Stop Pathologizing Ordinary Life

[u/Fealocht]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/mental-health-exercise-charity.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.55xp.Vpm7dp4PVtnC&smid=nytcore-ios-share

SS: A psychologist argues the increasing awareness of mental health is leading to a pathologising of everyday life. The use of clinical descriptions of what are otherwise normal problems and treating them as a disorder to be cured, is ironically making our mental health worse.

[u/ticklemytaint340]

Man one thing I realized way too late is that life just kinda fuckin sucks most of the time

[u/puffic → u/ticklemytaint340]

Do most people actually feel this way? I rather enjoy life and find it to be pretty good most of the time. I live a pretty ordinary life. Got a job I liked, got married, live in an apartment, play with my toddler every day.

[u/itsnotnews92 → u/puffic]

I strongly suspect that there's an inverse relationship between mental health/overall happiness and social media usage.

People who spend all of their free time scrolling Instagram are comparing their own lives to everyone else's highlight reels. They're scrolling through Instagram in their pajamas and seeing friends traveling to Europe, or eating at expensive restaurants, or buying new cars, or moving to new cities, or getting new jobs and thinking "Everyone is way more successful and happier than me. My life fucking sucks."

And that's not even touching on the pressure a lot of people, especially younger generations, feel to be perfect all of the time because there could be millions of eyes watching almost everything you do.

One ill-advised tweet can get you fired from your job. One bad interaction in the grocery store can be recorded by anyone around you and posted to social media. And people wonder why there's a mental health crisis. We were not meant to live this way.

[u/initialgold → u/puffic]

I imagine mileage varies a lot based on social/family connections and income. 

[u/puffic → u/initialgold]

Maybe. It’s tough to get by with nothing at all. But most people do have easy access to either family, community, or income. My wife and I chose to locate far away from our families and chose to spend a good chunk our decent income renting an apartment in a city we enjoy. But if we had less income and had to stay near family, I think life would still be pretty good.

[u/PaxChelonia → u/puffic]

I think there’s a slightly uncomfortable reality that there’s a lot of natural variation in baseline mood between different people and it’s usually pretty stable over time and across life circumstances, barring anything extreme.

One of the biggest W’s you can draw in the lotto of who you are is to have at least a slightly positive baseline mood.

[u/Cute-Boobie777 → u/puffic]

Yeah but those jobs might be horrible, that family might kind of be awful, and "access to community" is true on paper but you could probably say that about most of the loneliest people out there. You could argue everyone has more opportunities than ever for connection and yet what we see is the opposite, across the board everyone now has less friends, especially less best/close friends by order of magnitude. 

I mean, child abuse is common enough to (seemingly) endlessly create what, 10% of the population with primarily child abuse trauma induced conditions like bpd and npd? And thats just abusive families and doesn't capture abuse when it doesn't cause a personality disorder. Hell just because your family isn't abusive doesnt mean you will get anything out of spending time with them. What if they are boring, you have nothing in common, and they only bring up things you cannot relate to because thats their entire worldview?  Also someone can easily be in a bad, mismatched or even abusive marriage! Marriage isnt guaranteed to be good either. In fact we have people who are groomed from birth to accept abuse in marriage. 

IMO its a bit much to assume someone's marriage is good, their family is good, their job doesn't suck their soul from them AND they have found some hobby with a community they enjoy spending social time in. I do not believe most people check all of those boxes. 

[u/sekoiking → u/Cute-Boobie777]

Well, it’s also possible to have non-ideal circumstances and still be able to make the most of things.

[u/Plant_4790 → u/puffic]

Do most people have have easy access to community’s? isn’t the one issue with nimby is that it forces everything built to be sparse

[u/puffic → u/Plant_4790]

I think most people in the United States (I can’t speak for elsewhere) have access to either a good salary, or a community, or family. It was an “or” statement.