We Don’t Have a Mental Health Crisis

We Don’t Have a Mental Health Pandemic

We’re Not Mentally Unwell — We’re Emotionally Illiterate.

They’ll say we’re in a mental health crisis.
They’ll say people are anxious, depressed, burnt out.
They’ll diagnose it.
Treat it.
Market it.

But what if I told you …
we’re not mentally unwell.
We’re just emotionally illiterate.

We don’t know how to feel.
We don’t know how to stay.
We don’t know how to hold what hurts
without silencing it, spiritualizing it,
or distracting it to death.

Mental health has become
mainstream.
Cool.
Trendy.
A badge.
A playlist.
A billion-dollar industry.

But emotional health?

Still taboo.
Still too messy.
Still too real.

We say,
“humans are emotional creatures.”
And then we scroll through mental health tips
to learn how to control
the very thing
that makes us human.

We praise self-awareness
but fear the body.
We name our emotions
but never feel them.

This isn’t mental illness.
It’s disconnection.
It’s grief we’ve intellectualized.
It’s sorrow trapped behind the fake calm.
It’s a scream inside the regulated nervous system.

We weren’t born to be managed.
We were born to feel everything.
To break open.
To break the cycles.
To become soft enough
that love can finally get in.

Emotional health isn’t soft.
It’s not pretty.
It’s not polite.
It’s violent in the holy way.
It remakes you.

And most of us are terrified of that.

So today, I’m not giving you tips.
I’m not giving you practices.
I’m giving you permission.

To feel what you haven’t.
To stop trying to fix what’s sacred.
To stop managing your humanity
like a malfunction.

Because the truth is:

You’ve got to experience

how much
you have loved.

how deeply
you have felt.

how fiercely
you have cared.

and how
you’ve longed
to finally
live.

You’ve got this !

You can do it.