Something I’m increasingly sceptical of in modern mental health culture is this constant insistence to open up. Share your story! says every celebrity. Speak out! says every company. Men aren’t opening up enough, says pretty much every mainstream publication. In fact last week in the UK it was #TimeToTalkDay, urging us to be more open about mental health and share how we really feel!
My main concern with this is that Gen Z are very lonely and screen-addicted and so often take this advice and start opening up online. All over the internet, my generation are sharing their autism traits, ADHD habits and Tourette’s tics. Plus deeply personal moments: traumatic events, anxiety attacks, and mental breakdowns. On TikTok #mentalhealth has over 127 billion views; #trauma alone has almost 30 billion.
One major problem with opening up online, for example, is that whatever you share inevitably becomes part of your brand. This, I think, can explain a lot of Gen Z’s current obsession with and confusion around identity. We market ourselves from very young ages and then struggle to rebrand, to integrate our evolving selves into our online image. Once you share something on social media—your anxiety, OCD, gender dysphoria—it’s documented. You’re categorised. Consciously or not, you are more compelled to stick with it. But identities evolve! You are supposed to change! I find it so suffocating how modern culture makes us feel like it’s inauthentic or some sort of moral failure to change who you are or what you believe. Nobody can live up to that! And actually the opposite is true: something is very wrong if you aren’t changing.
As I see it this is why older generations often chafe at all this oversharing. Not because they can’t relate to adolescent angst or have no compassion for mental illness, but from an understanding that things, people, change. Maybe you are in real emotional pain. But don’t go blasting your gender identity journey all over the internet because someone told you it’s brave. You might not feel that way in six months, a year, six years. Even if you do, you might not want it out there. You might not even remember that you thought you had Tourette’s in your pre-teens. Also: trends change. There may not be the same cultural cachet for sharing your symptoms in the future. People might not be as rewarding or forgiving, so don’t start relying on their validation now.
This is a caution, then. A plea, actually, to the young girls recording their anxiety attacks, documenting their depressed day in the life, introducing their multiple personalities, posing with their mental health pills, to honestly think about this: what if things change for you? What if when you’re 30 you don’t want that video of you crying on your bedroom floor online? Or cleaning your messy depression room? What if you don’t even relate to that person anymore?
And please, ask yourself: is this going to be good for your recovery? Because despite what the mental health industry would have you believe, your anxiety isn’t fixed or inevitable. You could get over your OCD. But you’ll make that much less likely and harder for yourself by posting it all over the internet and publicly building your identity around it first. Maybe you’re socially anxious at 14 but not at 20, but you made it your brand and showed the internet that you struggle to make a phone call and can’t order food. Maybe you desperately want to be seen as confident but you’ve already marketed yourself as anxious and that’s how people treat you. All I’m saying is you might regret reducing yourself to a collection of symptoms. This world can be cruel and unforgiving, and you might one day regret telling it you can’t cope.
Delusions of Adequacy 