Hate is bad.
(Unless.)
Do not harm.
(Except when.)
Mistakes are essential.
(But.)
Be yourself.
(As long as.)
What if the youth mental health crisis isn't just about screens or peers or politics?
What if it's also about the energy we're generating – the hate, the fear, the contempt – and that energy doesn't care if it's coming from the left or the right, woke or MAGA, the present parent or the absent one?
Nearly half of all high school students currently report persistent sadness or hopelessness – a 10-point increase over the past decade. 20% have seriously considered suicide. Among young adults 18–25, nearly 1 in 3 experienced mental illness last year. For young people ages 10-24, suicide is now the second leading cause of death.
Despite unprecedented access to therapy and medication, these numbers keep climbing. What if we're missing something fundamental?
What if the problem isn't in them?
What if it's in us? All of us.
We tell our children to be empathic and kind. Then they watch us dismiss or demonize those who disagree, and withhold compassion the moment we feel wronged or can't relate.
We tell them everyone makes mistakes. Then they watch us erupt in panic, stress, or shame when we err – or in righteousness and contempt when others do.
We tell them to think critically. Then they watch us collapse every issue into good guys and bad guys, right side and wrong side.
We tell them people can change. Then they watch us disparage and discard people for a hurtful misstep, a dysregulated reaction, a skill they don't yet possess.
We tell them character matters. Then we help them build lives that prioritize performance over integrity.
Our children aren't learning from what we tell them.They're learning from how we live.
They're learning from how we talk about people who see the world differently. From whether we extend curiosity or contempt, humility or condescension. From whether dignity is conditional on agreement.
They're learning from how we engage our own wounds and egos. They're learning when we want more. They're learning when we look down. They're learning when we hate. They're learning from the extent to which we are what we're fighting.
They're also learning when we express hope in the face of despair. When we apologize with sincerity – not only to them, but to another adult in front of them. When we ask questions before drawing conclusions. When we celebrate mistakes as a key to growth. When we focus on what's possible and what we can create, rather than on what's broken or falling apart.
Our youth are absorbing it all – our hope, heart, and humility, our fear, hate, and hypocrisy – regardless of our politics, our intentions, or how much we love them.
The patterns live in everyone. So does the capacity to interrupt them.
Young people don't need perfect adults. They need adults who can look at themselves with honesty and compassion. Who can hold their own light and dark – and extend that same grace to others, even those they disagree with. Who can acknowledge harm and engage repair. Who can hold how dynamic and interconnected we all are.
When we fail to do our own work – when we exile our darkness, deny our harm, insist our side is "good, correct, and justified" while others are "bad, wrong, and unforgiveable" – we feed the very systems of fear and hate we decry. And we teach our youth:
What are we actually modeling?
Binary Thinking
Good people and bad people. Right side and wrong side. No nuance, no middle ground. Pick a side and defend it absolutely.
Mistakes are Catastrophic
One wrong move and you're canceled. No room for growth, repair, or second chances. Hide your failures. Perform perfection.
Certainty Over Curiosity
You must have strong opinions on everything. Questions are weakness. "I don't know" is failure – or a sign of alignment with the enemy.
Conditional Worth
You're valuable if you have the right opinions, achieve the right things, never make mistakes. Your worth depends on outcomes, not who you are.
Contempt is Acceptable
Cruelty is fine if they're on the wrong side. Dehumanization is justified if you're right. Curiosity about "the other" is betrayal.
Fragmentation
Hide your dark parts. Exile what's unacceptable. Never show your whole self.
And yet, when we integrate – hold our contradictions, practice repair, tolerate imperfection and uncertainty, extend dignity across difference – when we love ourselves through all of that – something else becomes possible.
We model that being human means being whole, not perfect. That mistakes are essential to growth and all developmental, relational, and creative processes. That people are complex and capable of change. That curiosity is more powerful than contempt. That everything is fluid – care and harm, victimhood and villainy, what we know and what we don't.
We've all been hurt, and we've all caused hurt. There are things we know and things we don't. We are all unfinished. Modeling this truth creates space for young people to do the same – to be whole rather than fragmented, curious rather than certain, human rather than performing.
Building Something New
Creating conditions for what's possible
The path may feel counterintuitive:
Self-love grows through compassion and accountability, not one or the other.
Peace comes from tending to our own integrity, not policing it in others.
Freedom comes from knowing we have everything we need – and releasing others as problem or solution.
We get lighter by lifting what's heavy – and so does the air around us.
What becomes possible:
Agency untethered from external validation. Power without superiority. Confidence born from humility. Hope born from knowing that nothing is fixed – that every moment, and every person, can be new.
A world on fire becomes an opportunity to build something new.
There's a widespread sense right now that the world is on fire. The strain is not imagined. A lot is shifting, deteriorating, and accelerating. And, understandably, we look outward. But here's what we can miss in the smoke: unexamined selves are the fire. Not through malice, for most people – but through patterns we haven't faced, energy we generate without seeing it, unconscious wounds we haven't healed. What we exile in ourselves doesn't disappear. It leaks out – through stress, contempt, superiority, performance, fear. And our youth absorb it all. They feel the effects of all that hasn't been integrated.
We're all caught in patterns we didn't consciously choose. We're all doing our absolute best. This work isn't about being better or more impressive. It's not about being small or ashamed. It's about noticing what we carry and becoming whole and more free – the rarest thing we can offer ourselves, our children, and the world. The only thing that really shifts the field.
Emergence Workshop
Rethinking our role in the emotional landscape young people inhabit
A two-session workshop connecting what's happening in the collective to what's happening in our homes, schools, and workplaces – from political discourse and social binaries, to cultural fear and the subtle forms of supremacism that live in all of us. Examining how the energy we generate shapes the emotional field young people develop within.
Brave work, grounded in self-compassion.
Adult Consultation
The surprising path to peace
For parents, educators, and caregivers ready to feel lighter. We explore patterns that no longer serve you, practice integration, and look honestly at what we're modeling – with courage, self-compassion, and an eye toward freedom and a more sustainable sense of peace.
Youth Mental Health Mentoring
You're the medicine. You're the magic.
Compassionate, collaborative work with teens and young adults. I listen, reflect, and help clients navigate their unique challenges and opportunities – with attunement to heart and fear, intuition and defenses, the systemic and the personal.
This isn't formulaic. It's a relational process of discovery, anchored in compassion for self and others, with support for both what is painful and what is possible.
About — Angie Evelina
For over two decades, I've worked at intersections most people don't connect – criminal justice and quantum science, clinical psychology and tech, education and business strategy, privilege and marginalization. I've spent years in proximity to people society has written off as well as people society celebrates. I've witnessed joy and transformation in the harshest environments and immense suffering in the most comfortable. I've witnessed cruelty in the good, and kindness in the criminal.
What I've learned is simple, but has profound implications: nothing is fixed. Neither people, nor conditions, nor character, nor ways of being. Everything is more fluid – and more interconnected – than we tend to think. We are dynamic, emergent beings existing in fields of possibility, and we're affecting one another all the time. We contain contradictions. We've been harmed and we've caused harm. And we are all, always, capable of something new.
The patterns I saw in criminal justice – harm begetting harm, fear driving rigidity, binary thinking obscuring our shared humanity – are the same patterns I see in families, in schools, in political discourse. The cycles are the same. The interruptions are available everywhere.
My work is grounded in a fundamental belief: when we can look at ourselves and others with honesty and love, when we can hold complexity without collapsing into binaries of good and bad, we access genuine power to create change. Not by fixing others, but by transforming conditions – starting with ourselves and the energy we generate.
BA Political Economy, UC Berkeley
MS Clinical Psychology, Notre Dame de Namur University
Writing & Work
I'm collaborating with physicists, psychologists, and systems thinkers on the Emergence Psychology framework, and always eager to bring in additional voices and lenses. If this work resonates, please reach out.
Why this work matters now: The Problem with Monsters and the Instinct to Destroy
"It is not enough to follow the heart. We must also train it."
— Ajahn Sumedho