People keep asking me about “Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria” or RSD. They’re convinced that they or someone they know has it. The term describes emotional pain triggered by perceived or actual rejection, criticism, or failure, and there are plenty of descriptions and self-assessments available online.

According to these sources, you might have RSD if:

• You have a hard time taking suggestions from others, even when they’re constructive
• You’re defensive when you feel criticized
• You’ve been told you’re “too sensitive” frequently
• You experience anxiety in social situations, overthinking, and rumination

Here’s the thing: many people I know don’t like criticism, tend to overthink, and find social situations anxiety-provoking. I would argue that these experiences go hand in hand with being human. Some of the finest people I know are extremely sensitive. For the most part, I see this as a strength, not as an illness requiring an intervention.

It’s worth noting that RSD is not recognized in the DSM-5, meaning it has no formal diagnostic criteria. I never studied it in medical school or heard about it during my training to become a psychiatrist. The term was first popularized in 2010 by Dr. William Dodson, who studies ADHD, to describe a phenomenon he observed in his patients. While some people with ADHD identify with features of RSD, that doesn’t make it a disorder.

We’re told that if someone you love has RSD, you should offer non-judgmental reassurance, avoid conflict, validate their emotions, and withhold criticism. When communicating with them, we’re advised to ask if they’re feeling uncomfortable and do our best to ensure they feel supported and heard.

But here’s what troubles me: while I don’t deny that some people experience pain in the face of rejection and criticism, the label RSD is being used to pathologize normal human experiences of disappointment, as an excuse to avoid discomfort, and as a reason to stop trying.

The Problem with Calling It a Disorder

When we label intense reactions to rejection as a “disorder,” we risk creating an excuse for avoidance. The language of disorder becomes a permission slip to opt out—to not apply for the job, to not ask someone out, to not put your work out into the world. It transforms what could be a challenge to work through into an immutable condition to accommodate. And that’s dangerous, because avoidance is exactly what makes rejection sensitivity worse, not better.

This fear of making a misstep is fueled by an epidemic of perfectionism. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that every rejection or setback is a sign of failure rather than evidence of trying.

Thankfully, role models like Lindsey Vonn remind us that trying matters more than winning. As she recently wrote on Instagram after announcing her retirement from competitive skiing:

Instead of avoiding rejection, we should allow for it. Instead of fearing failure, normalize it. Instead of minimizing discomfort, lean into it. Instead of striving for perfection, embrace effort. Living fully is about fully trying.

Three Ways to Be Less Rejection Sensitive

1. Make a “No” Spreadsheet

A countertrend is emerging, particularly among entrepreneurs and job seekers who are openly sharing their rejection tallies on social media. People are posting screenshots of declined job applications, publishing essays about pitches that went nowhere, and creating actual spreadsheets documenting every “no” they’ve received. What started as a way to cope with the brutal realities of job hunting and startup fundraising has evolved into a badge of honor—proof that you’re putting yourself out there rather than playing it safe.

The rejection spreadsheet is a simple practice of tallying every “no” you receive as a marker of effort and courage. Job applications rejected? Mark it down. Pitch declined? Add it to the list. Social invitation that went nowhere? Count it.

The rejection spreadsheet reframes setbacks from shameful secrets into data points. It’s an invitation to put ourselves out there and reframes failure as part of a process. When you’re actively collecting rejections, each “no” becomes proof that you’re in the game, not evidence that you should retreat from it.

Speaking of collecting failures, Sweden recently opened a Museum of Personal Failure where visitors can share their own setbacks and see others’ stories of defeat displayed alongside their eventual triumphs. The museum’s mission? To normalize failure as an essential part of the human experience.

2. Build Your Failure Resume

Stanford’s Tina Seelig takes this concept even further. As a professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, she encourages students to create detailed failure resumes—comprehensive lists of their missteps alongside what they learned from each one.

This practice builds failure into the learning process itself. Disappointment and frustration stop being aberrations and become expected parts of growth. Perfectionism loses its grip when you’re documenting your mistakes rather than hiding them.

As Seelig puts it: “If you want more successes, you are going to have to tolerate more failure along the way.”

The failure resume puts challenges into perspective. When seen through the lens of progress and learning rather than judgment and shame, setbacks become less psychologically threatening. You’re not failing; you’re collecting evidence of effort.

3. Develop Failure Immunity

Russell Shaw, writing in The Atlantic, draws a compelling analogy from immunology. He calls it “failure immunity”—the psychological antibodies that allow people to face future disappointments without falling apart.

For years, pediatricians told parents to avoid exposing children to peanuts during infancy, believing this would protect them from allergic reactions. But this advice coincided with a spike in severe peanut allergies. When the guidance was reversed in 2017, peanut allergies meaningfully declined. Scientists now understand that early exposure helps the body learn that the allergen is harmless, just as encountering a weakened virus through vaccination teaches the immune system to produce protective antibodies.

Failure works similarly. We need exposure to manageable setbacks to develop the capacity to handle future disappointments. As Shaw notes, developmental psychologist Ann S. Masten describes resilience as “ordinary magic”—not extraordinary personal qualities, but the result of normal developmental processes. Those processes require practice at encountering obstacles and pushing through them. You can’t develop perseverance if you’ve never had to persevere.

There’s even a formalized approach called Rejection Therapy, where people deliberately court rejection—asking strangers for improbable favors, pitching outlandish ideas, requesting unreasonable discounts. The goal isn’t to succeed. It’s to experience rejection so frequently that it loses its sting. This is the opposite of avoidance, which is how anxiety maintains its power.

What We’re Teaching Our Children

Shaw describes a mother concerned about her daughter’s first-ever B in calculus. When Shaw suggested the experience of not being perfect might benefit her daughter, the mother looked at him “as if I had suggested her child take up base jumping.”

This captures what Shaw calls “a paradox of contemporary parenting: In trying to protect their children from any hint of failure, many parents risk making them more fragile.”

The consequences show up in children’s mental health. When children absorb the message that failure is catastrophic, even minor mistakes feel unbearable. This is what happens when we deny young people the opportunity to develop failure immunity—they don’t learn that disappointment is survivable, that mistakes are instructive, and that setbacks are temporary.

The research is clear: when parents focus exclusively on outcomes (winning, rankings, being the best), children develop fragile self-worth tied to performance. But when parents emphasize process over outcome—effort, strategy, learning, resilience—children develop a growth mindset. Children whose parents ask “Did you try your best?” and “What did you learn?” develop healthier relationships with achievement (and failure) than those whose parents ask “Did you win?” and “Did you get an A?”

Shaw’s guidance: resist the urge to rescue. When a child struggles with homework, providing answers sends the message “You can’t handle this.” He shares the story of his daughter who regularly lost sleep over English papers in high school, weeping over drafts she’d toss out. As painful as it was to watch, he resisted stepping in. She recently reflected on how much easier college writing has been because of how she “tortured” herself learning in high school.

Parents can also normalize failure by treating mistakes not as shameful secrets but as integral to our stories. Research on social learning theory by psychologist Albert Bandura shows that children develop coping strategies by observing how their parents respond to adversity.

Make Feedback Your Love Language

I recently attended a book party for Jennifer Wallace, author of the best-selling Mattering. She thanked the people who had read the first few drafts of the book and expressed gratitude for their sometimes harsh criticism. “Critical feedback is my love language,” she said. Perhaps the most radical shift isn’t just tolerating rejection, it’s actively seeking critical advice and learning to value it as deeply as praise.

In a culture obsessed with affirmation, making constructive criticism your “love language” means training yourself to hear “here’s what you could improve” as an act of care rather than an attack. It means recognizing that people who tell you hard truths are giving you something more valuable than people who only offer empty praise.

The best coaches, mentors, and colleagues aren’t the ones who make you feel good in the moment. They’re the ones who care enough to tell you what you need to hear. When someone takes the time to give you detailed, thoughtful advice, they’re investing in your growth. When they point out your blind spots, they’re offering you a gift most people never receive.

Learning to genuinely appreciate criticism requires reframing. Instead of thinking “They’re saying I’m not good enough,” try “They believe I’m capable of being even better.” Instead of “This feedback means I failed,” try “This feedback means someone cares enough to help me improve.”

The most successful people aren’t those who avoid criticism. They’re the ones who actively solicit it, who ask “What could I have done better?” after every presentation, who seek out the colleagues most likely to be brutally honest. They’ve learned that growth lives in the gap between where you are and where you could be. Advice will help you navigate this.

A Legacy of Trying, Not Winning

At a cultural moment when we’re encouraged to see ordinary disappointments as disorders and when perfectionistic standards are crushing people’s willingness to try, seeking and normalizing rejection is a healthier approach.

The rejection spreadsheet and failure resume aren’t about lowering standards or celebrating mediocrity. They’re about recognizing that meaningful achievement requires repeated failure. Everyone who has achieved something meaningful has a longer history of losses than wins. The difference is they didn’t stop after the defeats.

As Shaw writes, “The kid who gets straight A’s through high school may struggle more in college than the one who foundered in ninth grade, figured out what went wrong, and then kept going.” When we allow ourselves and our children the satisfaction of overcoming hurdles on our own, we develop something more powerful than a perfect transcript: confidence in our ability to recover and come back stronger.

Resilience isn’t innate. It’s built through exposure to manageable challenges and learning that we can handle more than we think. When we avoid rejection, we rob ourselves of the chance to discover our own durability. When we protect our children from every disappointment, we prevent them from building the psychological muscle they’ll need for a full life.

So start your spreadsheet. Build your failure resume. Make rejection a goal rather than a fear. Seek out the feedback others are too afraid to hear. Teach your children that setbacks are worth celebrating and that trying means you were brave enough to compete. Let them develop their failure immunity through manageable exposure to disappointments.

You might be surprised to discover that the pursuit of “yes” becomes a lot easier when you stop being terrified of “no.” That the people who challenge you care more than the people who only compliment you. And that real success isn’t perfection—it’s the willingness to keep showing up, keep learning, and keep growing, even when it’s uncomfortable.

As Lindsey Vonn reminds us: the only failure in life is not trying.

Valentine’s Day will arrive soon with its familiar rituals: flowers, chocolates, and heart-shaped everything. These visible gestures of affection have their place but what about the role of invisible acts of love in everyday life? Put simply, how much do the little things matter?

A lot, according to research.

It turns out that little acts of love like the text you send to check in during their stressful afternoon, the way you handle the dishes without being asked, how you remember to grab their prescription on your way home, fill the car up with gas, or simply choosing not to argue about something small because you know they’ve had a hard day are the bedrock of a solid relationship. Acts so ordinary they might blend into the background, but they’re invaluable.

Invisible Doesn’t Mean Inconsequential

Most of us assume that acts of kindness only matter if the recipient knows about it. No recognition, no reward.

It turns out, we’re wrong. Just because nobody heard the tree fall doesn’t mean it didn’t make a sound.

Research from the University of Rochester found that the emotional benefits of giving are strong for the giver, whether or not the recipient even notices the act. In fact, when psychologists Harry Reis, Ronald Rogge, and Michael Maniaci studied 175 newlywed couples over two weeks, they discovered that givers experienced benefits about 45 percent greater than recipients and this held true regardless of whether their kind gestures were recognized.

The researchers asked couples to track daily instances when one spouse set aside personal wishes to meet their partner’s needs: things like changing plans for their sake, doing something that showed they were valued, expressing kindness. They also monitored each person’s emotional state throughout the day using scales that measured feelings ranging from enthusiastic and happy to sad and hurt.

Before the study, the team expected the biggest emotional boost for givers would come when their partner noticed and appreciated the kind act. They assumed that recognition would make them feel valued. That prediction proved true, but only partially.

What they didn’t expect: givers benefited emotionally from compassionate acts even when their partner remained completely unaware. Of course, the recipient needed to notice the kindness to experience its benefits. But the person performing the act? Their wellbeing improved by simply doing something kind.

As the Dalai Lama believes and this research confirms: doing something for someone else enhances our own emotional state. The act itself is the reward.

When we act compassionately, putting someone else’s needs ahead of our own, we create psychological coherence. Our actions match our beliefs about what matters. That internal alignment is what generates the emotional benefit, not whether anyone notices.

The Emotional Return on Generosity

Every day offers dozens of small opportunities such as making coffee for your partner, listening fully when they need to talk, handling an errand they forgot, letting go of being right in a minor disagreement. We’ve been conditioned to think these acts only “count” if noticed and appreciated. The husbands and wives in the study reported performing compassionate acts an average of .65 times per day. These weren’t grand gestures, just everyday moments of considering their partner’s needs.

Beyond Keeping Score

In an era obsessed with reciprocity and fairness, this research is a reminder that you don’t need your partner to always match your efforts, notice your sacrifices, or validate your contributions for those actions to matter. The emotional returns are built into the act itself.

This isn’t permission for relationships to become one-sided. Mutual care and reciprocity still matter for relationship quality and longevity. But on a day-to-day basis, your well-being doesn’t depend on your partner (or you) keeping score or even noticing.

Bottom Line: Stop waiting for the right conditions to be generous. Don’t hold back compassion until you’re sure it will be appreciated. The emotional benefit is yours either way.

Which brings us back to Valentine’s Day. By all means, enjoy the roses and the chocolates (Aby if you’re reading this, I love Läderach) but remember that the real work of love happens in the unmarked moments in everyday life. The coffee made without being asked. The listening without fixing. The thousand invisible acts of considering someone else. Each one is strengthening your emotional well-being, building your capacity for connection, and making you the kind of partner you want to be.

I have a January birthday so aging is on my mind. There is a lot of advice out there about how to live long and well. Following a Mediterranean diet, regular exercise, and socializing are all well-established contributors to healthy aging and longevity. Snooze. This is not exactly breaking news. We have all heard this before.

I recently stumbled upon a lesser-known nugget of wisdom about positive aging from Dick Van Dyke, the legendary song-and-dance man from Mary Poppins and The Dick Van Dyke Show who celebrated his 100th birthday on December 13th. He attributes his longevity to a simple strategy.

It’s a remarkable admission from someone who has made it through a full century of reasons to be angry. He’s lived through wars, social upheaval, and his own twenty-five-year battle with alcoholism. Yet somehow, he never tumbled into that toxic vat of a “white heat kind of hate.”

Science backs him up. Research shows that recurrent episodes of anger can impair blood vessel function and heighten inflammation in the body, raising markers like IL-6 that accelerate aging. Chronic hostility functions like a physiological tax, straining the systems that keep us resilient. But Van Dyke’s insight goes deeper than physiology. What he’s describing is a kind of emotional discipline, not suppressing feelings, but refusing to let them calcify into the corrosive resentment that, as he says, eats you up from the inside.

In our current moment, we’re constantly fed reasons to be outraged—algorithms designed to trigger anger, news cycles built on conflict, social media engineered for fury. Van Dyke’s wisdom suggests that resisting this pull, making the conscious decision not to let anger harden into hate, might be one of the most important choices we make for our health and our lives.

Van Dyke’s insight reminds me of the three questions Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says people ask at the end of their lives: Did I love well? Did I live fully? Did I learn to let go? At any stage of our lives, these questions have a clarifying power and reorient us to what matters most: connection, engagement, and the ability to let things go (and not hate).

Did I love well?

This isn’t just about romantic love, though that counts. It’s about whether we let ourselves love the people around us, family, friends, community, even strangers. It’s about whether we treat people with kindness and show up when it matters.

Did I live fully?

This question challenges us to look at whether we actually engage with life or just watch it pass by. Do we say yes to experiences? Do we pursue what matters to us? Do we let ourselves feel things deeply? Kornfield suggests we ask ourselves whether we’re following a path with heart, not the path that looks good on paper or makes sense to other people, but the one that feels alive to us. Living fully doesn’t mean being reckless or chasing every impulse. It means being present to our own lives, awake to experience, willing to show up even when things are hard or uncertain.

Did I learn to let go?

This might be the hardest question, especially now when we’re surrounded by so much to rage against. But learning to let go means refusing to let that rage consume us. It means releasing our grip on how things should be, on past hurts, on the need to be right. It means we can disapprove, we can work for change, we can feel frustrated but we don’t let those feelings calcify into the kind of resentment that corrodes us from within.

What strikes me most about these three questions is how they reframe what matters as we age.

Having just had a birthday, I have been thinking a lot about these questions. We spend so much energy worrying about decline, about what we’re losing, about how things used to be or should be. Kornfield’s questions redirect us to what matters. They’re not about what we’ve achieved or accumulated. They’re about the quality of our presence, the generosity of our hearts, and our willingness to release what we cannot keep.

This year, I am doing my best to answer these questions with action. I spent my birthday at Citymeals on Wheels with family and friends, packing more than 1,550 meals for homebound older New Yorkers. Along with nourishment, the goal is to deliver connection, care, and dignity. Citymeals has always been about more than a meal.

There may be countless reasons to feel rage right now but I’ve learned that it’s hard to hold onto resentment when your hands are busy packing meals for someone else.

As Van Dyke reminds us, positive aging is about letting go and moving forward.

It’s mid-January, and if you’re feeling the weight of these dark days, you’re not alone. About 40% of Americans report their mood declining during winter, and today—the second Friday in January—is actually nicknamed “Quitter’s Day” because an estimated 80% of resolutions have already fizzled out by now.

When we’re looking to improve our lives, our instinct is always to add more, new habits, new routines, new rules. We rarely consider that the solution might be taking things away. This is known as Subtraction Neglect.

I’m not here to add more to your already full plate. Instead of piling on more obligations, let’s think about doing less.

Say No Sometimes

We know social engagement triggers endorphins, your body’s natural mood lifters. Shared laughter and conversation reduce stress and enhance wellbeing. But this doesn’t mean cramming your calendar with obligations.

Winter is actually the perfect season to connect more deeply with fewer people. Choose the small dinner over the crowded event. The intimate gathering over the packed social calendar. It’s okay to say “no thank you” sometimes.

Seek Sunlight

Even just 10 minutes of sunlight can benefit your mood. Winter’s shorter days disrupt our circadian rhythms, affecting sleep, mood, and energy levels. Sunlight is harder to find right now, which makes seeking it out more important than ever.

That said—if you’re really struggling with the extra darkness, maybe the answer is leaning into it: an earlier bedtime routine and some added restorative sleep might be exactly what you need.

Move A Little

A brand-new study published this month found that exercise can ease depression about as effectively as psychological therapy. But if launching a giant new gym routine feels overwhelming, think walks, gentle yoga, or stretching instead. Moderate-intensity exercise significantly improves mental health by altering brain chemistry and improving mood.

Winter Isn’t a Problem to Solve, It’s an Invitation to Live Differently

You may have heard those viral phrases like “goblin mode” or “bed rotting”—wanting to curl up on the couch all weekend and not face the cold. In small, healthy doses, this can actually be helpful. It’s the antidote to perfection.

Try gopher mode instead—go under and then pop back up. If you’re cozying up:

• Opt for a book over doom scrolling
• “Hibernate” with a friend or loved one
• Set a time limit, or resolve to go outside right after

Your Mid-January Fresh Start

If your resolution hasn’t been going well, or the wheels have fallen off altogether—it’s okay. The concept of resolutions needs a makeover. We don’t need to “fix” ourselves.

This time of year has too much punishment and demands perfection. Stop drinking! Stop staying up late! Stop, stop, stop! It’s time to stop “should”-ing on ourselves.

Here’s the good news: It’s not too late. Research shows that any moment when we’re “turning a page” (think birthdays, the first of a month, starting a new job, Mondays, even tomorrow) creates added motivation and a sense of new beginning.

Embrace a second fresh start date: February 1, or even this coming Monday. Progress is never linear. Setbacks are expected. Tomorrow can be your fresh start.

Go easy on yourself.

We’ve been taught to treat happiness like a vital sign—something to constantly check, measure, and optimize. Open Instagram and you’ll find a thousand gurus telling you to “choose happiness,” “manifest joy,” or “prioritize your bliss.”

But here’s what nobody mentions: the relentless pursuit of personal happiness might be precisely what’s making us miserable. Put simply, the more directly we pursue happiness, the more it eludes us.

When Wanting Happiness Backfires

Psychologist Iris Mauss at UC Berkeley has spent years documenting what she calls the paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Her research found that people who placed the highest value on being happy actually experienced lower wellbeing and more depressive symptoms. The more intensely they pursued happiness, the lonelier they felt.

Think about that. The people most devoted to feeling good were the ones feeling the worst.

The mechanism is surprisingly simple. When happiness becomes your goal, every moment becomes an evaluation. Am I happy now? What about now? You’re constantly measuring the gap between how you feel and how you think you should feel. That gap is where disappointment lives.

It’s like trying to fall asleep by commanding yourself to fall asleep. The trying is the problem.

Think Again

As a psychiatrist trained in positive psychology, I’ve learned that the most powerful interventions don’t involve chasing feelings at all. More often than not, they involve changing what you’re paying attention to.

So here’s a radically different question: “What am I contributing?”

Not “What can I contribute to make myself happy?” because that’s still the same trap. Simply: “What am I contributing right now? Today? This week?”

This shift from hedonic to eudaimonic wellbeing isn’t just philosophical. It has measurable biological effects. Research shows that people with higher eudaimonic well-being—meaning purpose, growth, and meaningful connection—have lower inflammatory markers, better cardiovascular health, and improved neuroendocrine regulation. Their bodies, not just their minds, are healthier.

Why This Question Works

Contribution succeeds where happiness-chasing fails for three reasons:

First, it redirects your attention outward.

When you’re focused on what you can offer, you stop the rumination cycle. Instead of monitoring your internal weather, you’re noticing what others need, what problems you might solve, what small difference you could make.

This attentional shift alone interrupts the self-focused thinking that feeds anxiety and low mood.

Second, it’s inherently actionable.

“Am I happy?” leads to introspection.

“What am I contributing?” is action oriented.

Can you help a colleague think through a difficult decision? Can you bring genuine curiosity to a conversation? Can you make someone’s day slightly easier? These are specific actions, not emotional states to manufacture.

Third, it creates the conditions for connection.

Barbara Fredrickson’s research on “positivity resonance“ shows that moments of genuine connection characterized by shared positive emotion, mutual care, and behavioral synchrony are among the strongest predictors of wellbeing.

But you can’t engineer these moments by seeking happiness. They arise naturally when you’re contributing to something or someone else.

The Neuroscience of Giving

Here’s what makes this approach so compelling: your brain is already wired for it. Functional MRI studies show that giving activates the same reward circuits in your brain as receiving—areas like the striatum and ventral tegmental area that are linked to motivation and pleasure. This is the neural basis of what researchers call “helper’s high” and “warm glow.”

Elizabeth Dunn’s research on prosocial spending demonstrates this beautifully. People who spend money on others report greater happiness than those who spend on themselves. But here’s the key insight: happiness isn’t the goal that drives the behavior. It’s the byproduct.

When you stop chasing happiness and start asking what you can contribute, happiness becomes free to show up on its own terms.

The Contribution Reset

This isn’t about grand gestures or self-sacrifice. It’s about reorienting your internal operating system away from mood-checking and toward meaning

Here are three daily practices to make contribution your default setting:

1. Start with direction.

Instead of assessing how you feel upon waking, ask:

“What’s one thing I can contribute today?”

Maybe it’s bringing energy to a difficult conversation, offering thoughtful feedback on a project, or simply making your home a warmer place for the people in it. It’s often in the little things…

2. Redirect in real time.

When you catch yourself in the “Why am I not happier?” loop, try this pivot:

“What needs doing here?”

Often there’s a specific action available, a call to make, a problem to solve, a person to check on. The shift from self-monitoring to task-focus is immediate relief.

3. Close with evidence.

At the end of the day, don’t review your feelings. Review where you added value.

Ask yourself:

“Where did I contribute today?”

Did you listen well? Help someone clarify their thinking? Create something useful? Approach your work with care? This builds what I call “contribution confidence”—a far more stable foundation than transient mood states.

The key to happiness isn’t trying to feel happy. Instead, examine what you’re contributing and whether it aligns with what matters to you.

• Are you contributing in ways that match your strengths?
• Are you connected to people who value what you offer?
• Are you working toward something you consider worthwhile?

Sometimes the answer is that you need to contribute differently, perhaps in different contexts, to different people, in ways that better fit who you are. That’s actionable information.

The Reframe

Happiness isn’t a performance review you’re failing. It’s an emergent property of a life well-lived, one where you’re engaged, connected, and contributing something that feels meaningful.

So the next time you catch yourself asking “Am I happy?”—try this instead:

Pause, redirect, and ask “What am I contributing?”

Then do whatever it is with your full attention.

The happiness you’ve been chasing might just arrive while you’re busy making a difference.

This weekend brought devastating news from two corners of the world. At Brown University, two students were killed and nine injured during finals week. At Sydney’s Bondi Beach, sixteen people—including a ten-year-old girl—were murdered at a Hanukkah celebration. Communities are shattered. Grief is overwhelming.

In the wake of such unimaginable tragedies, a familiar response has already begun: calls for expanded mental health services, more therapists, additional crisis counseling.

These resources matter. But here’s what the research tells us that might surprise you: in moments of crisis, the most powerful medicine often isn’t found in a therapist’s office. It’s found in the people already around you.

The Default Response Isn’t Always the Right Response

We’ve developed a cultural reflex: when something terrible happens, we immediately reach for professional intervention. It makes sense. Trauma requires expertise, doesn’t it? But decades of research on how people actually recover from traumatic events tells a more nuanced story.

After trauma exposure, social support from friends emerges as one of the most significant predictors of recovery. A 2024 longitudinal study published in Behavioral Sciences tracking 151 individuals in the year following trauma found that increases in support from friends consistently accelerated recovery from PTSD symptoms across the entire recovery period. The relationship was bidirectional: feeling supported helped people heal, and as people healed, they were better able to maintain those connections.

What’s striking is that this wasn’t about professional support. It was about having someone check in, listen without judgment, and simply be present.

What Happens When We Turn to Each Other

Think about what actually happens in the hours and days after a crisis. At Brown, students didn’t wait for counseling appointments. They found each other. One student who fled the engineering building ended up sheltering with a classmate he’d never met before—someone who trusted him enough to bring him into her home simply because they shared the bond of being Brown students.

In Sydney, as the horror of Bondi Beach unfolded, lines formed at blood donation centers stretching around blocks. A GoFundMe for the bystander who wrestled a gun from one of the attackers raised nearly a million dollars in hours. The Australian Red Cross reported the biggest community response since the 2009 bushfires.

That immediate human response—the instinct to reach out, to shelter, to protect, to give—isn’t just kindness. It’s the foundation of healing.

Research on community resilience consistently shows that natural support systems activate faster and reach more people than formal interventions. After disasters, neighbors checking on neighbors, friends gathering to process shock together, communities organizing mutual aid—these informal networks become the first responders for psychological wellbeing.

The Therapeutic Power of Being Known

There’s something profoundly healing about being known by the people in your life. When your roommate notices you’ve been quieter than usual, when your friend texts because they had a feeling you might need to talk, when your parent calls just to hear your voice—these moments of recognition carry immense power.

Professional therapy has its place, particularly for those developing clinical symptoms or those whose trauma history makes this event especially triggering. But for many people navigating shock, grief, and fear, what they need most isn’t a stranger with credentials. They need their people.

The evidence bears this out. Studies examining social support after traumatic events found that emotional support—being listened to, feeling cared for—significantly reduces psychological distress. This kind of support doesn’t require training. It requires presence, consistency, and genuine care.

When Professional Help Makes Sense

This isn’t an argument against therapy. Some people will need and benefit enormously from professional support, particularly those who:

• Develop persistent symptoms that interfere with daily functioning
• Have a history of trauma that this event reactivates
• Find their existing support system insufficient or complicated
• Experience severe anxiety, depression, or PTSD symptoms

Professional intervention becomes essential when symptoms persist, when someone feels unsafe, or when informal support isn’t enough. But making therapy the default response for everyone affected by a traumatic event can inadvertently suggest that normal grief and shock reactions are pathological—that you can’t handle this without expert help.

What Actually Helps

If you or someone you care about is navigating the aftermath of trauma, here’s what the research suggests matters most right now:

Show up consistently.

Don’t wait for them to ask for help. Text. Call. Knock on their door. One of the most powerful aspects of social support is its reliability. Regular check-ins signal “you’re not alone” more effectively than occasional grand gestures.

Listen more than you fix.

Resist the urge to problem-solve or minimize. “That sounds really scary” is more helpful than “at least you’re safe now.” People need their experience validated, not rationalized away.

Be present with uncertainty.

Nobody knows what to say right now because there isn’t a right thing to say. “I don’t know what to say, but I’m here” is honest and real.

Create normal moments.

Go for a walk together. Get coffee. Watch something mindless on TV. Recovery isn’t just about processing trauma—it’s also about remembering that normal life still exists.

Don’t pathologize normal responses.

Trouble sleeping, replaying events, feeling on edge, crying unexpectedly—these are normal responses to abnormal events. They don’t automatically require professional intervention. They require patience, support, and time.

The Community Holds the Medicine

There’s a reason humans have survived crises throughout history long before we had trauma therapists. We’ve always had each other. Communities heal together not despite the absence of professional intervention, but often because of their capacity for mutual care.

The Brown community faces a long and painful road ahead. There’s no timeline for this kind of grief, no simple path forward. But healing, when it comes, will likely emerge from the ordinary moments of connection—friends gathering in dining halls not because they have answers but because they need to be together, roommates sitting in silence because sometimes presence is all we can offer, study groups that eventually resume not because life returns to normal but because doing something familiar can feel like solid ground when nothing else does.

It will happen through the accumulated small gestures: the text that says “thinking of you,” the offer to walk someone back from the library after dark, the friend who shows up with food because eating feels impossible but must be done anyway.

Professional support can enhance this process for those who need it. But it cannot replace it. Your friends, your family, your community—they’re not just the people who hold you until you can get to a therapist. They are the therapy.

In our rush to professionalize care, we’ve sometimes forgotten what generations before us knew: we heal in connection. The most important question to ask right now isn’t “should I see a therapist?” It’s “who can I reach out to?” and “who might need me to reach out to them?”

The answer to both questions is probably simpler than you think. It’s the people who already know you, who already care about you, who are feeling this same shock and searching for the same reassurance that life goes on.

Call them. Text them. Find them. Be with them.

That’s where healing begins.