When we choose to care for ourselves, this choice of self-care faces what feels like a social backlash that one would sense in their personal life, what normally makes it safer to bury even the thought of that process.

It is the way our collective thinking as a society works that is naturally damaging. To manifest yourself as an individual and to break out of any formulas is what disturb societal comfort tremendously. This is found in the simplest forms of free choice in our daily lives if you look closely, “different” is seen as unsettling and change is often stigmatized.

That is on the surface, and this is where most of us stop at. But if we were to have some degree of awareness and admit that no social system is inherently perfect, choosing individual change becomes inevitable, and when change is needed, initiative is always a virtue.

I will explain better.

The reason why we have to talk more about the relationship between the society and the individual in the first place is because most of us are in this dilemma of wanting to take steps towards personal change that would put us in conflicts with others.

I see a lot of people out there, and me included, waiting for something to reassure their steps, but we are too afraid of shame and stigma. We as humans need acceptance and validation, and when normativity is the only way to achieve it, and at the very same time the source of our feelings of alienation, a whole process of what is called “individuation” must be gone through.

Individuation means to regard something in an individualistic matter. In a social context like the one I am touching on, it is about treating oneself as an individual that is distinguishable from others, whatever that other was. It is to see yourself away from any collective considerations, and that is extremely vital while dealing with identity and personal crisis.

When the clash is between the “everyone” vs the “one”, individuation is the only possible way to solve that conflict, as it makes it clear what the “one” truly is and wants. By that, a sort of mature settlement can be achieved on the long run. But going through a complicated bond like the social one unknowing what is truly desired out of it will lead to more discomfort.

This process of individuation is similar to physical workout, but on a mental and a psychological level. The burden of loneliness and alienation on one side is huge, and the effort needed to tolerate the existential guilt of nonconformity is not something trivial, and most of the time will be demotivating, triggering, painful but eventually with dedication and awareness should be liberating and rewarding.

It should be hopefully clear that the society is not a scapegoat whenever being criticized. It’s always been one of my writing goals to find a way out of clichés and prejudices to communicate personal crisis on a social level. Because imagining personal change without social conflict is an illusion. And blaming what we call “the society” in any personal-related statement does never target a particular group with criticism. Again and as I always emphasize, it is not an us-vs-them problem.

It is rather the nature of social bonds and relations that imposes a kind of pressure onto conformity and dependency. This exact nature is what would then lead to the desired sense of belongingness and acceptance when those bonds are based on healthy terms.

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This is done through the persistent questioning, criticizing and sometimes attacking this pressure. Otherwise peer pressure would lead to the discomfort, dissatisfaction and distrust of everyone, as we obviously can see in our society.

Individuation is not a call for social chaos, it is a reaction to normativity, a state being imposed on the lives of many non-conformist individual and leads to all kinds of conflicts and crisis we face.

One thing keeps a system running; consistency. And one thing the human nature mostly lacks; it is also consistency. I think you can see the problem here. Creating a non-negotiable system for human relations and expecting it to work flawlessly is like running a program on a computer that doesn’t have access to a steady electric current.

The way our society is shaped, especially when it comes to our relationship to power, requires as much consistency from humans as possible. And this is not achieved in the most ethical way you would think of. Quite the opposite, if repressing the human nature will lead to more systematic stability then repression should be the core of our system. Which is the reality.

This is where this war takes place. And it is a war because change will be oppressed in every possible way imagined.

Starting from the way we repress ourselves, the toughest of all wars, the war within. Think of how much of the time we compromise our health and happiness for the sake of consistency and out of the fear of being too different, the thing that would alienate us socially.

As usual, the most obvious example is work. Under the money-oriented culture (which is a phrase I use to avoid saying “capitalism”), the common good is more valuable than the human. Even though the common good should be good for humans, but we underthink our actions in life so much that we stop questioning what good are we actually getting by sacrificing ourselves for a system.

This might give us an idea on why mental health is a stigma. Mental suffering is the leading manifestation of human inconsistency. And everyone will publicly deny going through any mental challenges, because the system requires machines. And since humans are not machines we all know what is the cost of this denial.

Power, media, work, entertainment, social relations and any field that is led by marketing and industry-thinking is nothing but a reflection to our awareness of our freedom. Because we normally don’t regard freedom as a priority or as a purpose, we choose systems that work best with our anti-individualistic identity.

When we notice that, and admit the flaws, and get the courage to confront our shame and guilt, we can think of better systems that work in favor of our wellbeing. And this is not a dreamy hypothesis, this is how change is being led around us all over the world. The lots of social wars we hear of but still away of taking part in.

The more I grow the more I prioritize my mental health. I am more in touch with my traumas and challenges now than ever, and I am letting my healing determine my path.

I am not ashamed of admitting being mentally and psychologically inconsistent as a human being, which I know will not make me the richest or the most powerful person on earth, but when I take a moment and think about it; do I need to win a competition of wealth and power? Or do I have different needs that represent more the person I truly am?

It is an endless inner conflict between the person I actually am and the person I seem like. And I could not be more certain at this point that nothing is worth more than my personal wellbeing.