When Will It Be Enough?

There’s a question that’s been echoing in my chest more and more lately:

When will it be enough?

Another shooting.
Another family torn apart.
Another headline so tragic it barely registers—because we’ve become so desensitized to pain that we now process it like background noise.

We scroll, nod in horror, whisper “how awful,” and move on.

But I can’t move on today.
And maybe you can’t either.

Maybe you’ve reached that quiet tipping point where the sadness turns into something heavier—something like exhaustion, something like rage, something like this can’t be it.

Because it’s not.

We've Made Numbness Normal

We are living in a society that treats chronic violence like weather.
Just another storm we’re supposed to ride out.
Just another "incident."
Just another mental health crisis we blame on “a broken system” but never actually address.

And while we keep blaming systems, the pain continues to metastasize in people.

We tell kids to stay calm in lockdown drills and pretend that’s normal.
We give people pills when what they need is connection, regulation, and a safe place to fall apart.
We avoid the hard conversations and wonder why the world keeps getting louder.

We have made numbness a cultural norm.
And now we’re surprised when emotional dysregulation explodes into public acts of violence.

It's Not Just a Gun Problem. It's a Nervous System Crisis.

I’m not writing this as a politician.
I’m writing this as a human.
One who has spent the last decade learning how to feel again.
One who was raised to hustle, succeed, and never crack under pressure—and who paid the price for it in the form of anxiety, stimulant dependence, and burnout.

And here’s what I’ve learned:

You can only repress emotions for so long before they erupt.

We’re not just dealing with broken policies.
We’re dealing with an entire population that has been taught not to feel.

Taught to push through.
Taught to perform.
Taught to suppress.
Taught to chase dopamine hits instead of building emotional resilience.

And then we act surprised when people snap.

The Pill-First Culture Isn’t Helping

I’m not anti-medication.
But I’m deeply opposed to how easily we reach for prescriptions without doing the work to understand why someone is in pain in the first place.

When a child is restless, we sedate them.
When a teenager is angry, we label them.
When an adult is anxious or sad, we numb them with SSRIs and hope they never ask too many questions.

Meanwhile, emotional intelligence is barely taught.
Somatic awareness is absent from most classrooms.
And nervous system regulation is something you only learn after you’ve broken down and gone looking for answers on your own.

That’s not healthcare. That’s damage control.

Feeling Isn’t the Enemy—It’s the Way Out

The truth is, we can’t numb our way into a healed society.
We can’t suppress our way into connection.
And we certainly can’t medicate the root cause of a regulation crisis that’s rooted in trauma, overstimulation, social disconnection, and unresolved emotional chaos.

Feeling is not weakness. It’s wisdom.
But most people were never taught how to do it without losing control.

So instead, they run.
Or they explode.
Or they bury everything until the pain becomes physical.

And in some tragic cases, they turn that pain outward—because pain that has no outlet will always look for an exit.

When Will It Be Enough?

When will we stop treating emotional collapse as an individual failure?
When will we stop asking kids to “calm down” without teaching them how?
When will we stop pretending a daily cocktail of caffeine, tech addiction, prescription meds, and cultural pressure is a sustainable way to live?

When will we realize that what’s happening on our streets, in our schools, and in our own homes is not random—it’s a mirror?

It’s reflecting what happens when we build an emotionally avoidant society.

We can’t keep chasing stimulation and expecting peace.
We can’t keep disconnecting from our bodies and expecting health.
We can’t keep masking over symptoms and expecting healing.

So What Do We Do?

This is where I always get stuck.
Because I don’t have a clean answer.
I don’t have a 5-step plan for fixing a culture that thrives on suppression.

But I do know where it starts:

• It starts with feeling.

• It starts with slowing down long enough to notice the tightness in your chest before you reach for your phone.

• It starts with breathing through discomfort instead of escaping it.

• It starts with asking your kids how they feel and actually making space for the answer.

And yes—it starts with learning how to regulate ourselves before we expect it from anyone else.

We need to stop outsourcing our humanity to algorithms and prescriptions.
We need to stop pretending that emotional chaos is just part of modern life.
We need to start building nervous system literacy into our homes, our schools, and our communities—because emotional regulation is not a luxury anymore. It’s survival.

If You’re Still Reading This

Thank you.

This isn’t a journal for likes.
It’s not a newsletter to go viral.

It’s a note from the heart of someone who’s spent the last few years waking up.
And falling apart.
And rebuilding from the inside out.

If your heart feels heavy right now—good.
That means it’s still open.
That means you haven’t gone numb.

And if you’re ready to feel more, regulate better, and start untangling from this burnout loop we’ve all been trapped in…

You’re not alone.

We're in it together.
Learning out loud.
Failing forward.
And choosing to stay awake in a world that rewards sleepwalking.

That’s enough—for today.

-PKJ