The 5% We Can’t Do Alone

[RickThrivingNow]

The concept of self-help has gone too far.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s useful. It’s incredibly useful to be able to wipe your own emotional butt. Shit happens. Emotionally, physically, biologically—shit happens. That’s real.

And just like we teach our children how to wipe and clean up, we also teach them emotional tending. We had to learn it ourselves first. How we deal with our shit has evolved over time. Still is evolving. But the nature of it is unchanged: as you live and consume life, there’s going to be waste.

And that goes for emotions, too.

The other day, my daughter had dental surgery. It was a sacred decision—deeply felt and aligned. The place we went to, the people, the energy of the space… it all held her beautifully. She was well cared for. Still, coming out of that surgery, her body and nervous system had a reaction. There were BIG feelings.

At one point, I could feel it—this energy in her wasn’t about the IV being pulled or the tape covering the site. It was her primal brain saying, I didn’t want this. She had wanted to resist, but the anesthesia kept her frozen. That’s the thing about trauma, even little ones—it can catch in the nervous system like a burr under the skin.

Processing that moment meant she had to feel through it. With Mama and me. With the nurses. It meant letting the feelings move, not locking them down.

On the way home, she was discharging so much energy. Woof.

Most adults, by the time they reach a certain age, don’t go into wild, primal rages to release stress. We’ve been conditioned. Trained. We move our energy in more “acceptable” ways. We learn to take care of ourselves—emotionally, energetically.

But here’s the thing.

Self-help? It only gets you so far.

I’m pretty good at emotional self-management. I’ve learned a lot of real skills over the years. I’d say I can process about 95% of the energy that moves through me, day in and day out. But then there’s that 5%. And that 5%? Self-help doesn’t touch it. Not really. Not in the way we need.

And that 5% isn’t just for big stuff like surgeries. It’s daily. It’s sneaky. It’s tucked in the small moments that tug at the soul.

You know what happens to that 5% if I try to handle it on my own? I tuck it away. Maybe in my hip. Maybe in the tension in my jaw or that shadow behind my eyes. It doesn’t get a hug. It doesn’t get to sit under my favorite tree or feel heard. It doesn’t get seen.

What that 5% needs is co-regulation.

It needs a listening ear. A warm gaze. Someone who can say, “I get it. That mattered. That didn’t feel okay.” It needs us—you and me and the circles we choose—to co-create a space where that kind of feeling can move and shift and be met.

Because self-help, as noble as it is, cannot give us the experience of being witnessed, soothed, and understood.

And I’ve yet to meet a human who doesn’t need that. Just like I’ve never met a human who doesn’t need to poop. It’s biology. It’s emotional truth.

If you live, you feel.
If you feel, there’s stuff to tend to.
Sometimes alone.
But not always and all ways.

And that’s where thriving begins: in knowing when to self-tend… and when to reach for someone else’s hand, voice, breath, or presence. Right now.

Useful Concepts for Thriving in This Story

• Emotional Freedom
  Emotional Freedom respects that we feel it all—and that feeling is not a failure, but a gateway to healing.

• Co-Regulation
  Co-regulation reminds us we’re not meant to hold it all alone; connection helps discharge and soothe the unbearable.

• Real Skills
  Real Skills include the inner and relational abilities that let us process 95%… and wisely ask for help with the rest.

• Sacred Decisions
  Sacred Decisions come from deep within and honor what truly matters in moments that carry weight.

• Primitive Brain
  The Primitive Brain reacts fast and hard to threat—especially when we’re frozen—and needs care to release the charge.

[RickThrivingNow]

• Sacred Shit and Emotional Waste: The Necessity of Tending

  • Living, by its very nature, produces waste—physical, emotional, energetic. We can’t consume experience without also metabolizing and releasing what’s left behind.
  • Learning to tend to our own mess is part of growing up. We teach our children how to wipe because we had to learn it too—emotionally and otherwise.
  • The tools for managing our internal world must evolve just like sanitation has. What was once raw instinct becomes refined skill. But the need remains elemental.
  • Emotional digestion is not optional. If we are alive, we feel. And if we feel, there is residue. To ignore this is to constipate the psyche.

• The Five Percent We Cannot Touch Alone

  • No matter how advanced our self-regulation, there is always a sliver of energy—raw, wild, unmet—that we cannot shepherd alone.
  • That last 5% resists control. It shows up in the body, hides in hips, pulses in nervous systems, burns like silent protest in the heart.
  • Self-help can skillfully clear most of the path. But the final stretch requires contact. Witness. Shared nervous system resonance. Something or someone who says, “I see it, and see you, too.”
  • We cannot self-hug that 5% into integration. We need co-creation, not isolation, to metabolize it fully.

• The Primal Cry Beneath the Tape

  • Sometimes what looks like a tantrum or outburst is the body telling the story of what it couldn’t say when it mattered.
  • An IV inserted while anesthetized may not hurt, but the body remembers being pierced while powerless.
  • Children live closer to the primal edge. Their wild grief, their fury, are not mistakes. They are medicine, if allowed to move.
  • Most adults have learned to avoid this wild edge—but not because it disappears. They’ve just buried it deeper.

• Co-Regulation as a Biological Need

  • Just like elimination, co-regulation is not optional. If we’re alive and feeling, we require shared space to offload what cannot be carried alone.
  • The myth of total self-sufficiency isolates us. We weren’t meant to wipe alone every time. Sometimes, emotional cleanup requires someone else’s hand on our back.
  • To deny the need for co-regulation is like pretending we don’t need to breathe in others’ presence. We can try—but our nervous system knows better.

• Self-Help is a Good Start, Not a Final Destination

  • Self-help matters. Skill matters. Regulation matters. Learn to wipe. Learn to clean up your own energetic mess, of course.
  • But do not mistake mastery for wholeness. Wholeness includes interdependence. We need each other to heal the parts we cannot reach alone.
  • The soul does not thrive in a vacuum. It blooms in relation, in shared space, in the presence of a witness who says: Yes, that mattered.

[Tanzeel]

It makes so much sense now. I was wondering why do I need to talk to my husband about something in my mind although I have tapped and processed my emotions. I felt the need to talk to a friend despite journaling and processing. And without those simple discussions, I would feel something stuck in my body…and the feeling will just wash away when a closed one says, “I hear you”.

[RickThrivingNow]

Thank you. So true for me (and those I am closest to!). The more we have competence in processing with body, mind, and spirit… we can become starkly clear that some aspects of co-Living and co-Loving are… meant to be shared.

Plugging into those energies together leads to a Completeness that holding it solely (soul-y?) inside does not.