We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path.

I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.

>> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.

I never thought about it but it likely stems from loss of religion, like many other problems. If I see my life as insignificant in the chain of generations - as a conduit between ancestors and descendants - and believe in the soul at least as a metaphor - then personal death or that of others is sad, but is in the context of a deeply meaningful existence.

On the other hand, if I am closer to atheistic hedonism/nihilism - there's nothing else but me and my thoughts and experiences, then my existence or non-existence takes on a very heavy weight - and we project that onto others.

I think that's backwards. I think the problem is that we, the general populace, fear medicalization. The medicalization of grief specifically or other emotional issues generally is unrelated.

These sorts of diagnosis criteria are created for a reason. I highly doubt psychiatric medical practitioners are developing them to pack people up into bins so that they can be marginalized. They create these criteria to be able to have a shared language to speak about issues and try to develop treatment regimens.

And it's not their fault that the lay population takes it out of context and screams, "NO NO NO! I'M NOT BROKEN!" It's that reaction that is the problem. That reaction that, "someone who fits this criteria is by-definition broken", with "and broken people are irredemable" followed closely behind. It belies a belief that they feel this way about other people, too.

The truth is, everyone deals with issues that would fit some criteria in the DSM-5. It's just part of the human condition. Some people are able to manage these issues on their own and some people are not, and that doesn't make them broken anymore than the fact that some people can dunk a basketball and some cannot. But, if you're 5'9" and had a job to put a ball in a basket 10 feet off the ground, wouldn't you want to focus on learning to shoot rather than try techniques you've observed 6'9" people use with ease?

Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like.

It's in the same vein as people who complain no one ever talks about serious subjects, and I'm just wondering why they think I want to get into discussing the meaning of life in the workplace cafeteria.

Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? A celebration of death? Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations? Why focus on the inevitable rather then actually living?

In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.

In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?

The problem is that medical diagnoses and therapy speak have spilled over into common language where they’re so diluted that they’re not accurate any more. For many there is no line drawn anywhere because they are self-diagnosing based on flawed understandings as soon as any feeling or symptom arrives.

This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.

This is only a subset of people, but it’s a rapidly growing percentage of younger people I work with. When someone falls into this mindset it only grows: The same people using these terms usually accumulate a lot of different self-diagnoses to cover every element of common human experience: They will claim ADHD, social anxiety, often some variation of Autism despite showing none of the signs, PTSD due to a previous relationship/boss/professor they didn’t get along with, and insomnia or delayed sleep phase syndrome. Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves.

I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them, because that’s where they think the best information comes from. 20-something engineers confidently tell me they know more than their doctors about ADHD and how to treat it (usually after their doctor refuses to increase their dose of Adderall again or denies them some other controlled substance they think they need like ketamine or perpetual daily Xanax). There’s also a growing culture of casual drug abuse and misuse that gets justified as self-medication, but that’s a topic for another post.

That said, the writing really resonated with me and i wish Bess well.

My dad died of cancer when I was 26, and I had very frequent dreams where it felt like he was real and present, though never speaking or interacting directly with me. The grief persisted for years.

Nearly 25 years later, my mom passed away this summer, and it's been a totally different experience. The grief was just as intense as when my dad passed, but contained to a few weeks.

Our bodies and brains are complicated.

The author is extremely talented at isolating certain feelings and making you feel them with her. I wouldn't use this article as a diagnosis of anything but her writing talent.