The Reset - Day 6

After five days of naming what hurts,

there’s a question worth sitting with:

What if the problem isn’t that we’re weak —

but that we’re responding to pressure in the only ways we know how?

Lack of motivation.

Overthinking.

Burnout.

Self-victimization.

Silent crises.

They don’t exist in isolation.

They grow in the same environment —

one that rewards performance over honesty,

busyness over balance,

and strength over softness.

Somewhere along the way, many of us picked up an idealist belief:

That we should be able to handle everything on our own.

That struggling means failing.

That needing help means weakness.

And then there’s the quiet belief almost every teen carries, even if we don’t say it out loud:

“I’m the only one feeling this.”

“No one will understand me.”

“My situation is different.”

Psychology calls this the personal fable.

The idea that our pain is unique, isolated, and invisible to others.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

It isn’t.

The biggest crisis of our generation isn’t motivation or discipline.

It’s the lack of empathy — for ourselves and for others.

We’ve learned to intellectualise our pain instead of feeling it.

To compare instead of connect.

To isolate instead of ask.

And yes — this includes how we see adults.

We assume parents and elders won’t understand.

That they’re out of touch.

That they’ve never felt this way.

But many of them have.

They just didn’t have the language or safety to talk about it when they were our age.

Seeking help doesn’t mean you’re weak.

It means you’re self-aware enough to stop carrying everything alone.

Talking to someone you trust — a parent, a sibling, a teacher, a friend, an elder — isn’t about dumping your problems.

It’s about letting someone sit with you while you make sense of them.

You don’t need a perfect explanation.

You don’t need to be at your worst.

You don’t need to have everything figured out.

Even saying,

“I’m not okay lately”

or

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but something feels off”

is a beginning.

Strength isn’t silence.

Strength is choosing connection over isolation.

The shift isn’t about fixing yourself.

It’s about replacing judgment with curiosity.

Instead of “What’s wrong with me?”

asking, “What happened to me?”

Instead of calling it laziness,

naming exhaustion.

Instead of blaming yourself for overthinking,

recognising fear.

Instead of staying quiet,

allowing yourself to be supported.

This series was never about answers.

It was about starting conversations we keep postponing.

With others.

And with ourselves.

Day 6 of The Truth Unhinged.

Not an ending.

Just a different way of looking at everything we’ve named.

And maybe —

a softer place to begin again.