Down the Rabbit Hole: What Kind of Help Do We Really Need?

There are moments in life when we all need help.

When the pain is too loud.
When the thoughts won’t stop spinning.
When the heart has been broken one too many times,
and you no longer trust your own reflection.

So where do we turn?

Today, the answer is often immediate: medication.
A prescription. A pill. A promise that the darkness can be muted.

And for some, it helps.
In the moment.
There is no shame in reaching for relief when suffering becomes unbearable.
There are those whose symptoms ease,
who feel steadied by chemical support
in a world that has become too heavy.

But for many, that moment fades.
And the promise that help is here
quietly turns into the addition of another drug…
and then another.
Until the days are measured by doses,
and the pain—the original pain—is still ever-present,
only now cloaked in fog.

We must speak of this.
We must also speak of the silence that grows
when trauma is medicated instead of witnessed.
When grief is pathologized.
When the tender intelligence of the emotional body
is treated as a chemical defect to be corrected.

What’s missing from this system
is the most essential thing of all: curiosity.
Not about what's “wrong” with someone—
but what happened to them.
What is asking to be seen, to be healed, to be held?

There are no blood tests for depression.
No brain scans for trauma.
No medical proof that these states of being
are purely chemical imbalances.
And yet, the default treatment is chemical.
Without question. Without alternative.
Without ever truly asking, what do you need to heal?

This is not healing.
This is sedation.

So where is the other path?

It begins in listening.
In trauma-informed care.
In spaces that welcome the full story—pain, resilience, lineage, loss.
In community. In connection.
In therapies that work with the body, not against it.
In nourishment—of soul, of spirit, of nervous system.

True help honors the person, not just the symptom.
It understands that behaviors are often adaptations,
that anxiety may be a signal,
that depression may be the soul’s protest
against a life that has become unlivable.

We must create spaces that do not rush to label,
that do not mistake pain for pathology,
that do not equate wellness with silence.

Yes, some people need support.
But let us ask:
What kind of support leads to wholeness, not dependence?
What kind of care invites long-term healing, not temporary suppression?

Down this rabbit hole, we do not find easy answers.
But we find something better:
The courage to ask better questions.

And that may be the first step toward true help.