Quoting Freya India in N.S. Lyons, The Self and the Soul: A Dialogue with Freya India, The Upheaval, 2024

girls are genuinely suffering in the modern world […] I see girls being told to focus on their feelings, to take their thoughts so seriously, to search their lives for symptoms. […] It’s heartbreaking to see how many young women are so miserably stuck in their own heads now, and encouraged to go further and further inwards to find relief. […] People assume that Gen Z feel too much, that we’re all too emotional, but I’m starting to think the opposite is true. We don’t let ourselves feel anything. We immediately categorise and diagnose and try to control every emotion. I don’t even think we know how to open up properly. We’re all so lonely. […] I’m not convinced, then, that therapy culture even helps us open up; I think it shuts down our ability to talk about our problems. Maybe you’re not anxiously attached, maybe you want to be loved deeply! Maybe you don’t have social anxiety disorder, maybe you grew up with less face-to-face interaction than any other generation in history! […] That doesn’t make you mentally ill. We’re so determined to de-stigmatise mental health issues we’ve started to stigmatise being human. Having human reactions to things. […]

The way I see it, girls are getting two contradictory messages: open up, talk about your problems, but also, being emotional is bad. If someone calls you emotional it’s an insult. Strong independent women aren’t bothered, don’t care. If women do get upset or emotional they must have anxiety, or trauma, or some mental illness. That’s a cruel and confusing message for girls. […]

they should be opening up face-to-face, honestly and vulnerably, in real communities, in meaningful friendships, in stable families […]

— Freya India in N.S. Lyons, The Self and the Soul: A Dialogue with Freya India, The Upheaval, 2024

4:31pm on January 17, 2025 from Vancouver, Canada.


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