Therapist and coach Rachel Hopkins is sparking a much-needed conversation in the mental health world: What happens when therapy gives you the language to understand your pain—but not the tools to live beyond it?
Hopkins, who began her professional journey as a coach before becoming a licensed therapist, describes a growing trend among her clientele—individuals who have already been to therapy, found it helpful, and can articulate their emotional wounds, but still feel “unfinished.”
“They know what happened. They just don’t know what to do next,” Hopkins writes in an Instagram post. “They weren’t stuck because therapy failed them. They were stuck because therapy stopped short.”
Her reflection resonates with a generation that has fully embraced trauma vocabulary, popular psychology, and social media therapy culture. Terms like “inner child,” “trauma bonding,” “attachment styles,” and “emotional regulation” are now part of the mainstream lexicon. But, as Hopkins warns, language alone doesn’t heal.
In her viral video, she explains:
“Language brings clarity, but clarity brings emotional fallout… Sometimes it leads to a reaction spiral. Resentment. Bitterness. Emotional overcorrection.”
Hopkins challenges the idea that insight equals healing, describing a common phenomenon in therapy where clients reach a point of emotional fluency—they can name the patterns, quote the theories, follow the influencers—yet still remain emotionally stuck.
“If you stop at insight, you don’t grow, you loop,” she says. “You try to feel better instead of getting stronger.”
Her coaching business, separate from her therapy work, now focuses on this very gap—guiding people who have graduated from awareness and are ready to build capacity for the life they want but don’t yet know how to live.
“It’s not about knowing more. It’s about becoming more,” Hopkins says.
