some ppl confuse empathy and/or spirituality with hyper-optimism & I think this is dangerous. whether the hyper-optimism comes from a place of privilege or is itself a self-defense mechanism to keep their own painful emotions buried, when ppl respond to other ppl’s pain with hyper-optimism it often further invalidates that pain, which ultimately only leads to more pain. I view emotions as energy frequencies, ranging on a scale from high to low, so it only makes physical sense to me that low-frequency feelings, such as depression, for example, are not going to suddenly bounce up to the high-end range of the scale, & even if they did, this dramatic shift would be unpleasant & maybe frightening, forcing your energetic system to adjust from one polarity to the other. my own energetic system used to do this all the time & it was excruciatingly painful, known to some in the western psych world as rapid-cycling bipolar disorder and/or the rapidly changing emotions that often accompany the class of symptoms the DSM calls ‘borderline personality disorder’ (which I have a *very long impassioned theory about that I will maybe share at another time*). So anyway if someone is feeling on the low-end of the spectrum it makes sense to me to 1) validate those emotions! Emotions are energetic signals – they are telling us something, even the unpleasant emotions we would rather not hear from. We are energetic beings & exist in so many more multi-dimensional ways than our physical bodies. Low-frequency/painful emotions are messages that something is wrong, & some might say “well yes there is a lack of serotonin in the brain” but that still doesn’t answer *why* there is a lack of serotonin in the brain (and sometimes it has nothing to do w/ serotonin or the physical brain at all so neuroscience as the universal foundation for figuring out emotional pain really doesn’t cut it for me & also largely ignores or at least does not center the roots of trauma & sociopolitical oppression), & if you’ve been my facebook friend for a while you know I am all about getting to the root of things. which brings me back to my favorite topic: QUANTUM PHYSICS. I believe that feelings are composed of subatomic particles just like everything else in the universe, which means I believe that our feelings have a direct impact on the physical world simply because feelings are, at their subatomic root, already a part of the physical world. BUT – I believe it is dangerous to translate this into the idea that hyper-optimism is the key to transforming painful emotions into less or not-painful emotions (this is known as the cringe-worthy concept of “positive thinking” as the cure to all yr woes), because to do so is to ignore or resist the energetic messages those painful emotions are sending us, & it is **resistance to energy** that is most painful of all. I believe painful energy needs to be processed & before it can be processed it has to be recognized & validated, & to me recognizing & validating where people are currently emotionally at is the first step in extending true empathy. and this true empathy is, at an energetic level, the highest frequency of all!!! I call this highest frequency Love & it is so fine & so electric & so infinite & multi-dimensional that you don’t even have to speak it for it to do its work. it works subtly, beneath the surface of what we can see, so that when someone is in pain & you choose to empathize with that person instead of project hyper-optimism or what *you* think they *should* be doing/feeling, you are both meeting that person’s current emotional need, an energetic alignment which helps provide some energetic stability, (which is much healthier than jumping from low to high anyway), AND stirring up the subconscious or perhaps unconscious high frequencies of Love that will continue to do their work even after you are finished extending empathy. this is why when we are in pain we cringe when someone tells us to just “cheer up” or “snap out of it.” that cringing is a sign that their energetic vibrations are not what we currently need, otherwise their messages would feel good! often we know exactly what we need: someone who is willing to listen & validate us, which is why it feels so good when someone does. that good feeling is the subtle work of Love as we process our pain. we need empathy/ Love.

a lot of hyper-optimism comes from privileged New Age thinking that does not empathize with sociopolitical experiences outside of the status quo, which is partly because we are currently living in a global empathy deficit & it is exhausting & downright awful. yet somehow I have hope, & I swear that’s not hyper-optimism lol.

I love you. <3