We are living in a time when psychological language is everywhere. Therapy terms saturate social media. Scroll through Instagram or TikTok, and you will find an endless stream of content about coping skills, trauma, diagnoses, self-care routines, emotional validation, and symptom explanations. Mental health information is now available on demand, packaged in brief, emotionally affirming formats that are easy to consume and easy to share.

By most assumptions, this should be a golden age of psychological well-being.

Yet many people report the opposite experience. Despite unprecedented access to mental health content, people increasingly describe themselves as more anxious, more fragile, more self-focused, and more uncertain about how to live their lives. The question worth asking is not whether mental health awareness has gone too far, but whether the way it is currently framed may be quietly making things worse.

Much of today’s mental health content encourages constant self-observation. People are taught to scan their thoughts for distortions, their emotions for warning signs, and their behavior for evidence of pathology. Others are taught to scan their internal states for reassurance that they are actually doing okay. Either way, attention remains tightly locked inward. While self-awareness has value, excessive self-monitoring reliably amplifies anxiety in both humans and non-human animals. Vigilance without direction produces agitation, not clarity.

Comparative psychology is helpful here. Across species, well-being depends far less on internal comfort and........

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