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Have we become so obsessed with protecting people’s feelings that we are forgetting to teach them how to cope with life?
By Devan Moonsamy
I am going to say something that may make some people uncomfortable: we are becoming too soft.
Not because mental health isn’t real. Depression, anxiety disorders, trauma, burnout and other psychological conditions are very real and should be taken seriously. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that more than one billion people globally live with a mental-health condition. But somewhere between finally learning to talk openly about mental health and trying desperately not to invalidate anyone’s feelings, we seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between mental illness and ordinary human discomfort.
Today, almost everything has acquired a psychological label. A difficult manager is “toxic”. An argument is “trauma”. Someone who disagrees with us is “gaslighting”. Nervousness is “anxiety”. Criticism becomes “bullying”. A selfish partner is a “narcissist”. A demanding week becomes a threat to our “mental wellbeing”.
Sometimes those descriptions are absolutely justified. But sometimes they aren’t. Not every unpleasant experience is a mental-health crisis. Sometimes life is simply uncomfortable — and discomfort is not a disease.
One of the greatest achievements of modern mental-health advocacy has been teaching people that their feelings matter. But “your feelings matter” cannot become “your feelings must always be accommodated”. You are entitled to feel offended; that doesn’t automatically mean someone harmed you. You can feel anxious without being unsafe. You can dislike criticism without the criticism being abusive. You can feel overwhelmed without everyone around you being responsible for removing the source of that discomfort.
Perhaps most concerning is how freely we now use clinical terminology. Researchers have even described a phenomenon called “concept creep” — where psychological and harm-related concepts gradually expand to include a much wider range of experiences than they historically did. Researchers have also raised concerns about the growing use of mental-health terminology and self-diagnosis on social media, particularly among younger people.
These conditions are real. They have clinical meaning. When every unpleasant person becomes a narcissist and every difficult experience becomes trauma, we don’t strengthen mental-health awareness — we risk trivialising the experiences of people living with genuine mental illness.
I see another version of this problem increasingly entering the workplace. Employers absolutely have responsibilities. Bullying, harassment and discrimination should never be tolerated, and genuinely psychologically unsafe workplaces can cause enormous harm. The World Health Organization itself recognises excessive workloads, discrimination, job insecurity, bullying and other poor working conditions as risks to mental health. But psychological safety does not mean psychological comfort.
Work involves pressure. There are deadlines, targets and difficult customers. Your manager may tell you that your work isn’t good enough. Someone else may get the promotion. Your idea may be rejected. Your performance may be questioned. You may fail. None of that feels good. But an organisation cannot function if every uncomfortable conversation becomes a mental-health event.
Compassion and accountability are not opposites. A person can be struggling psychologically and still have responsibilities. A manager can care about an employee’s wellbeing while also saying: “Your performance is not acceptable.” Mental health must never become a get-out-of-accountability-free card.
The same concern applies beyond workplaces. Parents understandably want to protect their children. Schools want children to feel safe. Universities want students supported. Employers want staff to feel valued. These are good intentions. But we need to ask whether protection from harm is slowly becoming protection from discomfort.
Resilience research has long recognised that coping with adversity and adapting to challenges are important parts of psychological development. A child who never experiences disappointment doesn’t learn how to manage disappointment. A young person constantly rescued from consequences doesn’t magically acquire resilience at 25. An employee who experiences every criticism as a personal attack will struggle in almost any demanding career.
We spend enormous amounts of time asking people, “How does this make you feel?” Perhaps we also need to start asking, “What are you going to do about it?”
And here is another uncomfortable truth: your employer is not responsible for your happiness. Your employer should provide a workplace free from harassment and discrimination, treat you fairly, protect your health and safety and provide reasonable support. But no employer can guarantee that you will never feel stressed, disappointed, frustrated or challenged.
Sometimes work is stressful because an organisation is dysfunctional. Sometimes work is stressful because work is difficult. Emotional maturity requires us to recognise the difference.
For generations we made the opposite mistake. People with depression were told to “get over it”. Men were told not to cry. Burnout was dismissed as weakness. Trauma was ignored. We should never return to that world. But correcting one extreme does not require creating another.
The answer isn’t less compassion. It is better psychological literacy and greater resilience. We need to recognise when someone needs professional help, accommodation, rest or protection — but also when someone needs perspective, accountability or simply to accept that life hasn’t gone their way.
Good mental health cannot mean feeling good all the time. Human beings need the capacity to experience disappointment, rejection, criticism, anxiety and failure without assuming every painful emotion means something is psychologically wrong.
Not every bad day is a mental-health crisis. Sometimes your boss isn’t toxic. Sometimes the feedback isn’t bullying. Sometimes the deadline isn’t unreasonable. Sometimes the other person isn’t a narcissist. Sometimes you were wrong.
And sometimes the thing that needs to change isn’t your workplace, your family, society or the world around you.
Sometimes, it is you.
Perhaps being able to hear that without falling apart is part of good mental health too.
References
- World Health Organization (2025). Over a billion people living with mental health conditions – services require urgent scale-up.
- World Health Organization. Mental health at work.
- Haslam, N. (2016). Concept Creep: Psychology’s Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology. Psychological Inquiry, 27(1), 1–17.
- American Psychological Association. Research and guidance on resilience and adapting to adversity.
- U.S. Surgeon General. Social Media and Youth Mental Health Advisory — evidence and concerns regarding young people’s exposure to health and mental-health information through social media.