I was having coffee with a friend the other day, and she said something that hit me right in the gut because I’ve heard it a thousand times from clients, from loved ones, and from my own head.
She said, “I just always think I’m not good enough. That things are going to fall apart. That nothing will work out.”
Not as a passing worry. Not even as a flavor of pessimism. More like a terrorist, a voice in her head telling her things she would never dare say to another human being. Not to a friend. Not to a child. Not even to a stranger she didn’t like.
Only to herself.
And I thought: this is a psychological autoimmune disease.
Just like the body sometimes turns against itself for reasons we can’t fully see, sometimes the mind turns inward and attacks its own dignity, its own brilliance, its own basic worth.
Almost everyone I know has experienced some version of this. Chronic. Episodic. Loud. Quiet. It’s part of the human condition.
(…Except maybe people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump, who I’m convinced do not suffer from emotional autoimmune responses because you actually need a functioning conscience to have one. Complete fucking psychopaths don’t tend to have this particular issue.)
But the rest of us, those of us who are trying to be good humans in a collapsing world, we get hit with this stuff all the time.
And here’s why it matters:
When you’re fighting an internal war against yourself, when your emotional health is in a constant state of flare-up, you don’t have the energy to fight the real battles: the ones in your life, in your relationships, in your community, in the world.
So tending to your emotional ecosystem isn’t just “self-care.”
It’s strategic readiness.
It’s spiritual hygiene.
It’s political resistance.
Because one way we combat the loud, destructive, power-hoarding forces in this world is by keeping ourselves well. Well enough to stay awake, to take action, to build something better.
And do you know the most powerful antidote I know to emotional autoimmune attacks?
Connection.
If I could sit every person down who’s spiraling in self-terrorizing thoughts and ask them to say out loud what they’re telling themselves privately, a few things almost always happen:
1. Reality checks in real-time.
Once you say it out loud, you hear how untrue, or at least how distorted, it is.
2. New perspectives open.
Even if some part of what you’re feeling has truth in it, there are a million other ways to interpret it, ways that don’t require you to annihilate yourself.
3. You stop fighting alone.
Because when you’re in it, you can rarely pull yourself out just by thinking harder. You need other humans. That’s a feature, not a bug, of being human. We are social beings.
So sharing what’s happening in your inner world is not just a personal act of wellness, it’s a collective survival strategy.
It’s a refusal to let the forces inside you (or the forces outside you) turn you against yourself.
It’s a political act.
A liberation act.
A reminder that your life is worth defending from both the inner and outer monsters.
Take care of your emotional ecosystem.
We need you well enough to fight for your life, and for all of ours.
Photo by Михаил Секацкий on Unsplash