once you turn 20 you have to fight everyday for the rest of your life to not lose your personality & spirit...bc what once came naturally to you will be exhausted into nothing if you don't actively Try. it's terrifyingly easy to become a lethargic, soulless adult
Your brain doesn't age because of time. It ages because of repetition. The more predictable your days become, the faster your neurons quiet down. Your brain builds neural pathways based on experience. New experiences create new connections. Repetition strengthens old ones. But when you repeat the same patterns for years, your brain stops building. That's why time feels faster as you age. Your brain stops encoding new memories. It just references old ones. A year at 40 feels shorter than a year at 10, because at 10, everything was new. At 40, everything is familiar. But neuroplasticity doesn't stop. You can still grow new neurons. You can still learn. You can still change. You just have to break the loop. Your brain will wake up. And time will slow down again.
We have become too articulate about our suffering & too inarticulate about our strength. The more elegantly we describe our wounds, the harder it becomes to leave them behind. When a struggle becomes part of your identity, overcoming it feels like a betrayal of who you are.
You ask how their week was and they say “I am really sitting with some things.” You ask what they want for dinner and they say “my inner child is very activated by choices right now.” Every feeling is a symposium. Every discomfort is “trauma.” Every minor conflict is “a communication rupture” that needs a three hour debrief with screenshots and voice notes.
Somewhere along the line we turned “pay attention to your inner world” into “stare at your own navel until the rest of the world blurs out.”
Therapy language leaked out of the office and into the feed. Suddenly everyone has an attachment style, an inner child, a trigger, a boundary, a nervous system on the brink. Which would be beautiful, if the point were to live a richer life. Too often the point quietly becomes to center yourself in every room.
There is a difference between healing and self obsession. They use similar words, but they land very differently in other people’s bodies.
Imagine a brain that never gets to rest from “how am I feeling right now.” You wake up and before your eyes even focus you run a scan. Am I ok. Am I regulated. Am I triggered. Am I in fawn or fight. You open your phone and the first three posts tell you that if you feel tired it is childhood trauma, if you feel lonely it is attachment trauma, if you feel annoyed it is a sign of a deep unmet need. There is no such thing as “I am just in a stupid mood.” Everything is a diagnostic code.
You go to work. Your coworker is short with you because they are on day two of a migraine and late on their rent. Instead of thinking “rough day, let them be,” you watch your own body and compose a paragraph about how this tone is “not safe for your inner child.” You feel disrespected, which you absolutely have a right to. But instead of having one uncomfortable conversation, you spin three days of analysis, two journal entries, and ten TikToks into it.
Meanwhile, dishes are still in the sink. Your friend is still waiting for your text back. Your deadline is still crawling toward you. The world does not pause its demands just because you are drafting the perfect paragraph about why your needs were not honored.
Sometimes the most mentally healthy move is not to name the feeling. It is to put your shoes on and do the next thing.
There is a kind of over-therapizing that becomes a dodge. If every flaw becomes “my trauma,” then nothing is your responsibility. Snapping at people is “my nervous system reacting.” Cheating is “my attachment wound.” Ghosting is “my avoidant tendencies.” The language that was invented to reduce shame gets repurposed to reduce accountability.
It should not take three sessions and a notes app essay to admit you were rude and say sorry.
The other side of this is quieter but just as suffocating. People who treat every flicker of discomfort as a crisis that must be resolved before life can continue. If I feel anxious, I must stop and explore. If I feel bored, it means I am misaligned. If I feel jealous, it must be a sign I am with the wrong person. No emotion is allowed to just pass through. It has to be understood, discussed, integrated.
No wonder so many people feel exhausted all the time. They are not only living their life. They are live blogging their own psyche to themselves.
You know who does not have time for that. The version of you who is actually present with someone else.
Think about the people you trust most. Chances are they are not the ones who constantly announce what they are working on internally. They are the ones who remember your exam date, show up when your name pops up on their screen, notice your tone shift and ask one simple “are you ok” instead of turning the conversation back to their own emotional weather report.
Thinking of yourself less is not the same as neglecting yourself. It is letting your attention be a two way street.