If you’re a parent or guardian, you’ve heard about the importance of respecting your child’s feelings. Teaching our kids can help them work through the negative emotions they experience as they grow up.

Modern life is full of emotional challenges. The pressure to succeed, need to “keep up,” fear of missing out and desire for good relationships and work satisfaction can all evoke volatile combinations of emotions.

One day several years ago, I spontaneously hugged a patient of mine, Gretchen. It was during a moment in which her despair and distress were so intense that it seemed cruel on a human level not to reach out my arms to her, in the event that she might derive some relief or comfort from an embrace. She hugged me for dear life.

When I began dating Jon, I was 39 years old and divorced with no intention of remarrying. He was also divorced, and we were both navigating the challenges of single parenting.

As a trauma- and emotion-centered psychotherapist, I am relieved that children are now being screened for toxic stress. Thinking about emotional health as a byproduct of a child’s environment is an important addition to current thinking on how to improve children’s mental health.

How can it be that a seemingly depressed person, one who shows clinical symptoms, doesn’t respond to antidepressants or psychotherapy? Perhaps because the root of his anguish is something else.