Fuck, You're Still Sad?
35 comments
·September 18, 2025aeturnum
Aurornis
> The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in
The problem is that medical diagnoses and therapy speak have spilled over into common language where they’re so diluted that they’re not accurate any more. For many there is no line drawn anywhere because they are self-diagnosing based on flawed understandings as soon as any feeling or symptom arrives.
This is scarily obvious when I’ve worked with college students and early 20s juniors lately: A subset of them speak of everything human nature in medical and therapy speak. Common human experiences like being sad about something or having a tough day are immediately amplified into full-blown medical terms like “I’m having a depressive episode today” (which is gone by tomorrow). Being a little nervous about something is “I’m having a panic attack”. Remembering an unpleasant disagreement at work “gives me PTSD”. When they’re procrastinating a task that is fun “my ADHD is flaring up today”.
This is only a subset of people, but it’s a rapidly growing percentage of younger people I work with. When someone falls into this mindset it only grows: The same people using these terms usually accumulate a lot of different self-diagnoses to cover every element of common human experience: They will claim ADHD, social anxiety, often some variation of Autism despite showing none of the signs, PTSD due to a previous relationship/boss/professor they didn’t get along with, and insomnia or delayed sleep phase syndrome. Many will have no formal diagnosis at all or even proudly claim that they don’t trust the medical system, they’re just diagnosing themselves. I’ve been offered helpful links to TikTok ADHD influencers to help me understand them, because that’s where they think the best information comes from.
graemep
There is a problem with rigid medical definitions. There is a huge difference between the author of this, a young pregnant woman losing her husband, and say, something like a middle aged person losing an elderly parent (as I did earlier this year). Of course it will take her far longer to recover (if at all).
I would guess her grief is not "disordered" though. As she says she functions - she works, she looks after her child, she looks after herself.
> We medicalize grief because we fear it.
Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
xyzelement
Sorry for your loss, and thank you for your perspective.
>> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
I never thought about it but it likely stems from loss of religion, like many other problems. If I see my life as insignificant in the chain of generations - as a conduit between ancestors and descendants - and believe in the soul at least as a metaphor - then personal death or that of others is sad, but is in the context of a deeply meaningful existence.
On the other hand, if I am closer to atheistic hedonism/nihilism - there's nothing else but me and my thoughts and experiences, then my existence or non-existence takes on a very heavy weight - and we project that onto others.
lotsofpulp
All the atheistic/agnostic people I know believe they are insignificant in the grand scheme of nature, not just in the chain of generations of people.
If anything, I find religious people are the ones who believe humans are special.
pizzathyme
I agree with what you say about "disordered", the language is hostile.
In a less morbid area, I feel the same way about ADHD - "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder". For some people this is problematic, but others can function fine and happily with this.
In those cases, why is it a "disorder"? Why can't it just be "how some people are"?
minitoar
I think it’s medicalized because often this set of symptoms is associated with inability to function and it can be treated medically with eg therapy.
XorNot
> Absolutely right. There is a certain cowardice in how we deal with death in the contemporary west.
Someone always rocks up to say this in these threads, and then never actually offers any suggestions of what they think an alternative should look like.
It's in the same vein as people who complain no one ever talks about serious subjects, and I'm just wondering why they think I want to get into discussing the meaning of life in the workplace cafeteria.
Seriously, what is the alternative meant to be? A celebration of death? Constantly reminding people that everyone will die and you'll be forgotten completely in about 3 generations? Why focus on the inevitable rather then actually living?
pizzathyme
An alternative would be: + Yes, allowing people to have a celebration goodbye party before they go + Allowing for medically assisted dying on a person's own terms + More open conversations about: directives, how people would like to be treated when they near death, wills, inheritances, funerals. These are all taboo topics + A natural part of life
righthand
In the west we’re trained to believe that if something happens there should be some sort of tangible reward on the other end, no matter how minute. Death takes and leaves nothing tangible and it’s the absence that drives us crazy. Since we’re trained this way we seek out some solution with the other trained aspect, spending money. Which in turn only temporarily numbs the grief until you deal with it.
We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”. So our money spending usually doesn’t direct us to a more helpful path.
I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.
AlexandrB
> We also stigmatize mental health care in the west, telling people to “suck it up” or “get over it”.
I think this idea is ~10 years out of date. If anything, we now seem pathologize every behavior and personality quirk into a mental health issue. At least on social media, it's also trendy to have a mental health issue to the point that people will claim to have ADHD because they're easily distracted by their phones. I've also lost count of the number of big "content creators" who casually mention their therapist or going to therapy. If there is a stigma, it's not found among the younger generations.
graemep
It used to be in the west. The Catholic Church discourages the scattering of ashes for just that reason - so that there is somewhere physical where people can be remembered. There was a tradition of memorial services. People still look after the graves of their loved ones.
I also think its not a simple east-west divide. Different cultures have many different ways of dealing with death. The contemporary west does have a problem, although i doubt it is the only culture for which that is true.
My family follows a mix of Christian tradition (e.g. memorial masses) and Sri Lankan (e.g. donations of food in memory of the dead).
Rooster61
> I often wonder how dealing with death compares to the east where ancestors are commonly remembered, contemplated, and revered.
In what way is this not western as well? Implying that western culture does not remember, contemplate, and revere those that have gone before us is a bad take.
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xyzelement
I agree with you on the western religious tradition, but I think it's less true for the secular west today.
With ample exceptions of course, a stereotypical "secular" person thinks of their ancestors as racist people that lived in an irrelevant time, and doesn't feel some sort of connection to them, or an obligation to continue them. So I think the poster you're replying to is kinda correct from a today point of view.
mc32
I also think seeking mental health is more popular in the west than the east where it's even less of a thing to seek.
pastage
I wonder how traditions around death help us to deal with it. I feel completely incapable of handling death.. I do not know how to comport myself.
embwbam
A lot! Maybe it's obvious, but I've long thought that religion's primary function is to help people process death (and other suffering). Now that life isn't constant suffering, many of us have discarded religion, but then we are blindsided by death.
I was very religious for 30 years, and have a very religious family. I've been athiest for more than a decade now, and it's sad to me that to leave religion behind I had to give up all my family traditions to process death. Those traditions are still there, but I can't relate to them since they are based on a belief I no longer agree with
moron4hire
> We medicalize grief because we fear it.
I think that's backwards. I think the problem is that we, the general populace, fear medicalization. The medicalization of grief specifically or other emotional issues generally is unrelated.
These sorts of diagnosis criteria are created for a reason. I highly doubt psychiatric medical practitioners are developing them to pack people up into bins so that they can be marginalized. They create these criteria to be able to have a shared language to speak about issues and try to develop treatment regimens.
And it's not their fault that the lay population takes it out of context and screams, "NO NO NO! I'M NOT BROKEN!" It's that reaction that is the problem. That reaction that, "someone who fits this criteria is by-definition broken", with "and broken people are irredemable" followed closely behind. It belies a belief that they feel this way about other people, too.
The truth is, everyone deals with issues that would fit some criteria in the DSM-5. It's just part of the human condition. Some people are able to manage these issues on their own and some people are not, and that doesn't make them broken anymore than the fact that some people can dunk a basketball and some cannot. But, if you're 5'9" and had a job to put a ball in a basket 10 feet off the ground, wouldn't you want to focus on learning to shoot rather than try techniques you've observed 6'9" people use with ease?
throwaway392405
I'm pretty sure my dad has chronic grief. My mom passed away from cancer when I was 11. I didn't know how unusual their marriage was until I saw others' marriages. It became particularly clear when I started dating and got married myself.
They never fought at all. There was zero conflict. It wasn't that they just "hid it from the kids"—there was simply nothing to fight about. They were truly each other's very best friend, and intensely so. My dad tried dating again a few years after her death, but I think he soon realized there was no way anyone could capture the kind of companionship he and my mom had. Some people are able to love more than one partner over the course of their life; I think he decided he could not.
He's a very private person, but I know he constantly thinks about her every day, and I suspect he's pushing off retirement because he doesn't want to be at home without her. They would have just hit their 40th anniversary if she were still alive.
tedggh
I have been through two very painful deaths, first by brother then my father and both had very similar transitions from shock to acceptance to grief and finally to the new normal. Both cases took years to heal. I stopped dreaming about my brother after about 10 years of his death. It has been 5 years since my dad passed and I still have very vivid dreams that upset me very much, but they are much less common now than say two years ago and I know at some point, like the dreams about my brother, they will stop. Everything succumbs to time, including grief.
latexr
Even before finishing the first paragraph, it all sounded familiar to me. Then I looked at the author’s name and remembered, this is the same person who wrote “The Year I Didn’t Survive”.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43020983 949 points | 7 months ago | 266 comments
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sudosteph
Having experienced a few hard losses this year (My dad to ALS, and my cat suddenly a week after my dad), the thing that has surprised me the most is how they show up in my dreams. In some dreams, I'm like "I thought you were dead? What am I going to do with all these death certificates now?", in others we're just hanging out at the pool. I never dreamed about my dad before he died. But in these dreams he's just there, and healthier looking than I had seen him in years. My cat shows up too, and many times I remember petting her in her bed, not realizing it was a dream, only to wake up surprised she wasn't still there next to me. In my waking life I fully know they're gone, but at least part of my brain really doesn't want to accept it's true.
fatnoah
I'm sorry for your losses.
My dad died of cancer when I was 26, and I had very frequent dreams where it felt like he was real and present, though never speaking or interacting directly with me. The grief persisted for years.
Nearly 25 years later, my mom passed away this summer, and it's been a totally different experience. The grief was just as intense as when my dad passed, but contained to a few weeks.
Our bodies and brains are complicated.
igleria
> Sometimes, I’ll go ahead and dial Jake’s phone number in case the laws of entropy have changed, and he picks up
I should not cry at work but damn, I want to.
squigz
Reading Jake's[0] and Bess' posts during his illness was both highly enlightening and also very depressing. The news of his death hurt me more than I expected. I simply cannot imagine the pain Bess has felt.
I wish I was half as articulate as they are and could say something that might provide even a modicum of comfort to her or others struggling with their grief.
dncornholio
I experienced a long period of grief as well. I think the grief stayed because I wasn't totally happy with myself.. Then I decided it's time for change and I moved house and changed jobs. That helped me.
I'm still sad sometimes, but I have much more to look forward to now.
bparsons
There is a practical utility in medicalizing otherwise normal behaviors. Particularly in the US, you need a medical diagnosis in order to take time off work, receive disability benefits or access mental health supports through insurance.
Nursie
I lost someone, a good friend and lover, when I was young. 27 years ago now.
Grief still occasionally hits me. Not so often these days, it’s a long time in the past, but after some reminders of that time of life on social media a couple of years ago, I felt the unfairness of it all like a knife twisting in my gut again.
All of which is to say I can’t imagine what it must be like to lose a spouse who you had a life and a child and plans with, and I don’t believe that everyone grieves the same, or that it should just be over when someone tells you that’s ‘normal’ or expected of you.
And also, as said in the blog post, if you’re functioning, if your grief isn’t actually stopping you from living your life, then who is to say it is disordered?
> We medicalize grief because we fear it.
I think this is just incorrect. You are not obligated to seek treatment for most medical problems[1]. The point of medicalizing something is to draw a line between situations where it would be too soon for medical professionals to step in and when people enter a situation where they may need external help. One of the diagnostic criteria, which this article mentions, is that your grief is disrupting your life - but despite what this article claims they have misunderstood that criteria. Of course grief changes your routines and life. That change only becomes "disruptive" if you feel the change has somehow gone too far or you are struggling to undo it. This writer is doing neither and therefor does not meet the diagnostic criteria for disordered grief. They are grieving normally and the medical literate supports that understanding.
There are of course medical professionals who use diagnostic criteria as cudgels. Trying to force people to become patients in order to enforce their idea of what someone "should" want. This is a problem but it is a problem that the official diagnostic guidelines try to avoid. For those who are interested in this kind of problem with our medical system might look into the professional philosophy of doctors (generally arrayed around identifying and curing disease) and nursing (generally arrayed around making the patient comfortable as possible). I tend to think the nursing model is the more useful and sensible of the two - even though, of course, if one wants to cure a disease a doctor is helpful.
[1] There are very few diseases, such as tuberculosis, where you can be forced to treat the disease.