We've become pretty good at telling people how to regulate themselves.
Take a deep breath. Ground yourself. Practice gratitude. Reframe the thought. Find the silver lining. Try box breathing. Notice what's within your control.
And don't get me wrong. These tools have their place. Emotional regulation matters. Having the capacity to pause, notice what's happening in our bodies, and respond rather than react can be incredibly valuable.
But I think we've sometimes become so focused on regulating our responses that we forget to ask a more important question:
What if the situation itself is the problem?
Consider the familiar metaphor of a glass half empty or half full. We're often encouraged to examine which perspective we choose. Is the glass half empty, or is it half full? Can we shift our thinking? Can we find gratitude in what we have rather than focusing on what we lack?
But there's a certain luxury in being able to debate whether a glass is half empty or half full.
For some people, the questions are entirely different.
Is the water clean?
Who controls the tap?
Am I allowed to turn it on whenever I need it, or does someone else decide when I get access?
Will there be more water tomorrow?
What happens if the supply runs out?
What if I have children, a partner, or an entire family depending on that same glass?
And what if I am expected to share what little I have while somehow making it last?
You can tell that person to practice gratitude. You can encourage them to focus on the fact that they have water at all. You can teach them breathing exercises to help manage the anxiety that comes with uncertainty.
But none of those interventions clean the water, redistribute access, change who controls the tap, or guarantee that there will be enough tomorrow.
Sometimes the anxiety isn't a distorted perception of the situation. Sometimes it's a pretty reasonable response to the conditions someone is living in.
Not every uncomfortable emotion is dysregulation.
In therapeutic spaces, we talk a lot about nervous system regulation. We teach people to recognize activation, increase their window of tolerance, develop grounding skills, and build capacity to stay present with difficult emotions.
These are important skills.
But there is a difference between helping someone tolerate an uncomfortable internal experience and helping them tolerate an environment that is genuinely harmful, unpredictable, inequitable, or unsafe.
A person who feels anxious because their financial stability depends on someone else's decisions may not need another cognitive reframe.
A person who feels hypervigilant because they have repeatedly experienced betrayal may not simply need to learn how to relax.
A person who feels angry about being mistreated may not need to find a more compassionate interpretation of the person mistreating them.
A person who feels exhausted from carrying the emotional, financial, or caregiving responsibilities of an entire household may not need another lesson in self-care.
Sometimes anxiety is anticipation. Sometimes anger is a response to a boundary violation. Sometimes hypervigilance developed because paying attention was necessary. Sometimes grief is the appropriate response to a loss that hasn't been acknowledged.
Our emotions don't always indicate that something is wrong with us. Sometimes they indicate that something is wrong around us.
A therapeutic modality cannot fix a systemic problem.
There is a place for EMDR, somatic experiencing, mindfulness, parts work, cognitive behavioral therapy, breathwork, and countless other therapeutic approaches.
These modalities can help people process experiences, increase emotional capacity, develop self-trust, and relate differently to their internal worlds.
But no therapeutic modality can independently fix poverty, discrimination, an abusive relationship, an unstable housing situation, workplace exploitation, unequal power dynamics, or a lack of access to basic resources.
And it is worth being careful about what happens when we unintentionally make therapy another place where people are taught to adapt to conditions that continue to hurt them.
If someone is struggling in an environment that consistently violates their boundaries, the goal cannot always be to increase their tolerance for boundary violations.
If someone is living with genuine uncertainty, the goal cannot always be to convince them that everything is okay.
If someone is experiencing an ongoing injustice, helping them feel less distressed about that injustice is not the same thing as addressing it.
We can help people build the capacity to navigate difficult circumstances without implying that their ability to tolerate those circumstances is the measure of their healing.
Regulation should not become another way of asking people to make themselves more comfortable with what is hurting them.
Sometimes the most adaptive thing your nervous system can do is sound the alarm.
We often talk about the nervous system as though activation is inherently something to move away from. But our nervous systems are constantly responding to information about our environments.
They are noticing unpredictability, power, safety, connection, threat, and the availability of resources.
Of course, our responses can sometimes become generalized. Past experiences can shape how we interpret present situations. We can experience a threat response in circumstances that are no longer dangerous. And there are absolutely times when developing more flexibility in our responses can improve our lives.
But we also have to leave room for the possibility that a person's nervous system is responding quite accurately to their current reality.
Sometimes the goal isn't to get someone out of fight or flight so they can tolerate the situation.
Sometimes the goal is to help them recognize that they have options, identify what needs to change, access support, establish boundaries, or take steps toward a different environment.
Sometimes the most compassionate intervention isn't another breathing exercise. It's helping someone find a resource, understand their rights, access practical support, or recognize that they don't have to keep participating in a dynamic that is hurting them.
And sometimes it's simply acknowledging that what they're experiencing is hard, without immediately trying to make it feel better.
We can build capacity without asking people to abandon reality.
I don't think this means we throw out emotional regulation, mindfulness, or the therapeutic work of building capacity.
I think it means we become more thoughtful about when and how we use those tools.
We can help someone regulate while also validating that their circumstances are genuinely difficult.
We can help someone develop a wider window of tolerance without making tolerance the ultimate goal.
We can explore the stories people carry while also examining the systems and relationships reinforcing those stories.
We can help someone find moments of safety in their body without pretending that their external world is always safe.
And we can teach someone to breathe through a difficult moment while also asking what needs to happen so they aren't continually having to breathe through the same difficult moment.
Because healing isn't always about changing how we feel about our circumstances. Sometimes it's about changing the circumstances themselves.
So perhaps before we ask someone whether their glass is half empty or half full, we should ask a few other questions.
Is the water clean? Is there enough? Who has access? Who gets to decide? And what would it take for everyone to have what they need?
Not every problem is a perspective problem.
Not every emotion needs to be regulated away.
And you cannot box breathe your way out of every human problem.
