This is where my work begins to extend far beyond pain. The lens I developed through pain psychology influences how I see every person who sits across from me. Whether someone is struggling with chronic pain, burnout, anxiety, relationship difficulties, life transitions, grief, perfectionism, or simply feeling disconnected from themselves, the questions I ask are often the same: What happened to your nervous system along the way? What adaptations helped you survive? What patterns made sense at one point but may no longer be serving you? What is your body trying to communicate? Where are you living out of alignment with your values? What would healing look like if we stopped focusing exclusively on symptom reduction? These questions are relevant to everyone. Not just people with pain.

And that's the part that makes me sad. Not because Pride exists. Because a world that truly celebrated human dignity wouldn't need it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this isn't really a piece about Pride Month. It's a piece about authenticity. Pride is simply one example of what happens when people are punished for being who they are. Because the truth is, I don't just want a world where queer people can be themselves freely. I want a world where everyone can be themselves freely. I want a world where authenticity isn't brave because authenticity isn't punished.

I am embarrassed to admit this, but I recently learned that yellow dandelions turn into the white fluffy dandelions. Somehow, I made it this far in life assuming they were two completely different weeds. The bright yellow flower and the delicate white puffball felt like separate things entirely, not two expressions of the same life cycle. It took my toddler picking me fistfuls of yellow dandelions at the park and one random Google search later that night for my mind to be completely blown. And honestly, I have not stopped thinking about it since. Because the more I sat with it, the more it felt like nature was revealing something profound.

Not putting pressure on every moment to be meaningful, but remembering that it already is. That this version of your life, exactly as it is right now, will never exist in the same way again. So maybe this is just a reminder to pay a little more attention, to soften where you can, and to let a few more things roll off your shoulders. Because you don’t always know when it will be your last time doing something exactly like this. And that’s exactly why it’s worth being here for it.

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.