Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey Ep 1272 | Your Self-Care Is Making You Weak: Therapist Drops Hard Truths | RaQuel Hopkins
Nov 26, 2025
RaQuel Hopkins, a licensed therapist and capacity expert, joins to discuss the flaws in today's feel-good therapy culture. She emphasizes the need for optimization over mere self-care, arguing that coddling leads to fragility. RaQuel critiques toxic empathy, asserting that real compassion includes accountability. The conversation touches on emotional resilience, responsibility, and the importance of teaching children to manage conflict rather than validating every feeling. Grounded in faith, she advocates for embracing pain as universal, promoting growth through challenges.
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Mental Health As Optimization
- RaQuel Hopkins reframes mental health as optimization rather than protection, focusing on growth and flexibility.
- Optimization invites nurturing and expansion, not coddling or endless symptom management.
Use Self-Care To Increase Capacity
- Do stop treating self-care as symptom relief and start using it to align, clarify, and show up well in imperfect circumstances.
- Do pursue solutions that increase capacity instead of short-term coping rituals.
Feeling Better ≠ Becoming Better
- Overemphasizing feeling better produces fragility because feelings are fleeting and not facts.
- Prioritizing growth over constant validation builds real resilience and development.
