There is nothing wrong with you
During a recent lunch with friends—executives, business owners, editors, and other people now far enough into our careers to complain about workplace culture instead of causing it—the conversation drifted toward a shared anxiety: How exactly do you give feedback to younger colleagues without accidentally becoming someone’s workplace villain origin story?
One friend shared an experience that left the entire table half-amused, half-horrified. After a younger team member submitted a report, she read through it and immediately sent back a few edits and clarifications—just ordinary professional feedback meant to tighten the work and improve the final output.
The next day, the employee resigned.
Soon after, my friend’s eldest nephew—thoroughly entertained by the possibility that his tita had become the antagonist in somebody else’s online healing journey—stumbled across a Reddit thread that sounded suspiciously familiar.
An anonymous poster described a “micromanaging,” “triggering,” “parang inuutusan ako na bata,” “hypercritical” boss with “trust issues” who allegedly created an “unsafe work environment” by immediately correcting submitted work.
The poster even dropped clues about the company and described the source of her suffering in suspicious detail, right down to the hairstyle that happened to be my friend’s trademark look.
Feedback is not always trauma
Previous generations were often taught to accept criticism silently, sometimes to unhealthy extremes. Younger workers, meanwhile, are entering workplaces with stronger emotional vocabulary, clearer boundaries, and greater awareness of toxic environments. In many ways, that is progress. Nobody should romanticize abusive workplaces disguised as “tough mentorship.”
But discussions in human resource circles since the post-pandemic Great Resignation have increasingly revolved around how ordinary correction itself has become emotionally charged. Edits are now interpreted as mistrust. Constructive criticism becomes “trauma.” Professional distance becomes “hostile energy.”
And yes, terrible bosses absolutely exist. Many millennials and Gen X workers carry scars from toxic office cultures—where humiliation was normalized as a test of grit.
Not every unpleasant interaction is abuse. Sometimes feedback is simply feedback. Sometimes mentorship means someone telling you where the work can still improve.
If anything, a workplace where nobody corrects you is not necessarily a kinder workplace. Sometimes, it is a workplace where nobody is invested enough to help you improve.
And perhaps that tension says something larger about the way modern culture increasingly interprets discomfort itself.
The internet has turned everyone into amateur clinicians
Somewhere between genuine mental health awareness and algorithm culture, every difficult emotion suddenly began arriving with definitive labels.
Sadness or feeling down became depression. Stress, which is essential to human survival, became automatic anxiety. An emotionally unavailable ex or a distant parent became a narcissist. Conflict became gaslighting. Ordinary disappointment, which is part of adulting, became trauma.
Psychologists abroad have already begun studying what researchers call “concept creep,” where psychiatric language slowly expands into ordinary life experiences. And social media accelerated this dramatically. Terms like “triggered,” “trauma response,” and “gaslighting” now circulate through TikTok feeds and group chats with almost no clinical precision left.
Dr. Carla Adajar, a physician working in the mental health space who plans to pursue psychiatry residency, describes social media awareness as a “double-edged sword.” “Mas nagiging aware ‘yong mga tao sa mental health, pero nagkakaroon din ng maraming false positives sa self-diagnosis,” she says.
Greater awareness encourages people to seek help. But it also creates situations where ordinary distress gets prematurely labeled as a disorder. And before older generations begin nodding too smugly about “kids these days,” let us acknowledge one thing clearly: Younger people are not inventing their stress out of thin air.
The kids are not imagining it
Gen X and older millennials experienced major social and geopolitical change over decades. Younger adults now experience it almost yearly, sometimes monthly. Industries collapse overnight. Careers become obsolete in real time. Inflation rises while wages remain tethered to the economic realities of the mid-2010s. Senate Presidents change within days. Political instability, layoffs, war footage, and climate fears arrive through push notifications before breakfast.
People are emotionally flooded and overstimulated.
And unlike previous generations, younger people grew up under constant visibility. Every awkward phase, breakup, insecurity, bad opinion, failed situationship, and emotional spiral can become searchable content. They have never been more connected, yet many increasingly feel isolated, observed, and profoundly alone.
Of course, therapy language spread through TikTok, Reddit, and anonymous online communities. Young people were trying to understand themselves using whatever vocabulary and means they could find. And some of that shift was necessary.
Many Filipinos were raised to believe that depression was weakness, a character flaw, or simply kaartehan. Therapy was often reserved for people considered “crazy.” In some Chinese Filipino families, mental illness is still quietly treated as a stain on the bloodline, discussed in whispers alongside addiction, scandal, or homosexuality.
Younger generations rejected that silence. That matters. But awareness without nuance can quietly slide into self-pathologizing.
Not every emotionally unavailable person has narcissistic personality disorder. Not every stressful week is automatic burnout. Not every disappointment is trauma-inducing. Not every difficult season is a disorder.
Sometimes, life is simply painful and imperfect.
Group chats are not mental health professionals
The Philippine context complicates this conversation because professional mental healthcare remains expensive and unevenly accessible. Public support exists, including through PhilHealth, but access still varies widely depending on geography, education, and income. Psychiatrists and psychologists remain concentrated in major cities, reflecting the disproportionate number of specialists relative to the population.
So the natural response in an underserved mental healthcare system is emotional outsourcing.
People turn to friends, ChatGPT, group chats that function like pseudo treatment centers, wellness influencers who seem to have answers for everything, and casual online Q&As disguised as screening tools.
I have seen online communities where well-meaning strangers—people presumably untrained in counseling or crisis intervention—offer a virtual shoulder to cry on and invite distressed users to message them anytime. The intention is kind. But what happens when a situation escalates beyond what anonymous good Samaritans are equipped to handle?
And because younger Filipinos grew up online, therapy language has entered everyday social life almost seamlessly, especially among urban middle- and upper-middle-class circles. Suddenly, everyone is discussing boundaries, attachment styles, emotional regulation, nervous systems, and trauma responses over matcha and Korean barbecue.
People are not irrational for drifting toward self-diagnosis or self-medication. In countries like the Philippines, where mental healthcare can be expensive, inaccessible, or stigmatized, many are simply trying to make sense of themselves with whatever tools are available.
But there is a difference between responsibly managing one’s wellbeing and attempting to chemically regulate oneself through caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, supplements, vape culture, sleep deprivation, or questionable online “focus” drugs simply to survive impossible productivity standards.
Feelings are real, but they are not always forecasts
For Adajar, the distinction between ordinary distress and something clinically concerning often comes down to functionality—whether a person can still sustain daily life, relationships, work, studies, hygiene, sleep, and self-care despite emotional strain.
“Kapag may issues with functionality—social, occupational, and self-care—doon ako nagsstart ng medications,” she explains. Otherwise, many patients are initially approached through the lens of possible adjustment disorder rather than immediately treating every difficult emotional period as a severe psychiatric illness.
Pain matters, yes, but not every painful experience is a disorder—and perhaps that is the emotional proportion modern culture increasingly struggles to keep. A breakup can feel world-ending at 21. Not getting into your preferred school under the weight of parental and peer expectations can feel humiliating. Being furloughed while bills continue arriving triggers real fear. Grief, whether for death or the end of a life season, destabilizes people. Loneliness affects the body. Failure embarrasses people.
These emotions are part of being alive. But feelings are not always forecasts.
Avoiding suffering altogether also dulls our appreciation for joy, intimacy, accomplishment, relief, and reinvention. A life without disappointment would also be a life without resilience, growth, forgiveness, and second chances.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with you
The challenge now is resisting both extremes: the older generation’s emotional denial and the internet generation’s tendency to medicalize every difficult feeling.
Both fail people differently. Some people truly need therapy. Some people truly need medication. Some people need psychiatric intervention urgently.
And some people need rest. Sunlight. A better support system. Financial stability. Less screen time. Time away from constant comparison. An honest conversation. A walk without documenting it online.
Not every difficult season requires a diagnosis. Not every uncomfortable feeling is pathology.
