To generalise your point somewhat, is there EVER an internet/social media fad that results in a healthy appraisal of one's life? It seems that you just end up with a load of anxious non-experts talking about something technical and completely missing the point in a constant cacophony that is prodded ever forward by The Algorithm. Is it even possible to have a healthy conversation in a context like that?
This doesn't directly address your post (which is great) but: I think the proper basis for mental healthcare is not to be personally happy or to avoid symptoms or improve mood-it's to be a better (more ethical) and helpful person to those around you. Once you reframe mental healthcare in that way so much of what seems bizarre and nonsensical disappears. A lot of the labelling and the online therapy community you reference here is really just semi-pathological self-absorption, which is not good for society or for individual psychological health.
Be more virtuous and stronger and more useful... and happiness will follow. Obsess about your mood and your 'peace' and your 'truth' and you will never find happiness. Humans are simply not normally built that way.
If you want to assess whether your relationship is good, ask yourself: does this person improve my work performance? Increase my kindness to strangers? Does having this person in my life make me a better friend? Does having this person in my life help me make good decisions? If a person is improving your experience of being an employee and a friend and a citizen that person is probably good for you... if he's not then there might be an issue. Just my opinion!
This is fantastic. I wonder, too, if a large part of the problem is the fact that women are physically bonding early to boyfriends through careless sex, without vetting compatibility or even the quality of the man and his treatment of them, and then are desperately trying to justify their ill-made bond through this sort of mindset.
We’re witnessing rampant diagnostic inflation; we pathologize reasonable emotional responses to the vicissitudes of complex relationships in a complex world.
Of course, this medicalized model of the human experience suits Big Pharma just fine—they’ve got a pill for every “ill.” The more we consider ourselves psychiatrically sick, the more $ Pharma makes.
My profession has done an enormous amount of damage by propagating this rhetoric.
Freya, my brother and I host a podcast called, “Love & Life with Dr. Karin and Pastor Elliott” in which we discuss holistic approaches to thriving in love and life. I’d love to have you join us for an episode, if you’re interested.
This post came to me perfectly because with my ex, he basically never spent quality time with me and whenever I asked for it he would always say he’s busy, and every single time arrange gaming with his friends over time with me, even when I lived with him.
And then he called me crazy and insecure and diagnosed me with BPD and said I needed to get better and work on myself and not get angry when he doesn’t hang out with me, and broke up with me. And I blamed myself every time and I tried to not have any needs but I couldn’t. And I even asked my therapist if I had BPD because he made it seem so convincing that something was very utterly wrong with me.
Thankfully one of my friends told me “sounds like he doesn’t make you feel secure in the relationship”. And that was the first time I thought maybe the problem wasn’t me. And I wasn’t being too needy and asking for too much. And she said “your attachment style can change based on your partner and maybe your ex made you anxiously attached”.
Thank you for this article. I’m beginning to see that my friend was right.
Gen Z often seems to complicate their lives, which are much easier compared to those of previous generations. Complaints are becoming increasingly common among this group, contrasting with their predecessors, who faced greater challenges yet seldom voiced their discontent. Imagining a Gen Z individual navigating life just 30 years ago—with the technology of that era—raises doubts about their adaptability. Social media and the internet have had profound impacts, not only on younger generations but also on Gen X and older individuals, altering the way all age groups communicate and interact. 🤯
I remember years ago when I learned about attachment theory and talking about it with my therapist. I tried explaining away that I was asking all these questions to my emotionally withdrawn partners because I was anxiously attached. She told me that while it was great that I discovered attachment theory, I was still right to ask questions. I see it's only gotten worse over the years.
"Seems to me that so much of Gen Z’s obsession with labels and categories comes from this need for control."
Great point! Another place this probably comes from is a need for belonging (i.e. creating identity-groups out of diagnostic categories) + the ability to absolve oneself of individual responsibility. See this GREAT bit on Colbert from a couple of months ago, discussing "girl trends": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqLuvNHECgw
"I don’t know about you but I’m tired of this delusion in modern life that a psychologically healthy and adjusted person doesn’t feel any pain or jealousy or need for anyone; they stay a moderate amount of attached to people, just enough that they can detach at any moment, and feel perfectly fine and stay friends because nobody owes them anything."
💯 There's a reason it's called healthy ATTACHMENT.
As I read this essay, I do wonder though if Gen Z has an attachment issue, or at least is focusing there because so many of you were separated from your mothers to be raised in daycare. There's ample evidence to show that kids in daycare, especially those who attended as infants, show higher levels of anxious and avoidant attachment because they couldn't attach to their mothers. Gen Z is the highest level of daycare babies ever in America, so why wouldn't you be unsure of how to attach? I know this is a controversial stance, but simply read anything by Erica Komisar, especially her work Being There. Gen Z's parents weren't there. Not really. They were at work, or working on themselves, or putting on their oxygen masks first, whatever. I mean, your parents are the ones who invented the entire self-care industry, never once considering the needs of the children. Just a thought.
Just want to say even if your ideas never got through to a single person who needed to hear them, hearing these things expressed is a great balm to those of us who are deeply worried these important truths are being lost. Modern society insists those truths are crazy or naive and I feel like we’ve all got to be firm about this or people are going to end up sadder and more confused. It’s heartbreaking to see love itself defined out of all meaning just because consciousness people feel it might not be their place to gently challenge the authoritative unwell.
To generalise your point somewhat, is there EVER an internet/social media fad that results in a healthy appraisal of one's life? It seems that you just end up with a load of anxious non-experts talking about something technical and completely missing the point in a constant cacophony that is prodded ever forward by The Algorithm. Is it even possible to have a healthy conversation in a context like that?
This doesn't directly address your post (which is great) but: I think the proper basis for mental healthcare is not to be personally happy or to avoid symptoms or improve mood-it's to be a better (more ethical) and helpful person to those around you. Once you reframe mental healthcare in that way so much of what seems bizarre and nonsensical disappears. A lot of the labelling and the online therapy community you reference here is really just semi-pathological self-absorption, which is not good for society or for individual psychological health.
Be more virtuous and stronger and more useful... and happiness will follow. Obsess about your mood and your 'peace' and your 'truth' and you will never find happiness. Humans are simply not normally built that way.
If you want to assess whether your relationship is good, ask yourself: does this person improve my work performance? Increase my kindness to strangers? Does having this person in my life make me a better friend? Does having this person in my life help me make good decisions? If a person is improving your experience of being an employee and a friend and a citizen that person is probably good for you... if he's not then there might be an issue. Just my opinion!
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/virtue-struggle-and-eudaimonia-begun?r=1neg52
This is fantastic. I wonder, too, if a large part of the problem is the fact that women are physically bonding early to boyfriends through careless sex, without vetting compatibility or even the quality of the man and his treatment of them, and then are desperately trying to justify their ill-made bond through this sort of mindset.
I’m a psychologist and this post is spot on! 💯
We’re witnessing rampant diagnostic inflation; we pathologize reasonable emotional responses to the vicissitudes of complex relationships in a complex world.
Of course, this medicalized model of the human experience suits Big Pharma just fine—they’ve got a pill for every “ill.” The more we consider ourselves psychiatrically sick, the more $ Pharma makes.
My profession has done an enormous amount of damage by propagating this rhetoric.
Freya, my brother and I host a podcast called, “Love & Life with Dr. Karin and Pastor Elliott” in which we discuss holistic approaches to thriving in love and life. I’d love to have you join us for an episode, if you’re interested.
This post came to me perfectly because with my ex, he basically never spent quality time with me and whenever I asked for it he would always say he’s busy, and every single time arrange gaming with his friends over time with me, even when I lived with him.
And then he called me crazy and insecure and diagnosed me with BPD and said I needed to get better and work on myself and not get angry when he doesn’t hang out with me, and broke up with me. And I blamed myself every time and I tried to not have any needs but I couldn’t. And I even asked my therapist if I had BPD because he made it seem so convincing that something was very utterly wrong with me.
Thankfully one of my friends told me “sounds like he doesn’t make you feel secure in the relationship”. And that was the first time I thought maybe the problem wasn’t me. And I wasn’t being too needy and asking for too much. And she said “your attachment style can change based on your partner and maybe your ex made you anxiously attached”.
Thank you for this article. I’m beginning to see that my friend was right.
Gen Z often seems to complicate their lives, which are much easier compared to those of previous generations. Complaints are becoming increasingly common among this group, contrasting with their predecessors, who faced greater challenges yet seldom voiced their discontent. Imagining a Gen Z individual navigating life just 30 years ago—with the technology of that era—raises doubts about their adaptability. Social media and the internet have had profound impacts, not only on younger generations but also on Gen X and older individuals, altering the way all age groups communicate and interact. 🤯
I remember years ago when I learned about attachment theory and talking about it with my therapist. I tried explaining away that I was asking all these questions to my emotionally withdrawn partners because I was anxiously attached. She told me that while it was great that I discovered attachment theory, I was still right to ask questions. I see it's only gotten worse over the years.
"Seems to me that so much of Gen Z’s obsession with labels and categories comes from this need for control."
Great point! Another place this probably comes from is a need for belonging (i.e. creating identity-groups out of diagnostic categories) + the ability to absolve oneself of individual responsibility. See this GREAT bit on Colbert from a couple of months ago, discussing "girl trends": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqLuvNHECgw
Hat tip, yet again!
So much gold in this👏👏👏
Freya with another BANGER! 🇬🇧😎🚀
"I don’t know about you but I’m tired of this delusion in modern life that a psychologically healthy and adjusted person doesn’t feel any pain or jealousy or need for anyone; they stay a moderate amount of attached to people, just enough that they can detach at any moment, and feel perfectly fine and stay friends because nobody owes them anything."
💯 There's a reason it's called healthy ATTACHMENT.
As I read this essay, I do wonder though if Gen Z has an attachment issue, or at least is focusing there because so many of you were separated from your mothers to be raised in daycare. There's ample evidence to show that kids in daycare, especially those who attended as infants, show higher levels of anxious and avoidant attachment because they couldn't attach to their mothers. Gen Z is the highest level of daycare babies ever in America, so why wouldn't you be unsure of how to attach? I know this is a controversial stance, but simply read anything by Erica Komisar, especially her work Being There. Gen Z's parents weren't there. Not really. They were at work, or working on themselves, or putting on their oxygen masks first, whatever. I mean, your parents are the ones who invented the entire self-care industry, never once considering the needs of the children. Just a thought.
Just want to say even if your ideas never got through to a single person who needed to hear them, hearing these things expressed is a great balm to those of us who are deeply worried these important truths are being lost. Modern society insists those truths are crazy or naive and I feel like we’ve all got to be firm about this or people are going to end up sadder and more confused. It’s heartbreaking to see love itself defined out of all meaning just because consciousness people feel it might not be their place to gently challenge the authoritative unwell.
Brilliant
Dang Freya, absolutely fantastic!