What I’m seeing in people right now concerns me

Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly concerned by what I’m seeing in people—physically, emotionally, mentally, and relationally. And I know I’m not the only one.

As someone who has spent more than two decades working in leadership, human services, wellness, coaching, and nervous system regulation, I’ve had the privilege of supporting people through some of the most vulnerable and transformative moments of their lives. And while every person’s story is different, the underlying patterns are becoming impossible to ignore.

Women are burnt out and carrying invisible levels of emotional and mental load while trying to hold families, careers, and relationships together- while losing a relationship with themselves.

Men are under performance-based stress, struggling to regulate, disconnected from their bodies, their emotions, and often silently coping through pressure, overwork, distraction, or unhealthy habits while their sleep, hearts, and nervous systems suffer underneath it all.

Children are growing up with lower emotional resilience than we’ve seen in previous generations, navigating overstimulation, pressure, disconnection, and anxiety at incredibly young ages.

Even athletes—people who are often viewed as the picture of health—are coming in with injuries that won’t heal because they’ve become disconnected from the signals their bodies are trying to give them. Many are stuck chasing dopamine, performance, and constant stimulation while overriding the body’s deeper need for recovery, regulation, and restoration.

And what concerns me most is that we’ve normalized so much of this.

We’ve normalized exhaustion.
We’ve normalized anxiety.
We’ve normalized disconnection from ourselves.

At the same time, many people are doing all the “right” things. They’re meditating. Exercising. Listening to podcasts. Reading books. Trying to heal.

I understand that deeply because I’ve lived it myself.

In with Heart, I share how after having COVID and then experiencing multiple devastating life events one after another, my own body began staying in a state of low-grade dysregulation. Even though I was meditating daily and spending time in nature—things that had supported me for years—it wasn’t enough anymore.

Something deeper needed to shift.

As someone with an extensive background in leadership, wellness, coaching, and somatic practices, I found myself confronting a difficult truth: many traditional approaches still center around control, performance, pushing through, or managing symptoms rather than truly listening to what the body, heart, and nervous system are communicating.

I didn’t need more strategies rooted in fear, force, or perfectionism.

I needed a different relationship with myself.

And that realization changed everything.

I’ve always been someone who learns through lived experience first. Since I was young, I’ve found myself moving through difficult circumstances and then searching for ways to create meaning, healing, and transformation from them. It’s why I created my charity Passion to Lead. It’s why I began guiding breathwork and nervous system regulation work. And ultimately, it’s why I wrote this book.

I believe many of the limitations people carry are not personal failures, but adaptations to trauma, chronic stress, societal conditioning, and systems that have disconnected us from ourselves and each other.

And if we don’t begin addressing this differently, we are already seeing where it leads.

Rising mental health struggles.
Chronic illness.
Disconnection.
Isolation.
People searching for relief in behaviours and patterns that never truly resolve the deeper issue underneath.

But despite all of this, I remain incredibly hopeful.

Because I also see what happens when people begin reconnecting to themselves in a real and embodied way.

I see bodies begin healing.
I see symptoms reduce.
I see relationships soften.
I see people become calmer, clearer, more empowered, and more connected to life again.

That is what with Heart was written for.

Not to offer another quick fix, but to invite people back into a more coherent, connected, and sustainable way of living, leading, and relating—to themselves, to others, and to the world around them.

Loretta Cella is a HeartBreath Therapist, PCC + HeartMath™ Practitioner