This Corner of the Internet Is Exposure Therapy
(aka The Portal Monologue)
I always say that this corner of the internet is, in many ways, a form of exposure therapy. Not just for the viewers, but also for myself. Because the truth is: I often feel like Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia—completely overtaken by the sheer number of patterns I see in the emotional maps of people’s lives. Family systems, coping loops, trauma reenactments, cultural projection, all of it starts connecting in this tangled mess of emotional strings and my brain just won’t let it go.
What I’m witnessing on both a clinical and cultural level is a mass misattunement to reality. Our internal threat detection systems—wounded by unresolved pain are being affirmed, agitated, and algorithmically rewarded. People are mistaking activation for danger.
Discomfort for abuse.
Challenge for harm.
And when a nervous system in the day to day can’t distinguish between a disagreement and a violation, we end up with a society that lacks resilience, emotional maturity, and critical thinking. The result?
Conversations collapse before they begin.
People assume bad intent instead of examining internal meaning.
Relationships rupture not because of difference, but because we’ve stopped building the skills to be with difference.
From my clinical lens, it’s clear: these are not random emotional trends. This is the downstream effect of unresolved trauma, digital projection, and systemic disconnection. And so when I create content, write reflections, and sit with the research—I really do feel like Charlie. String on the wall. Big circles around trauma loops. Trying to connect what most people miss.
Because if we can’t name the rupture, we’ll keep reenacting it.
That’s what this work is about.
It isn’t simply a stream of content; it is an invitation for your nervous system to tolerate truth. And truth has nuance.
My role is to name what I see, from a clinical psychological lens mixed in with my flare, clinical training, education, and conceptualizations. The societal struggle with this is, the moment I release the information—despite it being from neutral clinical lens holding the nuance. The amygdala and autonomic nervous system of many viewers register it as dangerous. That sense of harm isn’t always evidence of actual danger; it is evidence of activation. In clinical language, it is the body’s threat detection system its neuroception—responding to stimulation. Neuroception is the body’s subconscious threat appraisal system. Unlike perception which is conscious and cognitive, neuroception operates below the level of awareness and evaluates safety, danger, or life threat based on subtle internal and external cues, usually in other people (Porges, 2011).
Polyvagal Theory explains that the autonomic nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for cues of safety or threat, what Stephen Porges describes as the “neural surveillance system.” This includes tone of voice, facial expression, posture, memory activation, and even internal sensations. It doesn’t wait for your logical brain to weigh in. By the time you’re “feeling” something, your body’s already made a decision. That decision you think and feel— as fact.
In trauma-impacted individuals, this system becomes overactive or miscalibrated, often flagging neutral or mildly discomforting situations as dangerous. Such as difficult conversations where you may have to establish or reinforce a boundary, or where you have to hold someone else accountable. We must understand, this is not about something being broken inside of us — not at all— it’s about a muscle in us that has not been excerisied. Many of us never had people in our lives growing up that exercised these behavioral/ relational models. Leaving many of us having to learn the hard way.
When someone says “this feels harmful,” that does not necessarily mean harm is objectively occurring. It means the body’s early warning system has picked up a signal, real or remembered that resembles danger. This is the hallmark of a dysregulated nervous system: it doesn’t distinguish between then and now. As Deb Dana writes, “the autonomic nervous system doesn’t tell time.” This is crucial to understand, because many of us take the emotional and physiological arousal that is in the body as confirmation that what felt harmful is factual. Rather than assessing if it could mean you lack muscle in this particular area.
This is why emotional discomfort is often misinterpreted as oppression or interpersonal threat online. Without pause or self-regulation, people react from their adaptive survival state, not their wise, regulated self (what I call the higher self). And when algorithms reward reactivity, the unprocessed nervous system becomes the main character. And worse, social conditioning kicks in…
Most of us have been trained to expect that truth will be softened, decorated, or delivered in a way that regulates our discomfort. We assume someone else will wrap it in warmth before we’re asked to digest it. But if we depend on an external person to regulate what is happening internally, that is not a flaw of the messenger; it is a mirror for our own unfinished work.
This is not judgment.
It is data.
It is your nervous system showing you what still needs integration.
I sometimes call this space a “nervous system safari” because, like a field researcher, you can observe your own defenses in the wild. Some readers come along for the journey, entering the portal reflecting on their reactions. Others do “drive‑bys,” watching a single clip and drawing global conclusions about my/ or the messengers motives. They may say, “She’s defending narcissists” not because they are malicious but because their protector parts are filtering the experience. In exposure therapy we don’t shame the reaction; we notice it, name it, and allow it to become a breadcrumb pointing toward what is still unprocessed.
I learned this long before I became a clinician. As a child in the early 2000s, when neighborhood culture still meant riding bikes until the streetlights came on, my relationship with Pokémon cards became a metaphor for how I would later approach human behavior. While other children traded cards for value, rarity, or battle power, I collected them based on how they made me feel.
Yes I know… I know… I was and still am a very sentimental person.
I mean, I am a Cancer… :)
The kids on the block, could careless about what I felt… The would hate to see me coming—note book in one hand, the other steering the bike as I head to the gang of kids on the front porch playing their battles or trading.
What fascinated me at that time about Pokemon cards were the holographic ones, the ones that I personally felt were “pretty.” No one would want to trade their cards with little Sav, because they knew she would cut out the images, glue them into her spiral bound notebook to preserve the images rather than the use them for the function. The boys hated it. “She doesn’t even care about the cards,” they’d say. But I did care—just not in the way they were taught to care. I cared in a way where I wanted to savor them. Without realizing it, I was breaking the game, revering the image instead of following the script. That is what this portal is: a refusal to play by inherited rules about how knowledge, pain, or healing “should” look.
Now for those of you into Pokémon card, don’t come for ya girl okay, I was only a kid at the time. 😅
Many people online believe they are highly sensitive, intuitive, or spiritually gifted when, in fact, they are living inside a trauma loop. Their nervous system is over‑functioning, their protector part is performing, and what they call “personality” is just patchwork within a quilt of survival mechanisms. As van der Kolk (2014) reminds us, “the body keeps the score.” Chronic activation shows up as tight shoulders, locked jaws, scrolling thumbs, shallow breath, and the absence of discernment—just reaction, inflammation, and vibes masquerading as values.
From a clinical perspective, many self-identified empaths or HSPs (Highly Sensitive Persons) may actually be experiencing chronic sympathetic arousal (fight/flight) or functional freeze states where the nervous system remains mobilized under the guise of “insight.” These patterns can mimic sensitivity or “downloads,” but are often better understood as interoceptive confusion and dissociation: the inability to accurately read one’s internal state while over-interpreting external cues.
In simpler terms: if you can’t consistently distinguish between your own emotion and someone else’s, you’re not receiving a message—you’re likely caught in an unresolved activation loop. And this is where I want to challenge those using spiritual or psychological language as identity shields:
How can you be so convicted that you’re picking up on the emotions of others, when you haven’t yet built the nervous system capacity to sit with your own?
Trust me as someone who is an empath, it’s a blessing and a curse if not protected and managed. You can’t be out in this world as an empath raw doggin’ life without any self protection or while abandoning the self.
If we are normalizing mental health, then we must learn to understand that disassociation isn’t always obvious it can look like activism, advocacy, or even deep compassion. But if you are constantly overwhelmed by the pain of others while ignoring the wounds within yourself, it’s likely that what you’re calling empathy is actually projection or emotional enmeshment in disguise.
This is compounded by the algorithm itself. We’re not merely consuming videos; we’re being conditioned. Each scroll, comment, and hot take reinforces the core wound: people are dangerous, I can’t trust them, no one gets me. Hebb’s (1949) principle—“neurons that fire together, wire together” isn’t just a neuroscience slogan, its lived reality. It’s what happens to your nervous system every time you repeat the cycle of outrage and projection. Repetition strengthens the loop, and the body registers the loop as familiar.
Every time you reenact the cycle of outrage and projection, your nervous system encodes the pattern. It creates subtle imprints into the subconscious mind. Repetition doesn’t just shape memory—it reshapes your physiology. And because the body registers familiar as safe, even if it’s harmful, the loop becomes a comfort zone of pain.
This explains why many struggle to leave abusive relationships or dynamics.
But here’s the part I don’t think we’re talking about enough:
Your amygdala doesn’t have eyeballs.
It doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and a TikTok video about betrayal. It doesn’t care if it’s your trauma or someone else’s you’re consuming through the screen.What you’re feeding your nervous system matters. This isn’t just about what you eat—it’s your mental diet.
The songs.
The shows.
The group chats.
The doom scrolls.
The performative vulnerability decorated as healing.
We’re soaking in emotional residue from the emotional toxics we all release in our emotional vibration everyday! So much so that our own nervous systems can’t tell what’s ours anymore. And then we wonder why we feel numb. Or panicked. Or like every behaviors of overstimulation and burn out is now ADHD.
But maybe what you’re calling a diagnosis is just your body trying to scream through the noise.
Trying to say, “I’ve had enough.”
If you’re serious about your healing, be just as serious about your input.
Discernment isn’t a judgment practice—it’s a practice in self-leadership and protection.