, will always just scratch the surface.

I talk about mental health because I care about it. I care about people healing and feeling fulfilled. I believe mental healthcare is health care. That's why quality matters, credentials matter, language matters. And nuance matters. Because you are not a generalization. Your nervous system, your history, your childhood, the systems you grew up in and currently exist in — none of that fits inside a reel or a module or a four week program. Consuming content is not the same as receiving care. And understanding that difference might be the most important thing I can say here.

My blog, my newsletter, my sound healing…it's an entry point. A complement. A different kind of support. Not a substitute for the real, slow, individualized work of actually knowing yourself with someone trained to help you do that. If you're not sure where to start, ask someone you trust for a referral. Look up licensed clinicians in your area. Check credentials before you commit. You deserve care that was actually built for you.

What’s the point of all of this? Maybe just — pay attention. Ask who's talking and why. Notice if you actually feel safe somewhere or if someone just keeps telling you that you are. Those are really different things. And notice how content lands in your body, not just your head.

Healing is not an aesthetic. It's not a vibe or a brand or a content niche. It's slow, nonlinear, grossly uncomfortable work. The healed version of you might actually be meaner. More boundaried, less agreeable, harder to manipulate. That's not a vibe. That's the work and it's layered.

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