Over the past few weeks, I’ve had many clients panicking about their future. Whether they have lost their jobs due to COVID-19, are uncertain of the next steps in their personal life or have finally realized that the way they were running their personal lives was not conducive for their health and well-being, many people have been taking stock and making changes. This has brought in an influx of referrals into our mental health system with people seeking to make changes and “finally” following their friend’s or family’s advice to seek out therapy.
What I, however, have observed from my new clients is an unrealistic expectation about what therapy can provide us. This, in addition to the widespread fear and panic engulfing our world, has led to an unprecedented increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms. Yet, I’m not worried about the trend. I’m excited about it.
Why? The emergence of increased levels of anxiety and depression means, that perhaps for the first time in history, people are really starting to take responsibility for their lives and wanting to make things better. The emergence of anxiety and depression is often a wake-up call that past traumas or our current life need to be healed and transformed. As a mental health professional with a strong spiritual orientation, all I see is the beauty in the ensuing chaos. Transformation can only happen when things truly begin to fall apart and, for the first time, things are falling apart on a global scale.
The Role of GEN Z
For the past few years, older generations have given GEN Z a very hard time for their values of collaboration, connection, and emotional intelligence. They have also been given a hard time for being more anxious and depressed. Rather than seeing the potential for a higher level of consciousness in the future, our mental health system and general culture likes to pathologize their symptoms and tell them something is wrong with them. From what I have seen in my practice, a diagnosis is no longer providing the sense of relief it did 20 years ago. GEN Z is interested in healing, expanding their consciousness, and building healthy relationships. And if it means doing that through art, music, crystals, essential oils, humor, play, yoga, meditation etc… then so be it. They are a generation that learns via experience and they are hungry to learn how to take care of themselves.
It is the generation we have been waiting for!! Yet, in our own quest for survival, we continue to miss the universal memo that it is our responsibility to change and provide this generation with the support they need to master their emotional symptoms so that they can use the power of their emotions to improve humanity. Our mental health system needs to transform NOW.
Why Emotions Matter Now More Than Ever
We are currently days out for the US election. Our current President has served as a wonderful example of someone who has the gift for being an emotionally centered leader but who has not mastered the art of emotional regulation (which by the way is developed in the context of early relationships). For the past 4 years, we have experienced first hand the power of negative emotions and how this leads to fear. Few of us realize that emotions convey powerful energy and can be used to help or hinder other people.
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” — Audre Lorde
For far too long we have taught emotionally centered people that emotions need to be “controlled” or “rationalized.” This hasn’t done our world much good. It is this mindset that GEN Z is fighting against. Emotions are energy. With any type of energy, it needs to be channeled into something far greater than our own ego. All emotions carry the power to transform our world. Most of us, unfortunately, are too scared to learn a different way of managing our emotions. As a result, we continue to suppress and try to intellectualize ourselves out of feeling. This path will not be the path of GEN Z and this transition is bringing a lot of fear of uncertainty to the table. We are scared to open Pandora’s box to fully feeling ALL our emotions.
“Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance.” — Deepak Chopra
Artists are the Real Healers of Emotions
For thousands of years, the people who have been the true experts of emotions have been our artists. We have had a love affair with labeling them bipolar or some other disorder or had interests in the classic melancholy painter. And many fit the symptoms but we don’t love to talk about how they healed or found the emotional balance to live more peacefully in our culture. The narrative has revolved around medication management for far too long.
We also continue to miss the entire point as to why artists exist in our communities. They are the souls that have been tasked with channeling our emotions into something beautiful. They are naturally gifted at turning crap into gold. In the United States, especially in the last few decades as technology has risen to levels of importance, we have forgotten the role of the artist in providing necessary balance in our communities. Today, we sit in a place of high levels of imbalance with fear driving our every decision. Most of our artists, in an effort to financially survive in a world that does not always care about their work, have forgotten their roles as healers of our communities. They have even forgotten how to access their emotions opting to go to art school to learn a skill fully disconnected from their heart. Instead, they walk into my office or the office of my colleagues and state that something is “wrong” with them because they have anxiety.
“Nothing is wrong with your gift of feeling what the whole world is feeling,” is often a sentence I say to highly sensitive, creative and empathic souls. You see, artists and empaths have unique gifts that no one ever taught them how to use. What we are really seeing is not so much a mental health crisis as an opening to a higher level of consciousness. Unfortunately, there will be a lot of unlearning of old paradigms needed in order to fully support the rise and healing of such persons. Yet, I’ve never had a client who did not resonate with hearing that their sensitivities may be a gift. We are all eager to learn — we sometimes just don’t know where to start. That start may indeed be with a diagnosis and traditional medication management or it may not. We all have a different journey and we no longer need to feel bad about it — we just need to get started and not be judged for where we are.
Psychotherapy as the Start of Healing but Not the Totality of Healing
Psychologists are the experts in healing the mind but not the experts on the totality of healing. Our research has shown for years that our mind creates our emotions. Thus, if we heal the mind we heal our emotions. For this next generation, that paradigm may not be the full picture. The next generation is so highly sensitive that their emotions may be other people’s emotions or they are picking up on energies that are not related to their own thoughts. Without an adequate understanding of their gifts that emanate from high levels of sensitivity, people will not find themselves to other healing modalities that will assist them in learning to manage their gifts and thus their emotions (many of these modalities are spiritual or energetic based). Psychotherapy is thus often a tool for understanding and integrating experiences but the ego of the mental health profession needs to simmer down and make way for the possibilities that traditional talk therapy may not be the best modality for all persons. Healing is highly individual and people deserve to have access to any or all modalities that seem to provide the relief and personal growth they desire.
“Your pain is an opportunity for you to learn about yourself.” — Gary Zukav
Why Relationships Will Matter Most in the Future
As this next generation begins to push and request support for their emotions, our mental health system will need to expand and incorporate other healing modalities to help these souls achieve balance. When we do that, we can naturally help incubate the wonderful changes this generation is bringing in with the increased importance of all relationships. Rather than dating as an experience that feeds an ego (to get what we want on a checklist), this generation already has an awareness of the healing power of relationships. It is a natural gift of an empath. Their tolerance for toxic insecurity and negativity will be lower than it has been for any other generation and this will spur new ways of meeting, connection, and falling in love. This generation will likely be more interested in a deeper, less superficial connection in all aspects of their lives and will likely be more compassionate to others.
For example, I had a 14-year-old in my office a few weeks ago who was adamant that she wanted to date a boy her parents have said no to — for good reason. He already has a history of substance abuse, comes from an abusive family, and is not doing well in school. She was spiraling in her anxiety and was not interested in dancing. Her parents wanted to ban her from seeing him and they were scared and at a loss for what to do.
This magical, highly creative and empathic soul would not back down in front of her parents. Rather than convince her to stop seeing him, we worked over 3 sessions on learning about our empathic gifts through dance and music. We talked about keeping our power and how women have empowered themselves for thousands of years to maintain boundaries. We talked about the energy exchange of sexual contact and why, for her, the exchange of energy (even in a kiss) may affect her energy (and thus her mood) if she did not commit to taking care of herself every day. We called it Magical Unicorn School and she is still walking in her light. Rather than spend all her time with him, she made the choice to focus on dancing (because intuitive guidance helped support that decision) and to provide him with a referral to a therapist. They agreed to have boundaries together and she has taught him what she needs in order to stay in her light.
This 14-year-old has already saved a soul on this planet without giving up herself. It’s time for a new paradigm for healing depression and anxiety and it’s one steeped in remembering the power of positivity, creativity, and dare I say remembering what it was like to believe in magic. After our 3 sessions, she has not reported problems managing her anxiety and has started her yoga journey. I am forever grateful for my youngest clients for showing me the future and couldn’t be more excited to support them in their mission to make this planet a more loving place one relationship at a time. It will simply be up to our educational and mental health systems to loosen the control and be open to the idea that we do not know everything and that our patients are their own gurus.
We are just along for the ride.
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Previously Published on Medium
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