f you love and support someone who is struggling with their mental health, this episode is for you. Mental health support is for the supporters too: the partner, the parent, the child, the friend who shows up every day for someone they love. You deserve to be seen, heard, and cared for as well, and that is exactly what this conversation is here to do.

I am usually on the other side of this conversation. I have been the person being supported, held by people who love me, and from that closest seat I saw how much they were quietly carrying. This is the episode that finally asks how you are doing.

It is the final episode of the Mental Health Awareness Month series, landing in June on purpose, because these conversations do not end when the month does. This week's question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer is the people who hold the people who are struggling: the realities they live with that rarely get said out loud, the guilt that does not mean what they fear it means, and one small, doable practice that gives the weight somewhere to go.

If you have been the strong one for someone you love, this is the moment someone turns to you and asks how you are.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• Why the people supporting someone through a mental health struggle are so often unseen, and what changes when they finally are
• What it really feels like to love someone who is struggling, said out loud so you no longer have to carry it silently
• The guilt so many supporters know well, and the reframe that reveals it as evidence of how much you care
• Why being tired, frustrated, or in need of a break does not mean you love them any less
• What Lulu learned from being the person who was held: what the people supporting her truly needed
• One small, doable practice that lets you be supported too, and why a single honest sentence is enough to start
• Where the whole five-episode series lands, and why this conversation was always for you too

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THE MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS MONTH SERIES

Episode 78: Self-Advocacy

Episode 79: Functional Freeze

Episode 80: Connection and AI

Episode 81: Grief for the Life You Thought You'd Have

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

Nonfinite grief, mental health, and the emotional grief of feeling stuck, feeling behind in life, and grieving the life you thought you would have. This episode is about processing grief that has nothing to do with death, and why so many of us have been calling it failure instead of calling it what it is.

If you have been doing the inner work, showing up, pushing through, and your life still does not look the way you expected, this is for you. This is not about healing from grief through strategy or mindset. It is about what shifts when you finally call this feeling by its real name.

This is the fourth episode in The Lulu Essey Podcast's May series for Mental Health Awareness Month where I am asking the question: What should we be talking about that we are not talking about?

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL DISCOVER

• What nonfinite grief is and why finding this language changed how I relate to what I have been carrying
• What most of us have been calling this grief instead, and the cost of that mislabelling
• What happened at graduation ceremonies across the US this month when speakers mentioned AI, and the one speaker who got a completely different response
• Why the Gallup data on Gen Z and AI is not a tech story
• What opens up when grief and gratitude are allowed to sit in the same place at the same time
• One practice using music and intention that meets grief where it actually lives

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Gallup survey on Gen Z sentiment toward AI, April 2026

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛

This is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad. This is the more subtle, nuanced layer of AI and mental health that the binary debate is missing: are we getting AI emotional support without even realising it?

Many of us are. We open ChatGPT or Claude for something practical, a question to think through, a strategy to plan, an email to write, and we leave having been soothed by software. AI is meeting emotional needs we did not know we were carrying, in moments we thought were efficient. That is the layer this episode is about.

According to research by the RAND Corporation published in JAMA Network Open, one in five 18 to 21 year olds in the United States now uses AI when they feel sad, angry, or lonely. Nine in ten say the advice feels helpful. The question this episode asks is not whether AI helps in the moment, because many times it does. The question is what it is quietly costing us in the moments we are not paying attention.

This is the third episode in The Lulu Essey Podcast's May series for Mental Health Awareness Month. This week's question: what should we be talking about that we are not talking about? The answer is the layer of the AI and human connection conversation that lives underneath the surface debate, the unconscious ways AI is becoming the easier substitute for the people in our lives, and the one small practice this week that nothing on a screen can replace.

If you have ever opened AI to think something through and found yourself comforted before you had even finished the question, this episode will speak to you.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• The moments AI starts meeting emotional needs you did not know you were carrying, even when you opened ChatGPT or Claude for something practical
• Why this is not a conversation about whether AI is good or bad, and what the binary debate about AI and mental health is missing
• What AI gives us before we have even asked, and why that quiet substitution is the layer that deserves our attention
• The difference between real comfort and real continuity, and why one cannot replace the other no matter how good the AI response feels
• What young adults using AI for emotional support are actually carrying that the wider personal development conversation has not named in their direction
• Why your nervous system can tell the difference between a human voice and AI, even when AI says the more beautifully crafted words
• One small practice for this week that does what AI cannot, and how to take the first step even if it feels too vulnerable

RESOURCES MENTIONED

RAND Corporation research published in JAMA Network Open, November 2025

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛