This is Part 2 of a series on the language of trauma, the science of stress, and what it actually means to be human right now. If you haven’t read Part 1, you might want to start there.

In the trauma and attachment world, we rely heavily on nervous system science to make sense of human behavior. I have utilized it extensively in my practice, and it has shaped how I understand people — including myself. But there has been growing debate about the research we have been leaning on, and it always feels a little threatening when foundational ideas are challenged.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on the language of trauma, the science of stress, and what it actually means to be human right now.

I have been experiencing a quiet identity crisis in my career lately, and honestly, I welcome it.

There is a certain health in questioning what you have always held to be true. It forces a return to a fundamental reality we often forget: everything is theory. Everything is a hypothesis. In the world of therapy, the desire to help people—or to understand ourselves—is so strong that we constantly search for the one framework that finally works. We want a map that explains human suffering and offers a clear path out of it.

I had a moment the other day that I think we all have, though we don’t always talk about it. I was sitting down to record my podcast when I felt this familiar, heavy pressure kick in. It was the pressure to produce something of substance, something valuable, something that sounded like all those informational podcasts I love to listen to—the ones where you finish and think, Wow, I learned so much.

I have been thinking a lot about shame lately. It’s a familiar subject in my work, but recently, questioning my underlying assumptions about it has taken me somewhere unexpected. I didn’t expect that learning how to work with shame would lead me directly to understanding the emotion of awe.

There is an exhaustion I see constantly in my practice, and it is one I have certainly felt in my own life. It is deeper than the exhaustion of having done a lot of “work” and still feeling like there is something fundamentally wrong with you.

In my book, Already Human (download for free here), I dive into this exact question: Why are we all so tired? Why are we all so lonely? If the multi-trillion-dollar wellness and self-help industries were actually working, wouldn’t we see a change in the outcome by now?

I woke up this morning feeling a familiar dread. It wasn’t the dread of anything in particular, but because it was aimless, it touched everything I did.

I didn’t want to work out. It was deadlift day, and I didn’t particularly feel like lifting anything heavy. But I got on the Stairmaster to warm up anyway, because not wanting to lift has never been a reason not to lift in my book.

Then Puscifer’s Monsoon popped up on my playlist. And cue the swelling in my chest that caused the swelling behind my eyes. Out flowed the tears.

There is a rhythm to being human that we spend a lot of time trying to outsmart. It goes like this: we forget, and then we remember. And then we forget again.

In the self-help world, forgetting is usually framed as a failure. If you find yourself back in an old pattern—if you lose your temper, if you shrink to fit a room, if you relapse, if you suddenly believe that you are fundamentally damaged—the narrative is that you have fallen off the wagon of your own healing. You are supposed to stay in the remembering. If you forget, it means there is another stone to turn over, another pattern to examine, another emotion to regulate.

If you spend enough time in the therapy or self-help world, you will eventually bump into a very specific, very subtle implication. It usually sounds something like this:

If you had just had a more attuned caregiver, you wouldn’t have these patterns.

It’s the foundational premise of modern attachment theory, distilled down for infographics and pop-psychology books. The logic goes that your struggles with connection, your hyper-independence, your people-pleasing, your anxious grasping—all of it is evidence that something went wrong in your childhood. You were misattuned to. You were failed. And if you hadn’t been failed, you would be “secure.” You would be fine.

A couple of years ago, my husband and I went backpacking. We hiked a ridiculous number of miles in one day—because that’s just what we did back then—and by the time we needed to set up camp, we were too tired to be picky.

I like to camp near the designated campsites, but not actually in them. The whole point of walking into the middle of the forest is to get away from people. I saw a lake on the map and decided that was the spot.

Most of us are operating under a premise we don’t even notice anymore. It is so pervasive, so woven into the water we swim in, that it just feels like the truth.

The premise is this: Something is missing.

Something from our lives is missing. Something from within ourselves is missing. And if we could just find that thing, or build that thing, or heal enough to access that thing, then everything would finally be okay.

Last week, I shared a podcast and essay about emotional maturity and emotional distance, and one of you asked a very practical question: What do you actually do in the moment when you feel like you’re about to lose it? When everything inside you is spilling over, when you’re reacting in ways you know you might regret later — what do you actually do then?

Sometimes I don’t realize I’m burned out until it’s already too late.

It’s less like noticing and more like waking up from a dizzying dream to find myself completely empty and suddenly on the edge of explosion.

This happened a few weeks ago with my husband. Everything was fine—until it wasn’t.

We are living in a time where more people than ever are in therapy, talking about mental health, and learning how to understand themselves.

Yet, many of them still feel like something is missing because some forms of suffering aren’t problems to solve.

They’re expressions of being human.

I’ve been noticing something lately in the way people talk about relationships.

There’s a tension in it. A kind of tightness.

We talk a lot now about values, needs, and boundaries — and those things absolutely matter. Values shape how we live. Needs create vulnerability. Boundaries create safety and clarity around participation. They are real parts of how relationships function. There’s also been a shift underneath that language that feels increasingly common.

There’s a feeling I get sometimes when I finally stop moving.

It usually shows up after I’ve been going for a while — days where everything is full and layered and stacked on top of itself. Tasks, thoughts, responsibilities, conversations, plans. Then something interrupts the momentum. I sit down. I close my eyes. Or I lie still for a moment.

I can feel it immediately.

My body is still moving fast.

Lately, I’ve been noticing something in my practice that feels important enough to sit with a little longer. I work primarily with relationships — romantic relationships, friendships, family systems, and the relationship someone has with themselves — and especially with clients who are dating or longing for partnership, there’s a particular tension that keeps surfacing. It’s subtle, but it’s consistent.

It’s the hesitation to admit that they need a relationship.

Not want. Need.

Sometimes when I wake up, I just lie in bed and listen to the silence.

I sleep with earplugs, so the silence is loud in my ears. Dense. Almost humming. I can hear my heart beating. I can hear my breath moving in and out. I can hear my thoughts before they’ve fully taken shape. I can hear the swirling of sensations that don’t need words.

My body is loud—a whole universe of sound—but it’s only my sound. No one else’s. Nothing intruding. Nothing pulling at me.

I was rubbing my son’s belly the other day while he had a stomach bug, watching his eyes track the room with that unmistakable softness babies have—the kind that feels both ancient and entirely new at once. There is something about looking into a baby’s eyes that stops thought mid-sentence. Not because they are empty, but because they are so full. So complete.

I want to answer a question that came in from someone who’s started the process of unbecoming. It’s a really good question, and I suspect it’s one that comes up for a lot of people:

“I’ve done a lot of therapy, journaling, and self-work. I intellectually understand myself pretty well, but I still find myself reacting the same ways in my relationships, and my body still holds a lot of tension. When you talk about unbecoming, how is this different from just doing more insight work? What actually changes when someone moves from understanding themselves to living from that place?”

Most people don’t walk around consciously believing something is wrong with them. It’s subtler than that, showing up as a steady orientation toward improvement, a quiet pressure to get better, calmer, more secure, more healed, with an underlying assumption that if enough work is done, a version of the self will eventually emerge that feels okay to live inside.