Why You Might Not Be Broken After All...
When the world is on fire, is NOT being sad a sign of mental illness?
Disclaimer: This is not medical advice, just the reflections of a burnt out healthcare provider and consumer.
Let’s talk about that BIG D. Depression, that is…
You wake up. You're tired. You dread your inbox. The world feels heavy, your job feels meaningless, and every kid seems to have ADHD. You wonder if your brain is broken — or maybe you’re just finally paying attention.
We live in a world where sadness, restlessness, and burnout are no longer seen as natural responses to life, but instead as biochemical errors to be corrected. Your kid can't sit still in a desk for eight hours? Must be dopamine dysfunction. You're exhausted from the modern hamster wheel of productivity? Must be serotonin. Take this pill and get back to work.
Because God forbid you pause.
Chemical Imbalance: The Catchiest Myth in Psychiatry
For years, we've heard that depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance.” It’s simple. Easy. Marketable. Easily packaged into a pill. Also… never scientifically proven.
A 2022 umbrella review (a review of reviews) published in Molecular Psychiatry concluded there is no consistent evidence that low serotonin causes depression.
Oops.
This doesn’t mean SSRIs don’t ultimately help some people. They do. But if depression isn’t just about brain chemicals, why are we still acting like it is?
Maybe You’re Not Sick — Maybe You’re Having a Normal Human Response to a Sick Society
We live in a world where:
Productivity is praised over presence.
Rest is “lazy.”
Children are medicated so they can function in environments that actively stifle creativity.
And adults are numbed just enough to keep showing up to jobs they hate.
Maybe depression isn't a malfunction — maybe it's our bodies trying to tell us something.
Alternative Theories That Make Big Pharma Nervous
Polyvagal Theory
Developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, this theory says your nervous system isn’t just thinking in terms of “fight or flight” — it’s scanning the environment for safety. If you don’t feel safe (emotionally, physically, socially), your system might default into shutdown — which can look a lot like depression.
Translation: maybe you’re not broken. Maybe your body just doesn’t feel safe in late-stage capitalism. Weird!
The Biopsychosocial Model
Unlike the “chemical imbalance” narrative, this one says: Hey let’s consider biology and psychology and social context. Revolutionary, right?
Existential Psychology
What if your “disorder” is just you having a rational reaction to the absurdity of life? According to thinkers like Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom, the “symptom” is not pathology — it’s awakening. (Take that, serotonin!)
Trauma-Informed Approaches
Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score reminds us that the mind and body are inseparable. Chronic stress, childhood trauma, and intergenerational wounds might be behind the flat mood — not a missing neurotransmitter.
Big Pharma: Your Feelings Are Bad and You Should Feel Bad About It…But Take This Pill
Look, medication has its place. But let’s not pretend this isn’t a $40 billion industry that profits when your sadness is pathologized. ADHD meds, antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills — these are some of the most prescribed drugs on Earth. Are we really that broken, or is the system just that invested in keeping us “functional” to continue serving our masters?
It’s easier to medicate a person than to fix their environment. But maybe we’re overdue for some radical honesty.
ADHD: Diagnosis or Design Flaw?
In 2025, if your child struggles to sit still, gets distracted easily, or stares out the window during long lectures on common core math, they’re slapped with a label of ADHD by parents, teachers, and medical professionals alike. But what if these kids aren’t broken? What if they’re just disconnected and bored out of their brilliant little minds?
ADHD diagnoses have skyrocketed in recent decades. In the U.S., approximately 11% of children aged 4–17 have been diagnosed with ADHD, with rates much higher in boys than girls. Some researchers question whether this rise reflects a true increase in prevalence — or a society increasingly intolerant of normal childhood behavior.
A 2018 study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the youngest kids in a classroom were twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD and medicated than their older peers — suggesting that age-appropriate immaturity is often mistaken for disorder.
Even the very definition of ADHD is culturally bound. The same behaviors diagnosed as ADHD in the U.S. are often seen as normal variations in temperament in countries like Finland or the Netherlands, where schools emphasize outdoor play and less rigid academic structures. Turns out, children learn better when they’re not treated like tiny office workers.
The Environment, Not the Child, Might Be the Problem
Kids are increasingly expected to sit still for 6–8 hours a day, focus on abstract tasks, suppress physical movement, and excel in a system designed for quiet compliance. That’s not normal — it’s developmentally inappropriate.
Meanwhile, screen time is up, outdoor time is down, and recess is being sacrificed at the altar of standardized testing. A perfect storm for restlessness.
The CDC itself (or what remains of it…) acknowledges that behavioral therapy should be the first-line treatment for young children with ADHD — yet over 60% of kids diagnosed are prescribed stimulant medications right away. This is not a knock on meds — they can be life-changing. But it is a knock on how quickly we reach for the prescription pad instead of the playground.
Alternative Models: What If It’s Not a Disorder?
Some psychologists argue that ADHD traits may have been adaptive in evolutionary settings. Dr. Thom Hartmann’s Hunter in a Farmer’s World proposes that what we call ADHD today might have been advantageous in a hunter-gatherer context — where quick reflexes, novelty-seeking, and hyper-focus meant survival.
In today’s sit-down-and-shut-up model? Those same traits are labeled as dysfunction.
Then there’s the neurodiversity movement, which suggests that ADHD, like autism, is not a disease to be cured, but a different neurological wiring to be understood and accommodated. From this lens, it’s not about fixing the child — it’s about reimagining the environment.
What can we do about it (besides pump our kids full of amphetamines)?
Movement breaks improve focus and self-regulation in kids with ADHD.
Outdoor time significantly reduces symptoms of inattention. “Green time” beats screen time.
Mindfulness training, CBT, and parental education all show solid evidence as non-pharmacologic supports.
Can we all agree that many of these kids don’t need more structure? They need freedom. Creativity. Time to move. Time to be.
So maybe — just maybe — we need fewer pills, and more tree climbing. Let kids explore at take some risks…tell them to “break a leg” and REALLY mean it.
You Might Not Be Broken. You Might Be Waking Up.
So before you assume you’re disordered, ask yourself: Is it me? Or is it the environment that made me feel this way?
Maybe what you’re feeling isn’t an illness to be cured, but a signal to be honored. A sign that you’ve been programmed into a society that your body and soul are rejecting.
"He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures."
— Nietzsche