It's an inside job. You can't get inside.

I finally got back on the calendar with my therapist last week. He could tell I was carrying a lot. Visible and verbal weight were on my face and chest.

"I'm just feeling…lonely." As we unpacked it, so much of what was barring my connection was helplessness. I felt unable to help, support or change pain for people around me, and it weighed on me.

There's an incredible loneliness that happens in our life when we can't fix something for someone we love. It's like we're standing at a locked door trying to communicate with them through the door. Barking instructions, resisting the urge to break it down.

There's this urgency and restraint that combine into a pain we can't really describe except through a sigh and clenched jaw.

As parents, we picture ourselves in this analogy on the outside of the door, our kids inside. And many of us feel like we're living that reality, every day. Access to our kids' inner lives feels fleeting, emotional firewalls fly up with phones and shrugs.

We extrapolate. We presume a lack of communication to be a sign of anxiety and depression, disconnection and purposelessness.

The number one concern for American parents is the mental health of their child. Over 50% of American parents have significant fear about the mental health of their kid.

That's because we understand what it means to be on both sides of the door.

Parents, we've been trapped in our heads with anxiety. We've doomscrolled through the depression of world affairs. We've wrestled with futility and purpose. The empathy we have for a child walking into that world creates a distressing urgency inside of us.

"Get them to safety." We think, but we can't guarantee it, completely. Those instincts are generous, but misplaced.

Because having been inside those feelings, we all know that the only way we get to stability is tools, support, and agency. It's a three legged stool.

Instead of dismay, we can parent with more clarity.

We are the first source of tools our children have to understand their inner life. The way we communicate, repair. We teach them how to communicate in conflict, distress, joy, growth, and failure. These are the maps that our kids will take with them.

We are the first source of support. We prioritize connection. We challenge them, and scaffold the inner voice. We teach them what it feels like to be seen, safe and supported.

But we aren't the third leg, and we can't be. We aren't their agency. And the third leg is what's emergent in adolescence, and the only way that they can understand the importance of their own process is if we prioritize it for ourselves.

Try this this weekend: do the thing you've been putting off for your own inner life — book the appointment, take the walk, say the hard true thing out loud — and let your kid see you do it. You're showing them the door opens from the inside.