jordan peterson on why people actually fall apart:
1. as a psychologist, you learn something almost nobody expects. people don't come to you with a mental illness. they come to you because their life got too complicated to stay on top of.
2. complexity is the real problem. when it slips beyond your control, it causes suffering. and that suffering is what breaks people.
3. it's almost never one thing. it's three or four hitting at once. you lose your job. the economy collapses. someone you love dies. then you get sick. and you look around and think there's no getting out of this.
4. picture a balloon. blow it up past what it can hold and it bursts at the weakest spot. people are the same. keep piling complexity onto someone and they blow out wherever they're weakest. one starts drinking. another gets depressed. another gets anxiety or ocd. that's the "mental illness." but it's really just collapse in the direction of your weakness.
5. and sometimes it goes further. life gets so complex that people would rather be dead. that's what a lot of suicide actually is. not wanting to die. wanting the complexity to stop.