The Lie of Packaged Healing and the Truth About Feeling

“Emotions are not problems to be solved. They are signals to be felt.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

We’ve been taught to package our emotions like fast food—served quick, tidy, and with a smile. Americanized feelings. Digestible. Non-threatening. Always paired with productivity.

If you’re sad, journal it. If you’re angry, regulate it. If you’re overwhelmed, fix it with a three-step plan and a green juice. And if that doesn’t work? Try again. You probably missed a step.

This is how we sell emotional healing in the West—marketed like a self-improvement product. Seven-minute abs. Seven habits. Five love languages. Follow the formula. Find the peace.

But what if the formula is the lie?

As a mental health therapist, I’ve lived it on both sides. I’ve sat in the client chair, feeling broken because my sadness didn’t resolve after enough gratitude lists. And I’ve sat across from clients who whisper their grief like a confession, wondering what they did wrong because they still feel something.

They aren’t doing it wrong. They’re just human.

Healing isn’t about “doing” our feelings. It’s about learning how to actually feel them—without the compulsion to justify them or translate them into something useful.

You owe no explanation for your feelings.

And still, even knowing that, I get caught in it too.

I, too, am a product of this culture—a place where feelings are only tolerated when packaged properly. Not too loud. Not too long. Preferably resolved by morning.

Because of that, there are days I feel a deep aloneness. But I’ve come to realize the aloneness isn’t a flaw—it’s a longing. A longing to be witnessed in the fullness of my humanity. Not fixed. Not analyzed. Just seen.

I don’t need validation. I don’t want to defend how I feel. I just want space. Presence. Room to let the feeling pass through me.

The loneliness reminds me how deeply I’ve been shaped by a culture that fears emotions unless they come with an action plan.

So I’ve learned to hide mine from most people—not because I’m ashamed, but because they’re afraid. People are afraid of their own feelings, so of course they’ll fear the vulnerability of mine. Most people in this country don’t know what to do with real feelings. And the doing has become the problem.

That fear of being too much or too messy is rooted deep not only in American culture but also me.

That part inside me judges the part of me that feels sadness at times. She calls it weakness. Not out of cruelty, but out of fear. She believes that if she can shame that part, a much younger, more authentic part that lives inside me, she won’t risk being shamed by others.

I’m sure many other Americans have this exact same part inside them as well.

We have to be tough, suck it up—whatever that even means.

The part of me that gets sad. The part that gets afraid. The part that feels lonely. These are parts I exiled long ago. But I am beginning to bring them home to me. The parts that are terrified of taking up space. They don’t know yet how precious they are.

They’re not just tender. They’re wise. They’re the intuitive, empathetic, deeply alive parts of me. The parts our culture has spent countless centuries trying to forget.

But I won’t forget those parts. Not anymore.

I speak to them now, with clarity and compassion. I tell them: You are allowed to feel without defending it. You are allowed to take up space without apologizing for the weight of your truth. Expand. Don’t shrink.

The sad one. The scared one. The one who wants to hide. The one who’s learning to stay. Even the critic. They can all exist inside me—side by side—without contradiction. Without shame. Without needing to explain themselves to anyone.

I will no longer betray them because others betray their own parts and project their self-betrayal onto me.

There’s a whole galaxy inside me, and there’s a whole galaxy inside of you. Of course no one else will fully understand it.

What matters is that I do.

And I’m learning… I’m not here to be understood. I’m here to simply be me—and to allow all that resides in me to be, too.

And maybe you are, too.

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