A Paradigm Shift in Psychology: Expanding the Map of Human Experience
Psychology has made meaningful strides over the last century. We have learned to name trauma, to understand attachment, to recognize how the nervous system shapes behavior, perception, and health. Somatic approaches, trauma-informed care, and body-based therapies have widened the lens considerably.
And yet - there remains a gap.
There are aspects of human experience that still sit outside the edges of our dominant models. Experiences that are felt, perceived, sensed, or known in ways that do not fit neatly into diagnostic categories. Too often, these experiences are approached with suspicion rather than curiosity, and at times are prematurely pathologized rather than explored.
Historically, psychology has been shaped by what can be measured, observed, and standardized. This has brought rigor and safety, but it has also narrowed what is considered valid. Human perception, however, is not uniform. Some individuals experience heightened sensitivity, intuitive knowing, energetic awareness, or extrasensory perception. These capacities are not inherently disorganized, delusional, or symptomatic. In many cases, they are coherent, regulated, and integrated; especially when supported rather than dismissed.
What Psychology is often missing in Western psychology frameworks is not insight, but context.
Many ancient and non-Western healing traditions have long understood human beings as multilayered systems: physical, emotional, energetic, intellectual, and relational. Chinese Medicine, for example, views health through the balance and flow of energy, recognizing patterns of excess, deficiency, and harmony long before symptoms become a pathology. These models do not separate mind from body, or perception from physiology. Instead, they emphasize balance, integration and the intelligence of the system as a whole.
When viewed through this lens, energetic perception is not anomalous; it is part of a broader understanding of how humans interact with their internal and external environments.
One of the missing pieces in our current psychological frameworks is the energetic body and field. Just as trauma lives in the nervous system and the tissues if the body, perception extends beyond what is visible or easily quantified. Many somatic and trauma-informed approaches already acknowledge that the body “keeps the score.” I would add that the field does as well; the relational, energetic, and perceptual space that surrounds and informs the individual. When this aspect of experience is ignored, treatment models can feel incomplete for those whose perception naturally includes these layers.
For individuals with heightened perceptual abilities, the absence of language - or the presence of pathologizing language - can be deeply isolating. There can be a quiet internal tension between lived experience and clinical interpretation. I know this tension personally. Navigating spaces where parts of one’s perception must be edited, masked, minimized, or translated for safety can painful, even when done skillfully. It is one of the reasons I care deeply about the evolution of the field.
To be clear: discernment matters. Not all unusual experiences are integrated. More than one thing can true at the same time. Dysregulation exists. Trauma can fragment perception. Ethical, grounded assessment is essential. But the answer is not to collapse all non-ordinary perception into pathology. The answer is to develop more nuanced models - ones that can differentiate between distress, and giftedness, between fragmentation and attunement.
Across cultures and throughout history, intuitive, energetic, and extrasensory capacities have been recognized as part of the human spectrum. Modern psychology does not need to abandon its foundations to make room for this - it simply needs to remember that it is one tradition among many. When we integrate the wisdom of ancient systems with contemporary science, we move toward a more balanced and complete approach to healing and well- being.
The future of wellness lies in inclusion: inclusion of the body, inclusion of the nervous system, inclusion of the energetic field, and inclusion of the wide range of human perceptual experience. When we allow for this breadth, treatment becomes more humane, more accurate, and more effective.
This shift is not theoretical for me. It is personal, clinical, and lived. And it is part of why I believe so strongly that psychology is not finished - it is still becoming.
