I keep seeing posts from therapists on my social media feed: "With everything going on politically, remember to regulate your nervous system." "Ground yourself before responding." "Don't let polarization hijack your body."
While this might have a place, I'm not sure that's the answer at the moment. I don't believe we should be telling people to regulate themselves when families are being separated. I don't believe prescribing breathing exercises when rights are being stripped away is the appropriate response. This makes it seem as though we are pathologizing justified rage as "nervous system dysregulation."
This isn't wellness advice. This is political neutralization dressed up in therapeutic language.
The Problem with Positivity and "Balance"
I see this in two places. First, from therapists who genuinely believe they're helping by encouraging regulation and grounding. Second, from people in the general public who cannot tolerate sitting with pain, their own or others', and who reach for positive psychology like a shield. "What are you grateful for?" they ask, when what's needed is "I see how much this hurts."
Positive psychology has its place. Buddhism has profound wisdom to offer. But when we use these practices to avoid illness, hardship, and pain, when we use them to bypass the reality of what people are experiencing, we're not helping. We're abandoning.
If we cannot sit with someone's pain, we cannot truly bear witness to who they are. We only accept the parts that feel comfortable to us. We only engage with the parts that don't require us to feel something difficult.
And here's what we need to understand: bearing witness requires feeling.
The Myth of Therapeutic Neutrality
We're taught in graduate school to be neutral. To stay regulated. To not let our emotions "take over the room." And there's truth in that. Sometimes. There's a difference between strategic neutrality and moral neutrality, and I think we've conflated the two.
Strategic neutrality means I don't take sides when a client is navigating an interpersonal conflict. I stay curious about their internal contradictions. I don't impose my values on their personal choices.
But moral neutrality? That's something else entirely.
When a client tells me about discrimination they're facing at work because of their race, I don't hold back. When a client describes their partner's abusive behavior, I take a deep breath, let them finish, and then I tell them: "I'm feeling protective of you right now because what you're describing is not okay."
Every single time, the response has been the same: "Thank you. I needed to hear that." Or "Thank you. I needed to see that."
They needed to see that their anger is justified. They needed confirmation that concern for their safety is appropriate. They needed evidence that their reality is real.
Why Therapists Are Afraid to Feel
I think there are many reasons therapists hesitate to show emotion with clients:
We worry our emotions will take over the client's experience or the client won't know how we really feel if the therapist is "modeling" feeling. We may fear being seen as unprofessional or getting in trouble with supervisors or licensing boards. We may be afraid of our own unprocessed trauma being triggered. We fear losing control or being "too much" for the client. We worry about crossing boundaries we were taught are sacred. We fear criticism from colleagues who might see emotional expression as a violation of therapeutic norms.
These are understandable concerns. They're also solvable through clinical judgment and relational awareness.
I use the therapeutic relationship to guide when and how I show emotion. I consider: How long have we worked together? What's the trust level? What does this particular client need right now? I let them finish expressing before I respond. I take a breath to ensure I'm responding intentionally, not reactively. I name what I'm feeling and why: "I'm angry about what happened to you because it was unjust."
And yes, sometimes my emotion doesn't land the way I intended. When that happens, we check in. We discuss it. I learn more about them, and they get practice in how to navigate moments when someone doesn't get it completely right. This builds their capacity to do that outside our sessions too.
This isn't about perfection. It's about staying engaged. It's about trusting that the relationship can hold honesty, including honest emotional responses to injustice.
The Weight of Neutrality on Marginalized Bodies
This matters even more when we're talking about clients who are systematically marginalized: people of color, queer and trans folks, disabled people, anyone the world is constantly telling that their perceptions are wrong, their anger is "too much," their pain is exaggerated.
As a person of color who primarily works with people of color: we need to feel seen. When I show emotion in response to the injustice my clients face, I'm saying: "You're not crazy. This is wrong. I see you."
We're also carrying generational trauma. Our bodies hold what happened to our parents, grandparents, and ancestors. When a client of mine expresses fear about immigration enforcement, they're not just responding to current policy. They may be carrying the terror their grandmother felt crossing a border, the hypervigilance their parents learned to survive. When someone describes workplace discrimination, they may be reliving what their family endured for generations.
This isn't pathology. This is information. This is ancestral wisdom speaking through the body.
When we acknowledge generational trauma, we help people recognize these patterns without pathologizing them. We help them access ancestral wisdom, healing practices, and resilience. We help them trust their perceptions. They're not paranoid. They're informed by generations of survival knowledge.
When we don't acknowledge it, we're more likely to dismiss or invalidate ourselves. We're more likely to think we're overreacting. And when we doubt our own perceptions, we become more likely to be complicit, to give up, to turn away from the fight. We disconnect from the very resilience our ancestors embodied.
Our rage honors what our ancestors survived. Our collective action continues their resilience. When we feel together, we're drawing on generations of wisdom about how communities survive oppression. Not by staying calm, but by staying connected.
Therapeutic neutrality is rooted in Western, individualistic ideology. It's not universal. In collectivist cultures, bearing witness includes feeling together. Your emotion in response to someone's pain is part of the relational container, not a violation of it.
When we take practices from Buddhism or other collectivist traditions and use them to keep people calm in the face of injustice, we're not honoring those traditions. We're appropriating them in service of oppression.
When the System Is the Problem
Here's what the regulate your nervous system posts get fundamentally wrong: they treat systemic injustice as an individual mental health problem.
They suggest that the issue is your reaction to what's happening, not what's happening. They frame political resistance as polarization. They make mass harm into a personal stress management issue.
This is insidious. It keeps you focused inward when you need to be looking outward. It keeps you isolated when you need to be connected. It keeps you calm when you need to be activated.
When families are being separated, when trans kids are being targeted, when rights are being ripped away that is not the time to co-regulate and ground. That is the time to feel rage and anger together.
Feeling together is connection. And connection is exactly what the system wants to prevent.
The system wants you isolated, doubting yourself, wondering if maybe you're just "too sensitive" or "too political" or "too dysregulated." The system wins when you turn inward to manage your nervous system instead of outward to organize, protect, and resist.
What We Need Instead
As therapists let’s consider whether telling clients to regulate in response to systemic injustice is truly serving them. Work on distinguishing between strategic neutrality and moral neutrality. Consider showing up with your whole humanity including your anger, your grief, your protective instincts.
Learn to trust your clinical judgment about when and how to show emotion. Build relationships where clients can tell you when something doesn't land right. Model that repair is possible, that connection doesn't require perfection.
Take a stance on injustice. Let clients see you get upset. This validates their emotions and helps them trust their own perceptions. This helps them access ancestral wisdom instead of doubting themselves into compliance.
As individuals we should learn to spot therapeutic bypassing. It sounds like: "Let's focus on what you can control" when systems are harming you. "Have you tried gratitude?" when you're describing oppression. "You need to regulate" when you're expressing justified rage.
Look for therapists who will feel with you, not just observe you. In consultation calls, ask: "How do you handle it when clients are facing discrimination or injustice?" Listen for whether they can name it as such.
Build community to feel together. Therapy isn't enough when we're facing collective threats. We need each other. We need spaces where rage is welcome, where grief is honored, where we can say "this is not okay" and hear others say it back. We need spaces that honor ancestral knowledge about survival and resistance.
Moving Forward
We need to reconsider treating political activation as a mental health problem. We need to reconsider pathologizing the emotional responses that connect us to each other and to collective action.
When we fight the system together, when we feel our rage together, when we witness each other's pain without flinching we are doing the work of resistance. We are refusing to be isolated. We are staying human in a system that wants us numb. We are honoring what our ancestors knew: that we survive together, not alone.
So I'm reconsidering telling people to regulate their nervous system while the world is on fire.
I want to feel the heat with you. I want to rage with you. I want to witness your pain and let you see mine.
Because that's what it means to be truly present. That's what it means to be in this together. That's what it means to honor the resilience we've inherited and the resistance we're building now.