Comment Editor Safreen AC explores what it means when we pathologise familiar experiences and turn them into diagnostic identities.

By Safreen AC | Sep 10 2025

Do you enjoy rewatching your favourite sitcom instead of starting a new TV show after a long day of work? You are probably almost certainly someone who has clinical depression and an anxiety disorder. Are you an adult who struggles to focus now but used to spend hours holed up in a corner reading books as a child? I regret to inform you that according to various social media platforms, your reading habit was actually just a sign that you were dissociating. Too tired to text or email people back sometimes? It’s probably a sign of childhood trauma and definitely not the fact that you have two jobs or spend three hours a day commuting between work and home.

On TikTok, Instagram, Tumblr, and X (formerly known as Twitter) every experience you have ever had might just be a sign of an underlying pathology. The internet can be a useful resource, especially in a world where mental health care is inaccessible to many people, and where specific issues are often ignored or underdiagnosed in certain populations. Social media can offer community to people who are struggling to navigate the healthcare system or even guide them towards professionals who can help.

However, in the last few years, it is quite common to see people attribute specific diagnoses based on one-off instances or pathologising common experiences or relationship dynamics. 

There are countless videos and articles online that discuss how to identify and overcome “eldest daughter syndrome” or “gifted child burnout” and many creators explicitly craft their online presence around their identification with these pathologies. The impulse to look at a single instance or symptom and think “Oh, that’s exactly like me,” is very easy to follow through on, especially when it is being viewed in a thirty second video that rapidly presents a set of discrete, relatively common experiences or traits without any context. 

By creating anxieties where there were none before, people remain in a state of mind that makes them more likely to spend time scrolling through social media in search of solutions and comfort.

When I look up “eldest daughter” on Instagram, the first couple of posts include things like “caring deeply about others” and “feeling guilty when you are not productive” as potential signs of an abnormal childhood. However, these traits or feelings are extremely common in most of the population, and more often than not, are the products of a relatively non-traumatic life.The search for an explanation about why you feel bad or struggle with something in your life predates social media, but the level at which these new micro-identities emerge and are essentially sold to people—through “self-help’ books or online content—has been accelerated by internet culture. 

Many people struggle to concentrate, or find themselves spending less time on reading or other hobbies in their adulthood, or forget to text a friend during a particularly stressful time. Of those people, there may be a percentage for whom these traits or experiences are the result of emotional trauma, but most online content reduces what are deeply complex individual experiences into sweeping and universally relatable diagnoses. Not only do they do a disservice to those who have experienced serious struggles, but they also cause people to develop worries they otherwise would not by pushing them to see isolated experiences as signs of extreme psychological harm. Trauma or mental illness is rarely ever the result of linear cause and effect, and the same exact symptoms and conditions can be seen in drastically different people. 

Diagnosis is not bad in itself, but pathologising every facet of existence and building an identity around a diagnosis is a path that can lead towards a sense that you lack any kind of agency.

Many of the influencers and creators who produce quick-bite content about mental health offer generalised solutions that not only fail to actually address cases where someone has an issue, but often also encourage self-isolating behaviours that make people even more likely to rely on social media for validation and support. There are people online who are writing and creating things that offer a genuine avenue through which people can find help and further support. It is great that people can find guidance and support through online spaces, especially in light of how certain groups are discriminated against within the healthcare system. At the same time it is important to remember that influencers and social media companies have a vested interest in making sure people spend more time consuming their content. By creating anxieties where there were none before, people remain in a state of mind that makes them more likely to spend time scrolling through social media in search of solutions and comfort.

A lot of the criticism around pathology or diagnosis in the case of mental health concerns has come from commentators who think the younger generations are “weak snowflakes” and dismiss valid concerns. It is key to remember that criticising and calling out the tendency to pathologise common experiences can exist alongside believing people and taking them at their word when they express that they are struggling. Getting a diagnosis, the care you need, and finding community and support through that diagnosis is lifesaving for countless people, and there is nothing wrong with that. 

The danger of the present phenomenon of pathologisation lies in the fact that it encourages people to treat their identities and lives as things that are pre-determined, unchangeable, and unrelated to their broader social and economic circumstances. Diagnosis is not bad in itself, but pathologising every facet of existence and building an identity around a diagnosis is a path that can lead towards a sense that you lack any kind of agency. The constant state of precarity and uncertainty that structures much of our lives in 2025 is difficult to cope with. It is unsurprising that people find comfort in explanations that view their struggles as the result of a specific syndrome or condition. It is far easier to excuse harmful behaviours as something that is related to a particular diagnosis or traumatic past and to treat it as something you cannot control. 

The existence of this impulse to pathologise is connected to much larger problems: the lack of accessible mental health care infrastructure, the increasing commodification of everyday life, and the wider socio-political context that contributes to making people feel alone and unhappy in the first place. The idea that every problem a person might experience can be pin-pointed to one moment in their lives, upholds the external systems that are actively working against them. Figuring out how to navigate life requires that we resist the growing impulse to locate the source of all our problems within ourselves. The goal is not to find a single pathology or diagnosis—explanations are a starting point that provide a way through which to unravel emotions and anxieties and rediscover a sense of agency over our lives.