The Return of Mental Health as Capacity
RaQuel Hopkins’s viral rise may reveal a public craving for strength over fragility.
When social science findings enter the public domain, it becomes very tempting for journalists and other media outlets to declare one factor as the sole explanation for a social phenomenon. This is often the case with the mental health crisis. It’s blamed on social media, cellphones, gentle parenting, overly therapeutic schooling, or poor psychotherapy. Whenever single-factor claims emerge for explaining complex social problems, they’re almost always wrong.
But I do think there are some good theories. I don’t mean theory in the colloquial sense, which essentially means an educated guess; I mean it in the scientific sense. A good theory in this sense is one that identifies a common thread that links and makes sense of a wide range of facts. For example, one of the most elegant theories ever developed, the theory of evolution, explains the entire diversity of life and most of the associated facts.
Safetyism
One of these good theories that was popularized by Lukianoff and Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind is what Pamela Paresky calls “safetyism”, or overprotectiveness characterized by hypervigilance against perceived danger and harm. The theory posits that a widespread cultural shift in domains such as parenting, schooling, and psychotherapy, characterized by a misguided tendency to coddle children, has resulted mainly in deficits in children’s development rather than benefits. There is also a related implicit expectation that life’s barriers are to be treated as injustices, so our focus should primarily be on modifying environments or tearing structures down entirely. Under this framework, treating barriers as obstacles to overcome or tolerate is itself a form of injustice by adding insult to injury. Eventually, the youth who have been raised in this culture become adults, and they continue to struggle with their struggles.
Indicative of a good theory, safteyism potentially helps us better understand (not entirely explain) not only the rise of mental health challenges but the crisis among boys and men, behavioral problems in schools, delayed social development, loneliness, and relationship problems. The concern in the mental health field over safetyism—and the broader sociopolitical dynamics associated with it—has grown to a degree that organizations like the Open Therapy Institute (for which I serve as an advisor) have emerged to counteract it.
Capacity Building
Over the past several years, beyond the influence of Lukianoff and Haidt, I’ve seen many signs that we may be in the midst of a cultural shift toward a greater focus on resilience. One such sign is the sudden rise of RaQuel Hopkins, a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) who brands herself as a “capacity expert.” I don’t know Hopkins, nor do I have any clue about the quality of her counseling or training (so don’t take this as an endorsement of her services), but what I do know, from the viral nature of her videos (some of which were sent to me by colleagues), is that her message has been catching on. After doing some Googling, I discovered that her media following increased from 3,000 to 190,000 over the course of a week after the start of her posting mental health videos. Yes, one week (it looks like that has almost doubled at this point). The video below has nearly five million views.
Hopkins’s popularity was largely due to her series of videos where she discusses the goal of mental health as being about developing a capacity to withstand life’s challenges rather than resigning to being perpetual victims of them. That is, it focuses on self-development, rather than changing the world to accommodate our desires.
Isn’t this just regular psychotherapy? Yes, and no. This is how I was trained as a clinical psychologist, and until recently, it was probably the prevailing approach to therapy. But as the world has shifted towards more of an accommodationist approach, it’s been tugging at psychotherapy to do the same, to some success. Lukianoff and Haidt argue that society has not only deviated from the evidence-based therapeutic practices demonstrated to help therapy clients, but in many ways, we’ve promoted counterproductive behaviors such as catastrophic thinking. Whereas the mental health profession could have pushed back against this (many did), in general, there has been a slow drift to, well, accommodating it.
Hopefully, Hopkins represents a trend of mental health professionals recommitting to the work of personal development. Her message is a pretty straightforward one—she says that since the “world is not going to adjust itself to your emotional needs,” you’re well served by building the skills and characteristics to be resilient in the face of adversity. This is what she refers to as developing “capacity”.
The notion of mental health as capacity is far from a new concept, and she credits Harvard professor Robert Kegan as the source of her idea, but her repackaging of it is resonating with many. Part of this may have to do with the fact that she is a Black woman, which likely protects her from claims that she is ignorant of how sociopolitical issues like privilege and bias play into mental health. And part of it may have to do with her savvy production of to-the-point bite-sized clips. But I suspect most of her popularity stems from a growing acknowledgement that something is not right about popular notions of mental health, particularly where
“Discomfort is mistaken for danger. If a conversation makes you uneasy, it must be toxic. If a person challenges you, they must be unsafe. If a situation feels hard, it must be harming you. Boundaries are also being used as walls. Instead of learning to have difficult conversations, we shut people out completely.” [link]
A Return to Capacity?
I’d like to think that Hopkins’s message is popular not because it denies hardship, but because it respects people enough to believe they can bear weight, face difficulty, and develop the psychological muscle to move through it. That’s a form of compassion, too—one that’s often overlooked in favor of a softer, but more limiting, kind. There seems to be increasing interest in frameworks that say, “You are more than what has happened to you. Here’s how you can build the strength to act in the world and become a better person through it.”
Hopkins is not unique in this messaging, as many others are also moving in this space. For example, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman has been a major champion of this position, and I recommend his work on post-traumatic growth and victimhood. Hopkins’s approach is less intellectual and academic than Kaufman’s, but both appeal to me. It’s helpful to have a diverse range of communication styles for messages like this, and I like how hers is conversational, down-to-earth, and common-sensical. This likely connects with a very different audience than Kaufman and others.
Whatever the style, it’s nice to see push back against a false choice that has crept into our discourse: either you validate the reality of systemic barriers or you emphasize individual capacity. Or the other one—that you must either be a harsh and uncompassionate self-disciplinarian or be endlessly and unconditionally affirming of your awesomeness.
Ultimately, people need the ability to face, withstand, and bounce back from life’s inevitable hardships. They also need the awareness and agency to change the world for the better, especially when facing injustice. Overemphasizing one at the expense of the other leaves individuals unprepared and disempowered.
The mental health field needs more of the type of compassion that focuses on personal building rather than shielding. If the rising popularity of figures like RaQuel Hopkins is any indication, a growing number of people are seeking out this harder, more empowering message. Perhaps they’re tired of being told they’re broken, fragile, or helpless in the face of adversity. And they’re starting to realize that healing may not come from reshaping the world to accommodate every wound, but from cultivating the inner strength to live well despite them.
As one of Raquel’s capacity clients who has undergone traditional therapy in the past, it’s become so apparent how American culture (parenting and in the proliferation of social media, comparison culture) has really made it difficult for young people to learn self-trust. I was not coddled as a child — so my coaching was a journey in remembering that I have the capacity to do hard things after building a life of comfort.
But I really feel for young people who have never felt this and really depend on parents, peers, and society to dictate their identity and their self-worth deep into their 20s and beyond. So thankful for the message she’s putting out there and changing our world one post at a time!
I have been thinking a lot about this topic as a parent and as an education researcher. Thank you for writing about it! I struggle with how to give my kids the opportunities to meaningfully struggle when the culture says to let them quit an activity if they don't like it (aka it's hard). School models, typically do child-centered but then don't give students enough opportunities to struggle through challenging problems or situations on their own (I would look to Montessori as a model that does this). But it's so important!