You attract what you are, not what you want. The Universe always balances itself out. Hence, Yin and Yang is everywhere we look and everywhere we cannot see.

I would infer that you may be depleted in some area of your life. Generally, when I am having any of these experiences I can recognise that my basic needs, and possibly even transformative, needs are not met. My basic needs are food and water, adequate sleep, shelter and safety, social connection (belonging), and esteem needs (e.g., self-respect, self-worth, self-competence, mastery and achievement, integrity, sense of freedom and independence etc.). Perhaps only when all my deficiency needs are met, and I’m experiencing dissatisfaction with my growth needs, do I feel Restless, Irritable, and Discontent in this area of my life – however I assume some would argue that if I am feeling that way when attending to my growth needs, then I may have slipped back to Esteem Needs. You can look up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for a visual representation if you like, using a search engine. Below is a GIF that I created to educate people on how we can buffer ourselves to vulnerabilities. It’s very telling to go into the body when we haven’t eat for a while, may be we’re running on caffeine, and you can feel the restlessness in the body. We have to fuel up when we’re hungry to buffer ourselves from becoming irritable and restless. If you’re feeling discontent with life, I would suggest a social activity, play time with friends, working on a project of some kind, or getting involved in your community.

Not long ago, words like “triggered,” “gaslighting,” “narcissist,” and “neurodivergent” belonged almost exclusively to therapists’ offices and psychology textbooks. Now they’re everywhere; in workplace training sessions, community organisations, TikTok comment sections, and casual conversation between friends over coffee. That shift has brought some genuinely important changes. But it’s also introduced some problems worth taking seriously.

The real wins

It would be unfair to dismiss this cultural shift outright. There are meaningful gains. More people today can identify manipulation, coercive dynamics, and emotional harm than any previous generation. Mental health conversations have been destigmatised in ways that would have been hard to imagine twenty years ago. People who were historically silenced, particularly those from marginalised communities, finally have language that validates their experiences and gives them permission to leave harmful situations. That’s progress

But then there’s “concept creep” (pathologising the ordinary or “diagnostic inflation”)

Psychologists use the term “concept creep” to describe what happens when a word originally defined by strict clinical boundaries starts expanding to cover increasingly ordinary experiences. And that’s precisely what happened with “trauma.”

Clinically, trauma refers to experiences that overwhelm the nervous system i.e., genuine threats to safety, severe harm, events that exceed a person’s capacity to cope. These days, the same word is regularly applied to being disagreed with, having a relationship end, receiving criticism, or simply feeling uncomfortable. Events like relationship breakdowns, job loss, or failure can be genuinely devastating, and for some people, under some circumstances, they absolutely do meet the clinical threshold for trauma. The distinction isn’t really about the type of event. It’s about the impact on the nervous system and the person’s capacity to integrate the experience.

When everything qualifies as trauma, the word stops doing useful work. Worse, it can actually undermine the resilience people need to navigate a genuinely difficult world.

The nervous system problem

Here’s where it gets important. In actual “clinical” trauma, the brain’s threat-response systems activate intensely. Memory processing is disrupted. The body mobilises for survival in ways that can leave lasting marks.

Discomfort is different. It involves real emotional activation, it’s not pleasant, but cognitive flexibility remains available. The capacity to think, reflect, and choose a response is still intact.

When people learn to label ordinary emotional discomfort as trauma activation, the consequences compound. If discomfort feels equivalent to harm, avoidance becomes a logical response. But avoidance prevents the gradual building of tolerance. And without tolerance, the world gets smaller.

Trauma as identity and social currency

In some online communities, there’s an uncomfortable dynamic worth naming: being “highly traumatised,” “chronically triggered,” or “deeply misunderstood” can confer real social benefits — belonging, validation, moral authority, and attention.

This doesn’t mean the experiences aren’t real. But when distress becomes central to someone’s identity, letting go of that distress can start to feel like losing themselves. Recovery, paradoxically, becomes threatening.

The fragility trap

In certain environments, fragility functions as a kind of protection. If I am highly sensitive, others must accommodate me. Challenge becomes inappropriate. Accountability becomes unsafe. The person is shielded, but the cost is enormous.

Resilience, both psychologically and biologically, develops through graded exposure to stress. We become capable through encountering difficulty, not by avoiding it. Systems that never face adaptive pressure weaken over time. This is simply how human development works.

Why this moment matters

Several things are converging right now. Social media algorithms reward extreme emotional narratives. Identity formation increasingly happens in digital spaces that amplify distress. Institutions have frequently overcorrected towards protective language in ways that, whatever their intentions, can inadvertently signal that discomfort is dangerous. And while there’s been important growth in awareness of systemic injustice, the corresponding emphasis on individual agency has sometimes been lost.

We’ve swung from “suppress your emotions entirely” to “your emotions define reality.” Neither extreme serves people well.

Holding the middle ground

What good support actually looks like isn’t dismissing people’s experiences, it’s deepening them. The distinction that matters is between trauma-informed practice and what might be called trauma-indulgent practice.

Trauma-informed means understanding that harm genuinely impacts nervous systems, avoiding shame, recognising power imbalances, and creating safety. It’s grounded and necessary.

Trauma-indulgent means treating all discomfort as harm, reinforcing avoidance, allowing emotional reasoning to override reality, and quietly removing personal responsibility from the picture. It feels compassionate in the moment but tends to leave people worse off over time.

In practice, holding the middle ground means validating what someone feels while gently asking whether something was truly unsafe or simply hard. It means acknowledging difficulty while also reinforcing capacity. It means introducing a reality that doesn’t get much airtime in online spaces — that we can’t always control how those around us speak or behave, but we can build our own tolerance and capacity to regulate.

The question underneath everything

There’s a deeper ethical question running through all of this: are we reducing suffering in the long run, or just distress in the short term?

Protecting people from discomfort today, if it increases fragility tomorrow, is not a kindness. But exposing people to challenge without adequate safety and support risks re-traumatising those with genuine wounds.

The balance isn’t complicated to describe, even if it’s genuinely difficult to hold: safety, combined with graduated exposure, combined with a genuine sense of agency.

Anyone supporting others through difficulty needs a calm nervous system, a high personal tolerance for distress, and the capacity to sit with being perceived as insensitive when holding a difficult but necessary line. Clear values and genuine boundaries aren’t optional extras — they’re the model.

The world remains economically uncertain, socially polarised, and digitally relentless. People will encounter disagreement, rejection, imperfect institutions, and others who handle things badly. Preparing people for a world where everyone is perfectly considerate is not just unrealistic — it’s a disservice.

Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, gives four options for any problem that you face: Solve the problem, change your perception of the problem, radically accept the situation, or stay miserable.

When we are overwhelmed by a life challenge, one way we might naturally respond is by defending our position. Perhaps, we’ll resort to an effective yet temporary coping strategy like denial, projection, victimhood, or blaming. We attempt to cope in ways that lessen the stress – the internal discomfort and unpleasantness. Coping strategies that offer temporary relief generally make the situation worse in the long run, especially when fostering relationships at work and in our personal lives. For example, crawling back into bed when you need to work or have commitments with friends. Maybe you over-eat, use chemicals or resent the world, which alleviates the immediate emotional pain, then feel guilty or ashamed afterward. 

Sometimes, in an effort to take action, people attempt to solve problems cognitively – problems that cannot be solved, becoming more and more frustrated when their efforts don’t work. Others become paralyzed or dissociate, unable to decide what to do. Intense emotions can be overwhelming, fatiguing, and compromise our ability to think with an open heart and a clear mind. Searching endlessly for the right solution adds to anxiety and distress.

Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, gives four options for any problem that you face: Solve the problem, change your perception of the problem, radically accept the situation, or stay miserable.

Choice 1: Solve the Problem.

There are many problem-solving strategies, but most use the same steps. First, define the problem. Be as specific as possible. Use numbers whenever possible. For example, “I’ve been late for work four days this week.”

Next, analyze the problem. Is it in your power to solve the problem? If not, then consider one of the other three options. If yes, then continue to analyze the problem.

What are the reasons you’ve been late? Is the reason always the same?  Does it depend on your mood or what time you went to bed? Does it depend on what tasks you have to do at work? Who you work with? Where you went the night before?  Consider the who, what, when, and where of the behavior you want to change.

The third step is to consider possible solutions. Think of various solutions that could solve the problem. Evaluate the solutions carefully to determine which might work best for you. What are the pros and cons of different actions? What could go wrong? What can you do to make the solution more likely to work?

For example, if you decide to give yourself a weekly budget and to freeze your credit cards in a block of ice, what would you do in case of an emergency? Would giving yourself a certain amount of spending money for the day work better than an amount for the week?

A key variable to remember is how difficult it is to make changes in behavior. A strong commitment to change is important. Be specific in stating the change you want to make. Be willing to make small changes at first. Implement the solution: Take action. Trouble-shoot as you go along, tweaking it to resolve any issues you didn’t anticipate.

Choice 2: Change Your Perception.

Changing your perception of the problem can be a challenge. An example of changing your perception of a problem might be to see a difficult boss as an opportunity to work on coping with someone who is disorganized and demanding. If you feel irritated because your house is cluttered with toys, maybe change your perception to one that the clutter is a signal to be grateful for young children in the home. Changing your perception could also mean changing your view of emotion. Instead of trying never to feel anger, look at your frustration as a source of information, perhaps a signal that you need to speak up for yourself.

Choice 3: Radically Accept the Situation.

Radical Acceptance means wholeheartedly accepting what is real. Radical acceptance is like saying, “It is what it is,” and giving up your resistance to the situation. Radical acceptance could be about issues we can’t control or concerns that we decide not to change, at least for the time being. It doesn’t mean you agree with what has happened or that you think it is reasonable.

Choice 4: Stay Miserable.

Of course, staying miserable is not a choice anyone wants to make, and no one would want to consider it as an option. But if you can’t solve the problem, can’t change your perception, and you aren’t ready to radically accept the situation, then staying miserable is the only option left.

Staying miserable may be all you can do in certain situations. Sometimes staying miserable may be what you have to do until you are ready to do something else. There are ways to cope that can help until another option can be used.

In future posts, we’ll look at specific skills that enhance your ability to problem-solve, change your perception, or radically accept situations. We’ll also consider ways to get through the times when you can’t make any of those choices.