So when people say things like “I just feel blah,” “I don’t feel like myself,” “I’m just going through the motions,” “I have no energy for anything,” or “I’m always in my head,” it’s not because something is wrong with them. It’s because their body hasn’t had enough moments of safety to access that part of themselves. Feeling sexy lives in a completely different state than anxiety. You cannot be deeply in that always-on, go-go-go state and also feel open, embodied, and connected. Those states don’t overlap.

Every decision we make sits at the intersection of our values, our bodies, our histories, our personalities and the moment we are living in. Advice cannot fully account for that level of complexity. Psychologists have even studied how having too many options or too many opinions can actually make decision making harder rather than easier. When we are flooded with input we start doubting our own judgment.

If you think about it for even a moment, the odds of any one of us existing are completely absurd. A million trillion things had to happen exactly as they did in order for you to be you. Your parents had to meet at the exact moment they did. Their parents had to meet. And their parents before them. One specific sperm had to meet one specific egg at one specific second. Change even one moment in that chain and you simply would not be here. Not someone slightly different. Not a slightly altered version of you. You just would not exist.

The in between can look like so many things, but at its core it’s the space that opens up after you’ve gained clarity and before your external world has fully reorganized around it. It’s the overlap between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming. And most of the time, you’re not there by accident. You’re there because you told yourself the truth about what you want. You’re there becausee you chose growth over comfort. You decided that your time, your energy, and your presence are worth protecting.

I keep picturing how many thoughts like this pass through us every day and disappear. How often we think of someone with tenderness and let it float by, unspoken. And I keep imagining what would happen if more of those thoughts turned into action, if they actually reached the person they were meant for. People moving through their weeks receiving small reminders that they live in someone else’s awareness. That they matter enough to be remembered mid-day, mid-life, mid-chaos.

Your joy may highlight places where someone else feels constrained. Your confidence may activate someone else’s self-doubt. Your freedom may press against someone else’s unexamined rules. That doesn’t make them bad people. And it doesn’t mean you need to become smaller. It might just mean that not everyone knows how to make room for that level of aliveness!

Many people come to therapy believing that if they can just understand why they are anxious, reactive, or stuck in a pattern, they will finally feel better. And most of us already have plenty of insight.