We Are All Mentally Ill

Stop pretending

Let's stop pretending.

Every single one of us is living in a carefully constructed fantasy, a personal matrix of our mind's own making. Sure, some of us can still do our laundry and pay our taxes on time, but that doesn't make our reality any more "real" than the person talking to themselves on the street corner. We're all just functioning at different levels of delusion.

Think about it. While your eyes scan these words, your mind is humming like a server room, running endless background processes you didn't choose to install. There's the endless loop of this morning's elevator interaction – did your laugh sound too nervous, too loud?

In another tab, tomorrow's meeting plays out in vivid disaster scenarios: your presentation crashes, your voice cracks, your boss's subtle frown deepens. Meanwhile, the ever-running productivity audit tallies today's failures and inadequacies. And somewhere in this mental chaos, that text message you sent an hour ago floats like a time bomb – each passing minute of silence confirming your worst fears about how those three simple words could be misinterpreted in exactly thirty-seven different ways.

And your body? It's taking notes, faithfully responding to every fictional disaster your mind conjures. Your shoulders climb toward your ears as if bracing for impact. Your jaw clenches against words you never actually have to say. Your stomach churns acid for threats that don't exist. Your heart – that faithful responder to imagination's emergencies – pumps battle-ready blood through your system for fights you'll never actually face.

This isn't just momentary discomfort. This is your body slowly drowning in stress hormones it was never meant to swim in constantly. Your mind's infinite capacity for worry is literally aging you from the inside out. Those stress hormones? They're corroding your telomeres – the protective caps on your DNA that determine how quickly your cells age. Your immune system, confused by these constant false alarms, starts misfiring. Inflammation becomes your body's default setting. Your digestion treats every meal like a potential threat. Your sleep becomes as fragmented as your attention span.

The cruel irony? None of these physical reactions are protecting you from actual danger. They're just your body's desperate attempts to survive threats that exist only in that hyperactive movie theater between your ears. You're wearing down your body's emergency response system by keeping it perpetually activated for imaginary emergencies. It's like keeping your car in fight-or-flight mode 24/7, redlining the engine while parked safely in your garage.

And we call this normal. We call this "just thinking."

Stop pretending.

None of these thoughts are reality. They're stories – elaborate fabrications woven from threads of memory, fear, desire, and imagination.

We've created this arbitrary line in the sand: cross it, and you're "mentally ill." Stay behind it, and you're "normal." But let's get real about this imaginary boundary. Your coworker who rehearses next week's presentation 87 times in her head at 3 AM?

Totally normal.

The guy who does the same with imaginary conversations with his ex? Clearly dealing with some threatening disorder.

Your friend who obsesses over her Zoom background before meetings?

Just professional.

The person arranging their furniture symmetrically? Here's some Seroquel.

Let's stop pretending. This whole diagnostic circus is just rating how inconvenient your particular flavor of thought-attachment is to capitalism. You could create 300 separate "disorders" from the same exact mental process – our minds getting hooked on their own stories. The only real difference is branding. Obsess about your stock portfolio? Here's a corner office. Obsess about the alignment of your coffee cups? Here's a care plan.

Socially Acceptable Madness

Take “Sarah”, her Tesla sits in the driveway of her meticulously renovated Victorian – carefully curated props in the story she's constructed about success. Her Instagram feed is a masterclass in strategic self-presentation: just enough vulnerability to seem relatable, enough achievement to command respect. She's learned to package her neuroses in socially acceptable wrapping paper.

At 3 AM, Sarah's mind runs disaster simulations about tomorrow's board meeting while her Apple Watch records another night of fragmented sleep. Her acid reflux is "just part of the job." The tension headaches? "Normal for someone at her level." The panic attacks in her private bathroom between meetings? Well, they're hidden behind carefully applied lipstick and a story about "thriving under pressure." Her body is a battlefield, but the war is hidden behind designer armor and an impressive profit margin.

The story works. Her colleagues nod knowingly about "the price of success." Her therapist calls it "high-functioning anxiety." Her social media followers call it "inspiration." Her body calls it chronic inflammation, cortisol addiction, and premature aging – but hey, at least her stock options are vesting.

Meanwhile, James counts his doorknob turns openly, his rituals raw and exposed to the world. No carefully constructed narrative shields him from society's stares. He hasn't learned to disguise his compulsions as "attention to detail" or "quality control." His mind runs the same kind of repetitive disaster scenarios as Sarah's – he just hasn't packaged them in a PowerPoint presentation or tied them to a quarterly bonus structure.

The difference? Sarah's delusions are wearing Louboutins and contributing to a 401(k). Her stories align with capitalism's favorite fairytales. Her particular flavor of mental distortion helps maintain the collective illusion of control, success, and "having it together." She's made her madness marketable, turned her dysfunction into a LinkedIn profile that reads like a victory lap.