You know what’s really spooky?

Happy October! Spooky season is upon us!

You may or may not be someone who cares about holidays like these, but if you’re a human living in the U.S., it’s unlikely that you feel completely immune to being surrounded by the festitvities of this time of year.

Personally, I love a holiday, so Halloween/Samhain is something I enjoy…except that I get scared super easily, so all the typical spooky stuff is out for me.

But autumn spices, pumpkins, and people getting excited about a time of year that we often also felt giddy about as kids? I’ll always take that nostalgia and camaraderie.

It got me thinking today, though, about the things that truly feel scary, and that aren’t just a part of a holiday or a movie or a party…the real horrors that we’re living in right now.

While I’m pretty wimpy when it comes to fright, I think I’d prefer going to a haunted house every night of the week than the hellscape reality it can feel like we’re living in every moment of every day.

You know what’s really spooky to me? The state-sanctioned violence against immigrants, people in prisons, trans people, Black people, People of Color, Indigenous people, women, the land below our feet and the air we breathe.

There is real terror in the billionaires controlling our lives in deeply felt ways, the way that capitalism was taught to us as the way of freedom when it’s really choking us to death.

The horror of witnessing genocide and being told to close our minds and go about our days as if nothing is happening…that is terrifying.

We may view October scaries as fun and playful, but the all-year atrocities are deeply painful, and it often feels like it requires immense cognitive dissonance to survive it.

But we are not meant to witness and feel and experience all of this and also feel fully functional.

If this struggle has found you and it’s gotten harder to ignore the impact, therapy can be a place to process what we’re being told to disregard.

I’m a therapist who will not dismiss what you’re noticing…and I’m also not going to tell you this is something we can fix.

Therapy doesn’t “fix”…but it does give you room to breathe. To feel. To be angry. To honor that the realities feel super scary and being asked to still go to your dayjob and do the grocery shopping and pay the bills feels really incongruous with all of this.

When the scaries don’t feel fun…when they feel overwhelming or deflating or hopeless…I’d love to be able to support you, to witness you, and to help you move through the disasters in ways that feel more hopeful and more accessible.

Reach out to me here and let’s schedule a free consultation! I’d be truly honored to hold space for you.