thoughts from your millennial therapist…
When Caring Hurts: ICE, Existential Anxiety, and the Search for Alignment
There is a particular kind of ache in the air right now.
It shows up as anger that surprises you with its intensity. Confusion that makes it hard to know where to look for reliable ground. Overwhelm that seeps into your body before your mind can make sense of it. Heartbreak that feels both deeply personal and painfully collective.
For many of us, the social and political discourse surrounding ICE has stirred something existential, not just What is happening? but Who am I in the middle of this? and What does it mean to live a good, ethical life right now?
As a therapist, I want to be very clear about what I am (and am not) here to do.
I am not in the business of telling you how to feel. I am not here to prescribe what you should think or what you must believe. Your emotions are not up for correction, and your values are not mine to assign.
What is my job is to shine an honest light on value incongruences and to help people understand why moments like this feel so destabilizing.
Naming the Breach: Power, the Social Contract, and Moral Injury
It feels important for me to name, clearly and without euphemism, that much of the distress surrounding ICE is rooted in widely perceived and documented overreach of power, violations of human dignity, and fractures in the social contract that many of us were taught to trust.
When institutions charged with protection are experienced as inflicting harm, through execution, family separation, prolonged detention, or the erosion of due process, people often experience moral injury. This is not simply political disagreement; it is the psychic wound that occurs when actions by those in authority violate deeply held beliefs about fairness, legality, and humanity.
For many, this strikes at a foundational assumption: that the law exists to safeguard human rights. When that assumption feels broken, anxiety intensifies because the world no longer feels predictable or coherent. Anger, grief, and heartbreak are not overreactions here, they are proportionate responses to a violation of both human and natural law and the implicit promises that bind a society together.
Naming this reality matters. When we skip over it, we risk pathologizing entirely reasonable emotional responses.
When the World Collides With the Self
Existential anxiety often emerges when our inner value system collides with the realities of the world we are witnessing. Many women I work with hold values like compassion, safety, family, dignity, fairness, and responsibility. These values are not abstract; they are lived, embodied, and often hard-won.
When public discourse, policy debates, or images in the news and social media are in violation of those values, we experience distress that can feel disorganizing. You might notice yourself cycling through questions like:
Why does this feel so personal?
Am I doing enough? Too much? The wrong thing?
Why do I feel frozen when I care so deeply?
This is not weakness. This is meaning-making under pressure.
A Logotherapy Lens: Viktor Frankl and Values as Anchors
Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy, believed that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but meaning, a thesis he articulated most famously in Man’s Search for Meaning. His work emerged from witnessing unimaginable suffering and observing that those who could locate meaning, even in the smallest ways, were more resilient in the face of despair.
From a Franklian perspective, existential anxiety intensifies not simply because circumstances are painful or unjust, but because our sense of meaning feels threatened or obscured.
In times of social upheaval, anxiety often grows not because we lack opinions, but because we have not had the space to clarify what meaning we are trying to live by or how to live it under real constraints.
Frankl emphasized that values are not abstract ideals; they are expressed through responsibility and choice. Meaning is created through:
Creative values (what we give to the world through action or contribution)
Experiential values (what we receive through connection, love, beauty, or truth)
Attitudinal values (the stance we take when suffering cannot be changed)
When the discourse surrounding ICE appears to conflict with deeply held values such as compassion, dignity, safety, family, or justice, the distress that follows is often a signal that meaning itself feels under threat.
A therapeutic approach grounded in logotherapy asks:
What kind of meaning am I being called to make here?
Which of Frankl’s value pathways feels most accessible to me right now?
What responsibility feels mine to carry and what does not?
For some, meaning may be expressed through advocacy or action. For others, it may emerge through bearing witness, staying relational, or choosing a humane attitude in moments where control is limited.
For many, the deepest tension lies in holding competing values at once, protecting vulnerable people while also longing for stability or safety. Frankl did not ask us to resolve these tensions perfectly, but to respond to them consciously. That tension is often where existential anxiety lives and where meaning can be reclaimed.
Naming the Barriers Without Shaming the Self
One of the most painful experiences I see is when women turn moral distress inward and call it failure.
Barriers to living in alignment with our values are real. They include fear of social rupture, professional consequences, exhaustion, information overload, family dynamics, and the simple reality that we are one person in a massive system.
Therapeutic work is not about erasing these barriers or pretending they don’t exist. It is about naming them honestly, without shame, and asking:
Which barriers are internal, and which are systemic?
What is within my control, and what is not?
What does value-aligned action look like at my actual capacity, not my idealized one?
Sometimes alignment looks like advocacy or action. Sometimes it looks like boundaries, rest, or choosing not to consume one more traumatic headline before bed. Meaning is not measured by visibility.
Developing Discrepancy: When Values and Behavior Don’t Quite Match
In the therapeutic modality, Motivational Interviewing, there is a concept called developing discrepancy. It is not about confrontation or persuasion. It is about gently illuminating the gap between what someone says they value and how they are currently living so that change can arise from internal motivation rather than external pressure.
In moments of social and political intensity, this discrepancy often becomes painfully visible.
You might notice thoughts like:
I value compassion, but I’m avoiding the news because it’s too painful.
I care about justice, but I feel paralyzed and unsure how to act.
I believe in dignity and humanity, yet I’m snapping at the people closest to me.
The goal is not to judge these gaps. Discrepancy is not a moral failure; it is information.
From a therapeutic lens, bringing awareness to these inconsistencies can actually reduce anxiety. When values remain unexamined, distress becomes amorphous and overwhelming. When discrepancy is named, the anxiety gains shape and with shape comes choice.
Questions that support this process might include:
What do I say matters most to me in this moment?
How does my current behavior support or pull me away from that?
What feels like a realistic, values-consistent step not a performative one?
Importantly, motivational interviewing honors autonomy. The question is never What should I do? but rather What feels true for me to do, given my values and my limits?
Living in deeper alignment does not require sweeping action. Often it begins with small, intentional shifts such as how we speak, what we consume, where we place our energy, or how we repair when we fall out of alignment.
You Are Allowed to Be a Person, Not a Position
The current discourse often demands certainty, speed, and performance. But humans are allowed to be complex, grieving, and unfinished.
You can care deeply and still feel confused. You can be angry and still be thoughtful. You can hold empathy without having every answer. None of this disqualifies you from being values-driven.
If you are feeling dysregulated, disconnected, or existentially untethered, it may be less about needing a stronger opinion and more about needing support in reconnecting with what matters most to you.
A Gentle Invitation
Instead of asking yourself what you should feel or believe, consider asking:
What kind of person am I trying to be in this moment and what is one small, honest step toward that?
Meaning is not found in perfection. It is found in presence, integrity, and the courage to stay connected to your values even when the world feels unbearably loud.
You are not broken for feeling this way.
You are responding, thoughtfully and humanly, to a world that is asking very big questions.
Bridget Hager, LICSW
