What’s Going On? The Mental Health Crisis and the Call for Authentic Wellness & Empowerment

My family, mid 80s — I’m the little guy with an encyclopedic knowledge of Motown. By age four, I could tell Marvin Gaye from Smokey Robinson from Stevie Wonder — not because I knew the words, but because I could feel the difference.

I still remember sitting in the back seat of our two-door 1981 VW Jetta, listening to my dad’s old Marvin Gaye cassette. His favorite track was “Mercy Mercy Me,” but the one that stuck with me most was “What’s Going On?” — that smooth, soulful plea to wake up and care again.

Even before that, when I was four or younger, my parents used to laugh — sometimes in disbelief — at how I could pick out Motown singers on the radio. “That’s Stevie Wonder.” “That’s Smokey Robinson.” “That’s Marvin Gaye.” I didn’t know what made me recognize them — maybe it was the feeling in their voices. Even then, I could sense when a song was reaching for something real.

Decades later, I still feel that same pull. Because what’s going on… is stress.

Everywhere.

Every day.

For years.

For generations.

Most people are living their whole lives on the edge of fight, flight, or freeze — even when no true crisis is happening. The body keeps bracing as if danger’s always around the corner, and the mind follows suit. We stay busy, distracted, and tense, calling it normal when it’s really survival mode stretched out over years.

We’ve built whole lives around it — chasing, scrolling, surviving, pretending we’re fine. But most people aren’t fine. They’re quietly overwhelmed, waiting for someone, anyone, to fix it.

It’s not so different from what Marvin sang decades ago — “Things ain’t what they used to be.” Only now, the pollution isn’t just in the skies; it’s in our minds — the fog of stress, anxiety, and disconnection clouding our vision of what’s real and what’s possible.

The State of Mind We’re In

The numbers make it clear:

• 58% of U.S. adults say mental health is a major problem — more than drugs, crime, or politics (Pew Research, 2024).

• The U.S. Surgeon General has declared youth mental health a national emergency, calling loneliness an epidemic.

• Gallup (2025) reports emotional well-being at its lowest level since tracking began — especially among adults under 30.

• The World Health Organization estimates depression and anxiety cost over $1 trillion annually in lost productivity.

  
  

If this were a flood, a financial collapse, or a cyberattack, we’d rally overnight. But when it’s emotional, we stay quiet. We normalize it. We medicate it. We scroll through it.

What’s Really Going On

This isn’t just a mental health problem — it’s a disconnection problem.

Disconnection from self. From purpose. From others. From community.

It’s like we’ve been drifting in fog, losing sight of who we are and what actually matters. And we keep waiting for someone to clear it — the right leader, partner, policy, or algorithm.

But here’s the truth: those old ideas we once rallied behind — hope and change — they’re not outdated.

They’re just misplaced.

The Person in the Mirror

Michael Jackson was right.

If we want the world to be a better place, we’ve got to start with the man (or woman, or person) in the mirror.

Hope isn’t on a screen — it’s in a mirror. Change isn’t coming from outside — it’s growing from within.

It’s not a TikTok. It’s not an Instagram reel. It’s not a speech or a rally. It’s in your mirror.

That person staring back at you — that’s the one who’s going to change your life and impact the world.

And that means something radical in today’s culture: personal accountability.

We can’t heal what we keep blaming on someone else. As the old proverb reminds us: “Get the plank out of your own eye before you try to remove the speck from someone else’s.”

Before we fix the system, we have to fix the self. Before we reform the world, we have to restore our clarity. Before we change others, we must organize our own inner world — our desk, our room, our mind.

Because real leadership — the kind that heals — always starts with responsibility.

A Personal Moment of Clarity

I was reminded of that recently when I caught myself thinking about a choice someone made — something that still flared up in my mind as if it happened yesterday. While it’s been seven hours and fifteen days, seven months, and four years since that Friday in June, the shoulds still rise: They shouldn’t have done that. I should be over it by now.

And yet, the more I sat with it, the more I realized it wasn’t about them at all.

It was disappointment — not in their decision, but in my own unrealized dreams. It felt like if they hadn’t done what they did, I would have had what I wanted. That’s the tricky thing about shoulds: they feel righteous, but often they just reveal something unresolved in us.

The mirror doesn’t just show our reflection — it shows our projections. When we face those honestly, we move from resentment to responsibility — from waiting for change to becoming it.

And that shift doesn’t happen only once; it happens in the small stories we tell ourselves every day. Which leads to a truth many of us overlook: the most important headlines aren’t on the news — they’re running silently in our own minds.

The Real Headlines

Every day, we scroll through breaking news, but the real headlines are internal: the thoughts, fears, and narratives shaping our identity.

“I’m not good enough.” “They need me to fix it.” “I can’t mess up.” “I’ll never catch up.”

They’re lines we’ve rehearsed for years — casting ourselves as heroes, villains, or victims instead of empowered people capable of choice.

But those head lines can be rewritten.

That’s what trauma-informed empowerment is all about — helping people recognize the scripts that no longer serve them and replacing them with stories rooted in truth, strength, and possibility.

Because when you change the story in your head, you change the direction of your life. And when enough people do that — the world changes too.

Stress Is the Nail. Authentic Wellness & Empowerment Is the Hammer.

At Authentic Wellness & Empowerment (AWE), we believe stress is part of life — but suffering doesn’t have to be.

The real problem is the imbalance between enabling and exploitation — both born from unhealed drama and trauma. What the world needs instead is empowerment — a holistic, lasting approach that helps people take ownership of their choices and their healing.

The difference between illness and wellness is having options — real options — across six key areas of life: Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Social, Spiritual, and Financial.

Empowerment means having those options and the courage to act on them — showing up as a respectful, responsible adult in every situation, no matter where you’ve been or what’s happened before.

That’s what Authentic Wellness & Empowerment is here to build — an ecosystem that restores clarity, expands choice, and equips people to move forward with confidence and courage.

What’s Going On — and What’s Next

The truth is, we’re what’s going on. Our collective state of mind shapes the state of the world. But that also means we’re what can change.

It starts when one person — maybe you — looks in the mirror and decides to stop settling, stop surviving, and start moving again.

So ask yourself: What’s going on in your world? And more importantly… what’s ready to move from stuck to unstoppable?

Call to Action

If you’re ready to take that next step — to move from stuck to unstoppable — visit EmpowermentErie.org to learn how AWE can help you find your clarity, build your momentum, and create lasting change.