“Don’t mind him. He’s just like that.”

You’ve probably heard a sentence like at least once.

Maybe it’s not a him. Maybe it’s an older sister who’s “too emotional,” or an uncle who’s “always creating drama,” a cousin who’s “too outspoken.”

As normal as that sounds, what we often fail to acknowledge is how comfortably they settle into family life and before you know it, they become introductions:

“She’s the responsible one.”
“He’s the funny one.”
“That’s the stubborn one.”
“She’s always been sensitive.”

When you repeat them long enough, it starts to become facts. Or at least they feel like facts. However, nobody remembers when these descriptions began to take shape.

And that’s what got me thinking…

How does one person become the difficult one? Or the black sheep? Or the person whose name somehow finds its way into every conversation about what’s wrong with the family?

More importantly, why does this happen in so many families? Even families that genuinely love one another.

Maybe the “villain” isn’t actually a villain

No parent wakes up on a random Tuesday, sips their morning tea, and thinks, “You know what this family really needs? A designated problem child!”

From my understanding, the word “villain” is simply a convenient label for a role that many families unknowingly create.

 

And that’s the keyword – it’s a role, not a personality. Meaning that it’s not something people choose to be nor is it something families consciously assign to a family member.

What actually happens is much more subtle and, if you ask me, far more interesting.

To understand it, we have to stop looking at individuals in isolation and start looking at families the way Murray Bowen suggested we should: as emotional systems.

That single change in perspective changes everything.

Families Are More Than the People Inside Them

Most of us grow up thinking of families as collections of individuals.

There’s Mum.

Dad.

The eldest sibling.

The middle child.

The youngest sibling.

Grandparents.

Everyone has their own personality, their own habits, their own quirks.

It seems straightforward enough.

But the Bowen Family Systems Theory invites us to look at family as an emotional unit and not as a group of separate individuals living together. In other words, what happens to one person inevitably influences everyone else, and everyone else’s responses influence that person in return.

This might sound obvious at first because of course, families affect one another. But this theory dives in much deeper than that.

He argued that an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours cannot be fully understood in isolation because they develop within an emotional system. If we only look at one person’s behaviour without paying attention to the relationships surrounding them, we’re likely to miss a large part of the picture.

Imagine walking into your kitchen and finding water all over the floor. You could spend all day mopping it up, but if you never look up to notice the leaking pipe, the floor will keep getting wet. So you see, the puddle isn’t the whole problem. It’s just the part of the problem that’s easiest to see.

Families can work much in the same way. Sometimes the person who’s struggling the most isn’t the source of the family’s difficulties. They’re just the place where those difficulties have become most visible.

The tricky part about all this is that emotional systems aren’t obvious while we’re living inside them. Unlike a leaking pipe, there’s usually no single moment where everyone notices, points to the leak, and says, “Well, that’s the problem.”

Instead, emotional systems reveal themselves through everyday interactions.

Think about something as ordinary as a family dinner.

Everything is going well until someone makes an offhand comment. It doesn’t even have to be an argument. It could be a harmless question about someone’s job, a passing remark about marriage, or an old family story that accidentally touches a nerve.

Within moments, the room seems to reorganise itself. Someone rushes to change the subject. Someone else tries to make everyone laugh. Another person suddenly becomes quiet. Before long, the conversation has moved on, but the emotional shift is hard to miss.

Nobody planned this. Nobody discussed it. The emotional system just responded.

When Nobody Says Anything, But Everyone Knows

Which naturally raises another question: If families are constantly responding to one another, what exactly are they responding to?

Is it the words being said? The argument itself? Or is there something happening beneath the surface that influences everyone in the room, even before anyone has spoken?

Bowen believed there was.

Families are known for passing down all sorts of things – Traditions. Recipes. Heirlooms. Surnames. The family nose. That one oddly specific way of making tea that everyone insists is the only correct way. And if you’re incredibly fortunate, maybe even a little generational wealth, while the rest of us inherit a thousand books’ worth of stories that begin with, “Back in our day…”

But tucked away with all these inheritances is something nobody ever puts in the will: anxiety.

Not in the sense that you’re destined to inherit it genetically, but in the way these relationships shape how we respond to stress.

This was one of Bowen’s key observations. He believed that anxiety doesn’t simply belong to one person. It moves through relationships. Within families, it often becomes a shared emotional experience.

When one family member becomes chronically anxious, everyone else, without realising it, begins adjusting their behaviour in response.

A father who’s been under enormous financial stress for months says very little about it, believing he’s protecting his family. But without meaning to, he becomes shorter in conversation, less patient, more easily frustrated. His partner begins walking on eggshells. One child becomes unusually helpful around the house, while another starts spending more time in their room.

Nobody sat down and agreed to respond this way. Yet everyone adjusted to the emotional climate in the home.

Now stretch that over ten years. Or twenty. Or three generations.

Those repeated responses slowly become patterns. And before you know it, those patterns become the way the family functions.

And it’s these repeated patterns of responding, adapting, and adjusting that make a family more than just a group of individuals. They make it an emotional system.

The Comfort of Familiar Patterns

If these patterns are simply responses to emotional tension, why do families often find themselves having the same arguments, relying on the same people, and returning to the same ways of relating, even when everyone involved wishes things were different?

Homeostasis:

Bowen believed emotional systems have a remarkable tendency to pull themselves back towards what feels familiar. He called it homeostasis – the system’s tendency to maintain stability.

Most of us assume families naturally move towards healthier ways of functioning. Sometimes they do, but very often, we move towards what feels familiar. Even when this familiarity isn’t particularly healthy. Because predictable patterns can feel safer than uncertainty.

When this happens, the family returns to equilibrium, the emotional waters become calm again. At least for a while.

Invisible rulebook:

If homeostasis is how families maintain stability, then invisible rules are often how that stability is protected.

I don’t think there are a lot of families around that hold annual meetings where everyone agrees on the rules. In fact, most of the time, the rules are never spoken at all. Some are more obvious like:

Finish your education.

Respect your elders.

Help around the house.

Try not to set the kitchen on fire.

Reasonable enough. Right?

But there are also some rules in this book that nobody has to say out loud:

Don’t disagree with your father in front of guests.

Don’t bring family problems outside of the home.

Nobody talks about your grandfather’s drinking.

Smile for the photograph even if nobody has spoken to each other all afternoon.

Nobody mentions why your aunt stopped coming home.

Here, silence becomes a family language too.

The thing about unspoken rules is that we rarely notice them because they’ve always been there. Simply put, they are brushed off as “this is just how our family is.” And yet these invisible expectations shape how everyone behaves.

Some of these rules create belonging and preserve traditions but they can also make it difficult for families to respond when life changes. Give it enough time, and these rules begin shaping who people become.

If you’re the child who’s always expected to calm everyone down, chances are you’ll keep doing it.

The sibling who always apologises becomes the one everyone waits for.

The person who always challenges the family narrative eventually becomes “the difficult one.”

You see the pattern? Repeated responses slowly become expected responses. And somewhere along the way these expectations replace possibilities.

How Responses Become Roles

Most of us were fed the idea that personality is something people inherently have. But the Bowen perspective pushes us to consider another possibility: What if some of the qualities we describe as personality first began as adaptations?

This thought opens up the possibility to think of these qualities as understandable responses to the emotional environment a person grew up in.

“He’s always been responsible.” Or has he? Perhaps it’s just that he was the first one to notice that nobody else was carrying the responsibility.

“She’s independent.” – Or perhaps she learned early on that asking for help wasn’t particularly safe.

Families often give themselves medals for confidently describing one another. Yet if we rewind far enough, many of those descriptions probably began as responses to particular moments, repeated so often that everyone eventually accepted them as part of who that person was.

Think back to that dinner table from earlier – the offhand comment, the sudden change of subject, the joke, the sudden silence. Now picture it playing out with names attached –

Dad goes quiet. Before anyone asks if he’s alright, your eldest sister has already started talking about work. Your younger brother cracks a joke. Mum suddenly becomes very interested in whether everyone has enough food. Your grandfather asks if anyone watched yesterday’s match.

Nobody appointed mum to smooth things over, or your sister to keep the conversation moving, or your brother to be the one who lightens the mood. And yet, over time, these responses became roles we play within the family system.

Family therapists working from Bowen’s perspective might look at this scene and ask a question many of us wouldn’t think to ask: What function is each person’s behaviour serving within the emotional system?

How do these patterns become roles?

A child is growing up in a home where conflict is unpredictable. One day, after an argument, they tell a joke, everyone laughs and the tension eases. Nobody sits the child down afterwards and says, “Congratulations, you’ve officially been promoted to Family Comedian.” But the family breathes a little easier.

The child learns something here: humour changes the atmosphere. The next time there’s another conflict, they make another joke. Years later, everyone says, “Oh, he’s always had such a great sense of humour.”

Maybe he has. Or maybe humour became the safe way to belong within the family.

This is how many family roles begin. Not through conscious decisions, but through repeated reinforcement. Every time a particular response helps the family return to something that feels calmer, safer, or more familiar, that response becomes a little more likely to happen again. And ultimately, the role feels like who they are. And that’s precisely what makes these roles so powerful.

Which leaves us with an even bigger question: If nobody consciously assigns these roles, why do they seem to settle around particular people?

• Why does one child become the peacemaker while another becomes the rebel?
• Why does one sibling carry everyone’s expectations while another somehow carries everyone’s disappointments?
• Why does one person become “the successful one,” while another becomes “the disappointment”?

The short answer is that there isn’t one answer. There are several answers.

Family systems are wonderfully and frustratingly complex. And different families adapt in different ways.

Different children bring different temperaments into the world.

Different parents carry different histories.

Different cultures reward different behaviours.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, identities begin to form.

The Worries That Find Their Way to Us

Like we talked about before, parents can sometimes, without intention, pass on their own anxieties through relationships.

You might have noticed that some parents seem to worry far more about one child than the other. Bowen called this the Family Projection Process.

For instance, a parent who constantly worries about failure doesn’t wake up hoping to make one child anxious. Instead, their worry shapes the way they respond to that child. They become more protective, more critical, more watchful. The child gradually learns that the world is something to be feared, not because anyone explicitly taught them to think that way, but because anxiety became a big part of the relationship itself.

Take note of what’s happening here:

Nobody is the villain; nobody is consciously creating harm. Everyone is responding to the best of their own understanding and yet the emotional pattern seems to latch on.

More often than not, the child who becomes the focus of that anxiety grows into the family member everyone worries about or the one everyone tries to fix. Family therapists refer to this person as the identified patient.

The name can sound a bit clinical, but the idea is simple: when a family is under emotional strain, one of the member’s struggles can become the most visible expression of difficulties that already exists in the system. In other words, the family’s distress becomes concentrated in one place.

Think back to the kitchen from earlier.

The puddle is still on the floor. You could spend all day blaming the puddle for making the floor wet. You could even become very good at cleaning it up. But unless someone eventually looks up, the leak stays as is. And the sad part is that the leak doesn’t just stay in one place.

Anxiety Finds Other Places to Go

One fascinating thing Bowen noticed was that anxiety doesn’t stay confined between the two people who are experiencing it. But it will begin looking for somewhere else to go.

Imagine that same family dinner one more time.

Mum and Dad have been arguing for weeks but of course, nobody talks about it directly. They still pass the vegetables, ask whether anyone wants more rice, and politely discuss current affairs like nothing happened. But the atmosphere has definitely changed.

Dad starts spending more time talking to his daughter. He asks her opinion about things he would normally discuss with his partner. The daughter becomes the one who comforts him after arguments. Without anyone intending it, she’s no longer standing outside the conflict. She has become part of it.

That’s a triangle.

Whenever tension between two people becomes difficult to manage, it’s common for a third person to become involved. Sometimes it’s a child, sometimes it’s a grandparent, a sibling, an aunt, a family friend, or even a family pet that starts receiving everyone’s affection.

It sounds almost absurd when you first hear it but if you really think about it, you might notice it within your own system.

Have you ever found yourself caught in the middle of an argument that wasn’t really yours?

Or been asked to “talk some sense” into another family member?

Or noticed one parent regularly confiding in you about the other?

The triangle often reduces tension but it doesn’t resolve it. Instead, what happens is that the experienced anxiety changes shape.

And once you begin noticing triangles, you’ll probably start seeing them everywhere. Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to where this whole discussion started – the villain.

When the Family’s Anxiety Finds a Name

A family experiences stress, everyone begins adjusting, certain responses reduce the tension, those responses become repeated; repeated responses become expected and expected responses become roles.

In some instances, one person’s role becomes carrying what the rest of the family cannot. This is where the idea of scapegoating begins to make more sense. Don’t look at it as an act of cruelty but as something emotional systems can drift towards when anxiety needs somewhere tangible to settle.

The “problem child.”

The “black sheep.”

The “difficult daughter.”

The “disappointing son.”

These labels don’t appear overnight but the end result of years of repeated interactions that slowly organised themselves around one person.

As mentioned earlier, role emerged as a result of the environment the person was put into, not because it was assigned to the person. And that’s an important distinction because it moves the question from, “Who caused this?” to, “What purpose has this role been serving within the family?”

That’s a far more uncomfortable question. But it asks everyone to become part of the conversation. And that conversation, it turns out, isn’t limited to whoever happens to live under the same roof.

Who Else Is Sitting at the Family Table?

Families belong to communities.

Communities belong to cultures.

Cultures carry expectations of their own.

Most of us don’t grow up with just our parents influencing us. We grow up with grandparents reminding us how things have always been done. Aunts who have opinions about our careers. Uncles who somehow manage to ask about marriage before asking how we’ve been. Neighbours who know everyone’s business before their morning tea. Communities that celebrate together, grieve together, and occasionally remind us what “people will say.” Sometimes even the shopkeeper you’ve known since childhood who seems oddly invested in your career choices.

Bowen called this the Societal Emotional Process: the idea that the same emotional forces operating within families can also operate within larger social systems.

In this view, the emotional system becomes much bigger than just Mum and Dad – it stretches across generations, across neighbourhoods and traditions.

Perhaps that’s why changing one family pattern can feel so difficult.

We’re not only responding to our family, we’re responding to generations of expectations that arrived long before we did. And yet, understanding those patterns doesn’t mean we have to be trapped by them.

It offers the opposite. Because once we begin seeing patterns, we also begin noticing where we have these choices.

Perhaps that’s what Bowen’s work was really offering all along – not a way to diagnose families but simply a different way of seeing them.

The moment we start seeing these patterns, curiosity replaces blame. And when this happens, people start looking a little less like fixed characters in a story and a little more like human beings who adapted to the emotional worlds they grew up in.

Of course, that alone doesn’t erase hurt and it doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour.

Understanding is not the same thing as agreeing. But it does remind us that people are often far more than the roles they’ve been given. Maybe the greatest freedom isn’t finally convincing your family that they misunderstood you but recognising that the role you once learned to play is not the whole story of who you are.

And maybe that’s the real question all along. Not, “Who is the villain in my family?” But what if there never was one to begin with?

Only a role that made sense inside a particular system.

 

The post The Psychology of Becoming The Family “Villain” first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

A few years ago, if someone told me they were venting to a chatbot about their problems, it would’ve made me clutch my pearls and go, “Oh, bless your heart.” But fast forward to today, and here we are: AI-driven mental health apps everywhere!

We have chatbot counselors, virtual “friends,” and AI-driven therapy apps all promising to lend a listening ear.

But let’s pause here for a moment and really think:

• Is this genuinely a good thing for our well-being?
• Are chatbots simply providing an illusion of connection?
• Are they just making us more isolated than ever?
• Are we simply fooling ourselves into thinking an algorithm truly understands us?

Innovation or Illusion? Why Are We Turning To The AI Bots?

To be completely fair, access to mental health care is a privilege that not everyone has.

Therapy is expensive. Waiting lists can feel endless, and the persistent stigma still prevents many people from seeking help.

This is where the AI-powered chatbot makes its grand entrance.

A quick scroll through the app store and you’ll find dozens of mental health chatbots claiming to help with stress, anxiety, and even depression.

And it’s quite attractive, because:

• They claim to be available 24/7.
• They certainly don’t judge you.
• They won’t hit you with the dreaded, “Have you tried meditation?” (unless you ask!).
• And they don’t come with a hefty price tag.

Therefore, in theory, it sounds like the perfect, accessible solution.

To supplement this further, countless studies show that a key motivation behind the adoption of these tools is accessibility.

One study found that chatbots can improve access to mental health support for people who might not otherwise seek help. This is because these bots make therapy-like conversations more readily available. At the same time, it reduces the barriers of time, cost, and fear.

In fact, a study published in JMIR Mental Health noted that conversational agents like these AI Bots can provide immediate, low-threshold emotional assistance, particularly for those hesitant to reach out in person.

So who wouldn’t want this kind of accessible help when they need it, right?

But that’s just the point! Even with that being said, it is so important to understand that accessibility doesn’t mean that it is automatically equal to safety.

And I find it so utterly devastating that we, as a society, have come to a point where it’s easier to type “I’m struggling” to a bot than to say those words to an actual human being.

The Empathy Gap: Where AI Falls Short

While chatbots can process text and respond, they fundamentally don’t actually understand what it means to feel the weight of a heartbreak, or the crushing grip of anxiety, or the deep ache of sadness.

How could it?

Scientists researching this very topic often arrive at the same conclusion: while AI can retrieve information and reason logically, it doesn’t feel anything.

There’s a massive difference between a chatbot responding with a well-coded, “That sounds difficult, how can I help?” and a human therapist picking up on the subtle tremor in your voice, the hesitation in your words, or the exhaustion in your posture.

Because real human empathy goes beyond the words you exchange. It comes from connection and shared experience, and that’s what makes you feel truly understood and heard.

The Risk of Emotional Isolation

The American Psychological Association (APA) has pointed out a growing concern: people, especially teenagers, are turning to AI chatbots as their primary source of emotional support.

We can all agree that AI is definitely a smart and helpful tool, but even with everything that it offers, it is unequivocally NOT a worthy substitute for human connection.

In fact, over-relying on AI can often leave you feeling more lonely than when you started because they:

• Are always available, anywhere, anytime.
• Don’t require any emotional effort in return.
• Never challenge you in the way a real friend or therapist might.

When you lean heavily on a zero-effort relationship, reaching out to a fellow human can start to feel like just too much work.

While real relationships require patience, vulnerability, and sometimes even discomfort, AI bots offers comfort without complexity and responses without responsibility.

Eventually, it makes real conversations with real humans feel unnecessary, or worse, exhausting.

On the surface level, you may feel like you’re being supported, but what you’re really experiencing is a simulation of closeness, not the closeness itself.

Chatbots are great at mirroring your words back to you, but they cannot truly sit with you in your pain, know you deeply, or grow alongside you the way you do in a real relationship.

And when emotional support becomes something automated, the messy, imperfect, deeply human parts of connection can start to feel optional even though they are often the very things that help us heal.

The Misinformation Problem

And beyond isolation, there’s the danger of misinformation. Chatbots are designed to respond quickly and confidently, but confidence doesn’t mean it is always correct, especially when it comes to mental health.

There have been concerning reports of chatbots dishing out advice that’s not just unhelpful, but potentially harmful to users in distress. In 2023, the American Psychological Association also warned that AI tools used for mental health may produce inaccurate or misleading responses, particularly in high-risk situations, because they are not held to the same standards as licensed professionals.

Someone reaching out during a panic attack, a depressive episode, or a moment of crisis doesn’t need a generic, vague, or misguided suggestion. They need care, nuance, and more often than not, professional intervention. These are things that AI simply cannot fully provide.

The problem is that chatbots don’t truly understand context the way humans do. They don’t know a person’s history, emotional state, or risk level.

They can miss red flags, oversimplify serious issues, or even unintentionally validate unhealthy thoughts. And in vulnerable moments, even a small piece of wrong advice can be deeply impactful.

What makes this especially dangerous is how believable these systems can sound. When someone is struggling, they may take the chatbot’s response as trustworthy guidance, even when it’s inaccurate or inappropriate. And over time, this can lead people to rely on AI as a substitute for real mental health support, which it was never meant to replace.

So when misinformation enters the picture, the stakes become much higher than just “bad advice.”

A Band-Aid, Not a Cure

To be clear, AI isn’t inherently harmful. For some people, it can be a helpful starting point like a journaling companion, a grounding tool, or a way to feel a little less alone when you can’t fall sleep at 2 in the morning.

When used thoughtfully, AI can support mental health in small, practical ways.

But it is important to understand that support is not the same as treatment. And convenience is also not the same as care.

• At best, AI is impersonal. It’s a well-worded response without a real presence behind it.
• At worst, it’s a reminder that no matter how advanced it gets, it still doesn’t truly get you. It can simulate empathy, but it cannot offer the depth, care, and accountability that comes with real human connection.

So yes, AI chatbots can be a useful tool. But they should never be replaced with therapy.

Think of them like a band-aid: useful for a small scrape, but not a replacement for actual medical treatment or for the steady and nurturing presence of a human being.

Technology sure is evolving fast, and so is our approach to mental health. But no matter how advanced and sophisticated AI becomes, one thing remains crystal clear: Human connection isn’t a luxury, it’s a fundamental, non-negotiable need and no algorithm, no matter how advanced, can ever truly replace it.

The post What Happens When We Trust AI With Our Pain? first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

Your Body Remembers What Your Mind Forgets

You can have a checklist and know exactly what healthy love should look like- kind, consistent, emotionally available. You can read every self-help book, follow every therapist, and still find yourself drawn to someone whose silence feels achingly familiar.

This is your nervous system betraying you in the most heartbreaking way possible. The thing is, your brain doesn’t wire itself for happiness, but it wires itself for survival.

This is the oldest reflex we have. And if survival once meant chasing after a parent’s attention, earning love through performance, or walking on eggshells to keep the peace, then that’s what your body will recognize as normal.

Why Healthy Love Feels Wrong 

What if you met a person who ignores you? Your body will remember when love looked like having to earn someone’s attention.  Or if you meet someone who dumps their chaos on you, or keeps you guessing? You mistake unpredictability for excitement because your nervous system was trained to carry weight that wasn’t yours.

This is why the healthy person feels wrong. Not boring, WRONG. 

Your body doesn’t know what to do with someone who doesn’t trigger your hypervigilance. So ultimately, when someone shows up consistently, your nervous system stays calm, and your brain interprets this as ‘no chemistry.’

This revelation is not to say that you have bad taste. You have a nervous system that does exactly what someone trained it to do: seek what it knows, even if what it knows might slowly kill you.

The post Why Do We Fall In Love With The Wrong People?  first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

I make tea when guests come over. Even when I’m tired. Even when my brother is sitting right there. I do it without thinking, like it’s stitched into my spine.

And he, he reaches for the heavier suitcase when we travel, moves the furniture, opens the stubborn jar. Not because he enjoys it. Because that’s what men do, right? That’s what he’s supposed to do.

Muscle Memory of Womanhood and Masculinity

In moments when I can watch myself from the outside, I feel an odd kind of betrayal; like I’ve let go of the version of me who stands tall for equality, who earns her own money, who refuses to wait for permission. But when guests walk in, that girl disappears. The tea gets made. The house gets cleaned. My body moves before my brain catches up.

And he too wonders, sometimes, late at night, why he’s expected to be strong all the time, why asking for help feels like weakness, why carrying the weight of “being the man” feels so damn heavy, even when no one’s watching.

Wanting What We Were Taught to Want

Still, in the same breath, I want flowers. I want someone to walk me home when it’s late, to lift the heavy boxes, to pick me up from a shady auto stand. Not because I can’t do it myself but because somewhere, I’ve been taught not to want to.

And he, too, wants to be seen beyond the strength expected of him, beyond the rules he never chose to follow.

Perhaps it sounds a lot like hypocrisy but I believe this is inheritance. It’s centuries of conditioning tangled into the scripts we don’t even realize we’re reading.

Roles That Outlive the People Who Wrote Them

We like to think we’ve moved forward. That with a few conversations, a few policy changes, a few Instagram posts, we’ve left the past behind and well on our way to a “woke” future. But gender roles don’t vanish just because we understand they’re outdated.

They live in our bodies.

They live in our silence.

They live in the moments we don’t even notice.

You don’t remember learning them, but you follow them like a sleeper agent who was told the password.

“Clean the house before the guests arrive.”

“Don’t speak too loudly.”

“Expect strength from men, softness from women.”

“Smile. Nod. Serve.”

You were rewarded for being obedient and he was praised for being tough.

You were taught to soften your voice and he was told to speak with authority.

You were shown how to make a home. While he was told to provide one.

These things are not always taught with cruelty. Sometimes they’re passed down with care, under the guise of “protection,” “respect,” or “tradition.” And so we internalize them as part of our identity and they become who we think we are.

Psychology, Culture, and the Gendered Brain

Psychology calls this gender schema theory. Basically, it means the internal map we start drawing in early childhood that tells us how boys and girls “should” behave. These frameworks are shaped by family, media, religion, and culture. They tell us what’s appropriate, acceptable, attractive.

They might begin as suggestions but over time, they harden into expectations. And once those expectations are ingrained, they become habits- automatic, and unthinking. That’s why even when we know better, we often don’t act differently. But we’re just defaulting, not failing.

The toughest part is the cognitive dissonance because even when we know gender roles are outdated, there’s guilt in not following them. Like feeling selfish for not helping or cold for not nurturing. Maybe you feel some kind of entitlement for expecting emotional support from your partner. Or disappointed when they don’t fit the gendered fantasy that you thought you outgrew.

This push and pull makes us feel like frauds, like imposters. Because we say we want equality, but we still crave the emotional rewards of old roles: the chivalry, the service, the power.

Religion and the Divine Order of Gender

Every major religion has played a part in reinforcing gender roles. Perhaps not always maliciously, but deeply and consistently. Gender roles were never just about personality or choice. It had so much to do with order, survival, and in many cases, power. Over centuries, those roles got baked into traditions, reinforced by stories, and eventually passed down like family heirlooms.

Across belief systems, be it Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism or any other,  you’ll find gendered ideals:

The devoted wife.

The noble protector.

The obedient daughter.

The authoritative father.

And while some of these roles may have served a purpose in historical contexts, they too have, in many ways, outlived their usefulness and instead, become prisons.

Religion codified these roles into something sacred. This meant that disobeying them wasn’t just a simple rebellion, it felt like SIN.

Ritual became rule. Rule became virtue. Virtue became shame.

But even when we begin to unlearn what religion, tradition, and family once taught us, the residue doesn’t wash off so easily.

These beliefs aren’t just in sermons or rituals but in every pause when we speak. Shame creeps in when we disobey and we feel like we are betraying our lineage for simply choosing differently.

And so, even with awareness, we are heavy leaden with the weight of roles we no longer believe in, feeling torn between who we are becoming and who we were told we must be.

The Guilt of Knowing Better

Many of us identify as progressive, independent, and empowered and maybe we really are.

But why do we still feel a jolt of disappointment when a man doesn’t offer to pay? Why do men still feel pressured to be providers?

Why is it that even today, we raise daughters to dream big, but still teach them to say “sorry” too much.

Or tell sons to express themselves, but still stiffen when they cry too easily.

The truth is, we are quick to say “be who you are,” but we quietly celebrate when they stay in line.

And here lies the heart of the conflict:

We know the roles aren’t real. But we still feel guilty when we don’t play them. And the worst part is that, we sometimes resent others when they don’t play them either.

We expect ourselves to be evolved, but somewhere deep inside, we still want the roles to be filled. Maybe by us, by our partners, or by the world.

We feel like imposters in our own beliefs and constantly feel like we’re betraying something but we’re just not sure what.

Gender Role or Sex Role? Words That Define Us

Some roles are written into our bodies: chromosomes, hormones, anatomy. These are sex roles.

But most of the roles we live come from stories. Stories that shape our gestures, expectations, desires. Stories about what it means to be a woman or a man, soft or strong, nurturing or assertive. These are gender roles- taught, repeated, enforced. It’s what is stitched into lullabies, textbooks, temple rituals, and sitcom punchlines.

Some schools of psychology and sociology lean toward this understanding: most of what we think of as “natural” behavior is actually modeled, rewarded, and reinforced. In other words, behaviour is built, not born. Biology may set the stage, but culture writes the script. And we’ve all been cast before we even knew we were in a play.

How We Begin to Unlearn

You don’t need to burn the kitchen down just because you found yourself doing the dishes.

You don’t need to exile your dad or rewrite your childhood in a rage.

You don’t even have to stop liking flowers, or wanting someone to walk you home.

But you can notice.

You can pause before you perform.

You can ask: Is this who I am, or who I was trained to be?

You can name the double standards.

You can say no even when your upbringing tells you to smile and nod.

You can be both: loving and loud, soft and self-defining.

Because that guilt, the friction and the ever present internal tug-of-war is not a sign of failure but a sign that signals you are waking up inside a system that wants you asleep.

We might still make the tea. We might still carry the heavy boxes. But we’ll do it awake.

The post Why Do I Still Want to Be Picked Up From the Auto Stand? first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘Good Vibes Only’ mantra became the unofficial wallpaper of the internet, but you’ve seen it: “Good vibes only!” plastered on Instagram captions, neon signs, and aggressively cheerful coffee mugs. The irony isn’t lost on me. I’m literally wearing a ‘Good Vibes Only‘ t-shirt as I type this.

When “Good Vibes” Aren’t So Great

Just to be clear, optimism isn’t the enemy. Positivity, gratitude, and finding silver linings all have their place in mental well-being. But when positivity is used to dismiss or invalidate real emotions, it can get a bit tricky.

Toxic positivity is the relentless pressure to be a ray of sunshine, even when life’s pelting you with lemons and forgotten the sugar for the lemonade.

It’s sentences like:

“Just stay positive!”

“At least you have a job!” or

“Everything happens for a reason!”

Spotting Toxic Positivity in the Wild

Toxic positivity minimizes real struggles. When you are dealing with stress, grief, or anxiety, forcing a positive spin on everything can make you feel guilty for having emotions in the first place.

You end up thinking “Why can’t I just be happy?” or “Maybe I’m overreacting.” But the truth is, YOU’RE NOT!

Research consistently demonstrates a stark reality: suppressing emotions amplifies them. This forced ‘positivity’ ironically breeds more stress in the long run. So, by forcing “good vibes only,” we’re not creating happiness but bottling up stress that will explode later. (Which will probably happen at the worst time.)

Beyond the mental gymnastics, the physical toll of this forced positivity is just as concerning. There is extensive research that suggests that emotional suppression can lead to increased stress, higher inflammation, and even a weakened immune system. In other words, pretending everything is fine under a gigantic pile of “good vibes” is not good for your mental well-being.

Embracing Your Inner “Meh” (And Other Real Emotions)

You don’t have to be happy all the time to be mentally healthy. Real emotional well-being means allowing the space in your mind and body for all kinds of emotions.

Yes, that means even the uncomfortable ones. Why? Because these are the emotions that tell us when something needs to change, when we need rest, or when we need support.

What It All Boils Down To

There’s nothing wrong with looking on the bright side. But the problem is that toxic positivity can be quite sneaky. “Good vibes only” sounds well-intentioned but it’s not really doing anything good or helpful for you other than telling you to be happy no matter what.

Where as, real support is about being there for yourself and others through the highs and the lows.

Mental health isn’t only positive affirmations. Sometimes it can look like anger, sadness, crying in your parked car. And sometimes, it’s saying, “I’m not okay” without looking at the silver lining.

The goal isn’t to force happiness but to create a little bit of space in your being for all feelings. That means the good, the bad, and even the ones that don’t fit neatly on a coffee mug.

Read more on how to take better care of your mental health here!

The post Is “Good Vibes Only” Actually Bad for You? first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

This silent suffering is a ticking time bomb wearing the mask of masculinity.

He was the life of every party, the one always cracking jokes, the friend everyone described as “solid.” A week after his funeral, the group chat was still haunted by silence. No one knew he was struggling. He never said a word.

His last message was a meme. His last act was ending his life. And he wasn’t the only one.

It’s frightening how we all know this isn’t an isolated tragedy.

This is a story that rings like an echo in countless stories of men bound by loyalty, yet divided by silence.

You might have come across this statistic that states men die by suicide nearly twice as often as women worldwide. And this is not because they lack strength, but because society silences them until silence becomes irreversible.

They’re taught to joke instead of cry. To brush it off instead of speak up. To hold it in, even when it’s killing them.

This reality reveals a stark truth: Your best man will take a bullet for you, offer up a kidney without blinking. But ask him to talk about how he feels… Suddenly, the room goes quiet.

This is the paradox of male friendships. The love runs deep but the language of that love is insults, sarcasm, and banter.

Why?
Why do so many men bottle up their emotions, deflect with humor, or implode in private? Maybe the answer lies in a mix of biology, psychology, and generations of social conditioning.

The Biology (and Society) Behind It All

To understand how we got here, we might first look to biology. Research shows that male and female brains process emotions differently. Men have a smaller prefrontal cortex compared to women, which influences emotional regulation.

Testosterone also plays a role in reducing the intensity of emotional responses, making men naturally more inclined to suppress rather than express. It is linked to risk-taking behavior, dominance, and aggression.

Evolutionarily, this made sense. Our ancestors needed protectors, hunters, fighters. Men were, in some ways, biologically predisposed for survival, to be less overtly emotionally expressive and more action-oriented.

But we’re not fighting sabertooth tigers anymore. And while biology offers a starting point, it’s crucial to remember that we are not merely slaves to our hormones.

Society and culture are powerful sculptors, intensely shaping how these predispositions are expressed, encouraged, or suppressed. Studies have found that boys and girls experience similar levels of emotional intensity as children, but by adolescence, boys exhibit less outward emotional expression. This shift isn’t because they stop feeling emotions, but rather because they learn that expressing them has social consequences.

We mistake silent suffering for strength, but it’s really society’s way of keeping men in emotional solitary confinement. We’re dealing with job loss, heartbreak, loneliness, identity crises, and the overwhelming weight of being “a man” in a world that often doesn’t allow him to bend.

The wiring hasn’t changed much. But the world, and our understanding of it, has. And the result of this?? An emotional bottleneck. It’s just pressure building and building with nowhere safe to go.

Raised to Be Tough, Not Tender

From the moment a boy cries, he’s told, “Don’t cry like a girl.” He’s taught that vulnerability is weakness. That sharing is soft. That asking for help is a defeat. And by the time he becomes a man, he’s mastered the art of emotional silence.

Boys learn fast: “If you show emotion, then the pack will descend.” The word “gay” itself, stripped of its meaning, becomes a slur to police their tenderness. If you show too much care, too much softness, you’re suddenly seen as less of a man.

This isn’t just fathers; mothers too, enforce these lessons. They push sons toward ‘strength,’ sanding down their edges to fit society’s mold. It rarely has anything to do with cruelty, rather, it’s generations of inherited scripts: ‘Don’t cry. Don’t flinch. Don’t need.’ 

This mocking isn’t harmless. This is textbook emotional policing. But what fuels this policing? It’s more than just “boys being boys.” If you dig deeper, you’ll find society’s allergic reaction to male intimacy. Even straight men internalize this homophobia, then wield it like a cudgel against vulnerability. This fear ensures that any deep emotional expression between men becomes suspect, forcing interactions into a narrow, “acceptable” band of masculine behavior.

Men are constantly on guard, performing a rigid version of masculinity even with those they should trust most.

It’s the unspoken rulebook of male friendships: never be too open, never feel too much.

And the irony is that these are often the same friends who would stand by you through hell but can’t sit with you in your sadness, precisely because the rulebook forbids it.

He’s fine. He’s dying inside.

In therapy, we often trace the roots of depression, addiction, even aggression in men back to one thing: unexpressed emotion. Decades of pain with no outlet.

And the worst part is that this toll extends beyond mental health. Chronic, unexpressed stress corrodes arteries and cripples immune defenses. So in other words, emotional suppression doesn’t just harm mental health, but it also chips away at the body.

Men die earlier, in part, because their stress has no outlet. Often, the only “acceptable” emotion for men to display is anger- a dangerous conduit for unexpressed sadness, fear, or shame. Furthermore, the inability for men to be vulnerable makes it difficult for them to truly receive love and support, even when it is offered. And all this does is continue perpetuating a cycle of profound isolation.

The Truth About “Toxic Masculinity”

Let’s get one thing straight: masculinity itself is not the enemy. The internet has, in part, diluted the concept of toxic masculinity, unfairly dragging basic male traits.

What toxic masculinity does is weaponize this silent suffering, and call it ‘resilience’; all the while ignoring its fatal consequences.

Emotional Orphans: The Silent Suffering of Men

Many men become emotional orphans in their own lives. Surrounded by people, but starving for connection. And we often talk about how emotionally unavailable men affect their partners. But what about their friends? Their kids? Their brothers?

When men don’t know how to emotionally show up, they become strangers to the people closest to them. Their romantic partners often become unwilling sole emotional custodians, shouldering the entire weight of their partner’s unexpressed inner world. A burden that healthy friendships are meant to help share.

This outsourcing of emotional labor can lead to resentment, burnout, and ultimately, relationship breakdowns, leaving men feeling even more adrift. They become absent in presence. And over time, even their most loyal friendships start to feel like hollow performances, shadowed by an unspoken competition or a fear of judgment that keeps true connection at bay.

Brotherhood Without The Silent Suffering

Because sometimes, the pressure to offer solutions is just another way we avoid sitting with uncomfortable feelings – our own, or someone else’s.

Unlearning the Silence

If you’re a man reading this maybe it’s time to check in on your friends. Not just with a “Yo, what’s up,” but with an “Are you really okay?” And if you’re someone who loves a man, your partner, your brother, your father, give them the space to talk. Don’t judge how or when they do. But just let them know it’s safe.

Breaking these cycles isn’t easy. It requires conscious effort:

• Ask your friend how he’s really doing and wait for the pause.
• Don’t fix. Just be there. Sometimes, presence is the only answer.
• Share something real from your own life. Vulnerability breeds safety.
• Challenge the jokes that cut too deep. You can love someone and still call them out.
• And yes, it might feel awkward at first. Do it anyway. That’s how change begins.

Male friendships don’t have to be built on silence. Emotional strength isn’t about pretending nothing affects you, it’s about facing what does and that doesn’t make you any less strong. In fact, this is the very thing that makes you whole.

Because behind every joke, every insult, every “I’m fine,” there might be a weight they’ve carried for far too long. And they’re waiting, perhaps desperately, for permission to finally set it down.

The post Man Up. Shut Up. Break Down: The Deadly Cost of Being ‘One of the Guys’ first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

You’ve seen it. Cinematic montages of morning coffee captioned like movie scripts, dramatic retellings about life’s mundane events, plot twists, and people stepping into their “main character era” like they just walked onto a film set. The idea is simple- romanticize your life, see yourself as the protagonist, and bask in the spotlight of your own narrative.

Sounds empowering, right? Well, not always.

What is Main Character Syndrome, anyway?

Main Character Syndrome (MCS) isn’t an official psychological diagnosis, but it’s definitely a cultural moment. It’s the tendency to see yourself as the star of the show; where everything that happens is part of your storyline, and everyone else is just supporting characters, obviously!

A little self-importance is natural. Heck, it’s even necessary, but when does it go too far? In my own understanding, perhaps it’s when your personal story arc becomes the story.

Reality with a Filter

Social media didn’t just encourage MCS, it put it in 4K resolution and everyone wanted social media to be the director of their lives. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have turned everyday existence into a performance that encourage people to document their lives like a carefully curated film reel.

It was no longer about just about sharing life’s moments, it became so much about crafting a narrative and making sure they look like something straight out of an A24 film, complete with aesthetic coffee shots, dramatic text overlays, and indie soundtrack-worthy captions.

But constantly curating your life to fit a storyline can wrap self-perception. You just end up spending too much time scripting your life, and before you know it, you are living for the aesthetic, not the experience.

When we’re too focused on being the main character, it’s easy to forget that everyone else is living an equally complicated, messy, meaningful lives too.

Main Character Energy Gets Lonely

There’s nothing wrong with adding a little flair to your life; after all, perspective shapes experience. And tbh, romanticizing your life does have the potential be all fun and games. You might even manage to convince yourself of this, but …

when everything becomes content, conversations will turn into dialogue rehearsals, experiences become photo ops, and relationships can feel transactional. The pressure to constantly be someone funny, wise, effortlessly cool, and whatever else is trending, can leave little room for just being.

When you’re always trying to fit your life into an Instagrammable narrative, the mundane parts of existence (which, let’s be honest, is most of life) start feeling unbearable.

Everyone knows that not every moment is a perfect, slow-motion, sun-drenched scene. Real life isn’t always cinematic. Sometimes it’s awkward, uneventful, or downright boring. Sometimes you spill coffee down your shirt five minutes into the day.

And that’s okay.

How to Be the Main Character Without Losing the Plot

Social media rewards a carefully curated version of authenticity, but true connection comes from embracing the unfiltered parts of life too. Studies have even linked excessive social media use to higher levels of narcissism and decreased empathy. This is exactly the kind of behaviour that shows up when people start treating others as background characters instead of fully realized humans with their own emotions.

When your desire to be the protagonist disconnects you from reality, or makes real-life relationships feel secondary to your own narrative, it might be time to take a step back. Because the best protagonists evolve, stay grounded, and (shockingly) care about others too.

You are the main character in your own life, but you’re not the only main character.

So, how do we embrace self-romanticization without getting lost in our own echo chamber?

• Acknowledge other storylines. Every person you meet has their own plot twists, struggles, and triumphs. Don’t just play a role in their lives, actually engage with them.
• Drop the script. Let go of the performance because not everything needs a highlight reel.
• Be real, not just relatable. If you’re having a deep conversation with a friend, maybe don’t pause to tweet about it.
• Appreciate the unedited version of life. Not every experience has to be aesthetic or romanticized. Sometimes, a cup of coffee is just a cup of coffee.

At The End Of The Day…

There’s nothing wrong with embracing your main character energy now and then. But the real magic happens when we recognize that we’re all protagonists in a shared world, with overlapping narratives, unexpected plot twists, and co-stars worth listening to.

Real connection is about embracing life in all its unfiltered, unedited moments. So go ahead and romanticize your life, capture the aesthetic, but don’t forget that sometimes the best scenes unfold when no one’s watching.

The post Dear Main Character, You’re Not the Only One in the Story first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

And no one knew.

Maybe you feel it too.

Overstimulated, under-supported

That’s the thing- emotionally intelligent people also struggle to name their own pain. Even those trained in the art of listening- therapists, helpers, healers – get lost in their own noise.

You still show up, though. You get to work. You soften your voice, make space for their hurt, gently fit their pieces together while your own feel scattered across a hundred places.

Drowning Without a Sound

Sometimes the anxiety comes like a silent flood.
No warning, no noise, not dramatic.
Just a slow, steady drowning.

You might even look calm to everyone around you. But inside, your body is screaming in a language no one else seems to hear. The kind of scream that doesn’t make a sound because you don’t have the words to explain it.
Or the energy.
Or the permission.

When the panic doesn’t subside, I search for unfamiliarity. For new sensations, unlikely corners, unfamiliar textures. Anything to remind me I’m still here, still moving, still outside the spiral. Anything to distract me from the ache I couldn’t name.

And you don’t want pity. You don’t want a crisis hotline. You don’t want to talk about it. Not with a friend. Not with a therapist. Because how do you explain something you don’t understand?

Running on Empty

It’s a weird kind of burnout you know, the emotional kind. Not the “I’ve been working 16-hour days” kind, but the “I don’t have the capacity to feel another thing” kind.

You want to feel less.
But also, you want to feel something.

You want to rest.
But there’s always something that needs doing.

The world doesn’t stop. Deadlines don’t care.
And yet your brain is on fire.

So I do. I show up. I fix lives. I put the puzzle pieces together for other people, even when I feel like I’ve misplaced my own.

Overflowing, But Not Crumbling

If any of this sounds familiar, I just want to say, your body is begging for rest. Not sleep. But stillness. Safety. A break from having to be the one who always understands. Always absorbs. Always adapts.

You might not have words for what you’re feeling.
But you’re not the only one feeling it.

And maybe no one will fully understand. Maybe they’ll never quite get what you mean when you say “I’m fine” with a smile that feels like betrayal.
But someone out there reading this, breathing quietly like you are, gets it.

And that’s something.
That’s not everything.
But it’s something.

This isn’t a confession. It’s a reminder.

A reminder that those who carry others often carry their own weight in silence. That even the ones who seem composed can be cracking inside. Especially for people who are used to being the caregivers, the listeners, the problem-solvers, the empaths- we get so good at helping others through their storms, we often forget to notice when we’re drowning too.

So here I am, sitting in an unfamiliar study room, fingers hovering over the keys, surrounded by quiet strangers.

And then I’ll wake up tomorrow. I’ll do it all again.
I just hope someone sees the version of me that didn’t make it to the room.

The post I’m Fine (And Other Lies I Tell) first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

What Is Selective Morality? The Psychology Behind Convenient Ethics

The dissonance is deafening. We talk a big game about values but only until those values come home for dinner.

This isn’t about hypocrisy. This isn’t about judging you. It’s about understanding why we do this and how our minds work. And why being morally consistent is much, much harder when love, guilt, tradition, and identity are in the mix.

Moral at a Distance

Somehow it’s surprisingly easy to call out people we don’t know. You can comment, block, rage-cry in a tweet thread and sleep peacefully. But when it’s your best friend who cheated on their partner, or your uncle who said something offensive at a family gathering, suddenly it’s “not my place.” This common justification highlights how selective morality operates in personal relationships.

Psychologist Albert Bandura coined the term moral disengagement to describe how people rationalize behavior that contradicts their personal ethics. We tell ourselves it’s “different” when it’s someone we love. That they’re not a bad person. That they’re “just going through a phase.” We convince ourselves that silence is protection.

When Blood Dilutes Ethics: Selective Morality Within Families

A man steals from an old woman. It’s on the news. We’re furious. We repost, we write angry captions, we say “justice must be served.” We shame not just the thief, but his family, his friends, anyone remotely related.

But now imagine it’s your sister.

She didn’t rob anyone, but she did take something intangible. Maybe she manipulated a coworker. Gaslit a friend. Pulled strings at work. It’s still harm. And the moment someone brings it up, your defense kicks in.

You go from being a critic to their crisis manager like a PR agent for the behavior you once condemned.

This is where cognitive dissonance hits the hardest. When your actions and beliefs don’t line up, your brain scrambles to resolve the tension caused by this selective morality, and often, the easiest way to ease the tension is to rewrite the narrative. Downplay the wrongdoing. Focus on the “good parts” of the person.

You can call this in-group bias – our tendency to protect our own- the closer they are to us, the harder it becomes to see them objectively. And now, you’ve got a family WhatsApp group full of silence and saved face.

Selective Outrage: Who Gets Held Accountable?

We hold public figures to higher moral standards than we hold our families. And ourselves.

You’ll cancel a celebrity for a problematic tweet from 2008, but excuse your cousin’s slurs at the dinner table because “that’s just how he talks.” You’ll call your coworker out for body-shaming, but stay silent when your aunt comments on your niece’s weight in front of everyone.

And again, it’s not because you’re a bad person. It’s because confronting the people we love risks more than just being uncomfortable. It risks closeness. And for many of us, especially in collectivist cultures, family harmony > personal values.

The Unspoken Rulebook: Family First, Morals Later

Somewhere along the way, we were taught not to “air dirty laundry.” That family matters more than truth. That blood comes before boundaries. Even when it means protecting someone who needs to be corrected.

Ethics is not about being perfect. It’s about being honest- with ourselves and with the world. Because at the end of the day, the hardest battles are not the ones we fight in the streets but the ones we fight inside our own homes.

The Psychology Behind Selective Morality

When we see a wrong committed by someone we don’t know, we evaluate it using the cold cognition part of our brain. Logic, facts, right vs. wrong. But when the same thing is done by someone we love, it activates hot cognition and which is the emotion-driven decision-making.

Research on moral licensing also show that when people feel morally validated in one area (“I stood up for this one issue!”), they tend to give themselves a pass in other areas (“So I can let this one slide.”), a cognitive loophole enabling selective morality. You stood up for the environment at work so you let your dad’s plastic dumping slide.

It all adds up.

Combine that with years of social conditioning (be loyal to your tribe, respect elders no matter what), and you’ve got a recipe for moral silence.

Does Empathy Justify Selective Morality?

Compassion is important. Nuance is necessary. But we can’t keep confusing empathy with avoidance.

And no, confronting someone doesn’t mean cutting them off. Sometimes, love can look like difficult conversations.

Now That We Know, What’s Next?

There’s no easy answer. This blog won’t end with a 3-step plan to fix your family’s moral inconsistencies. (You’d ignore it anyway. We all would.)

But maybe the next time someone you care about messes up, you won’t rush to sweep it under the rug. Maybe you’ll sit with the discomfort and ask yourself, “If I didn’t know this person, how would I react? And what does it say about me if I only act when it’s easy?”

Morality isn’t convenient. That’s what makes it moral.

The real test of our values isn’t what we scream in public. It’s not the silence in courtrooms or protests. It’s what we whisper at the dinner table- where truth gets served cold, or not at all.

The post Selective Morality 101: Why We Cancel Celebrities, Not Cousins first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.

There’s a kind of grief we don’t talk about enough. And it’s the grief of unlived lives, of who we could have been. It lingers in the spaces between our choices, in the roads we never took, in the lives we imagined but didn’t live.

It sneaks up on you in small moments like when you scroll past someone living the life you once dreamed of, when an old ambition resurfaces out of nowhere, when you wonder, what if? It’s not exactly regret but something softer, and it’s heavy nonetheless. It’s a mix of nostalgia, curiosity, and sometimes, a little bit of sadness.

And this grief is not just personal, but cultural too. A lot of our choices never felt entirely our own. We came of age in a time that preached independence and ambition, especially for women. We were told we could be anything, do anything but in the background, tradition kept whispering reminders of what we should be. Marriage, family, stability- those age-old benchmarks that have long defined a woman’s worth. So while we reached for more, we also carried the weight of expectations that inadvertently shaped our decisions.

By mid to late 20s, we’re expected to have a steady job, an income, and a life that looks put together. But what if getting there meant giving up parts of ourselves? What if, in choosing the practical path, we had to let go of the dreams we once nurtured?

And if so, how do we live with this grief? More importantly, how do we stop mourning the lives we didn’t live and start embracing the one we have?

The ‘Job by 26’ Rule

Remember those kids in school who swore they’d be astronauts, artists, or world-famous chefs? Fast forward a decade or two, and most of them (like us) are just trying to figure out how to reply to emails without having an existential crisis.

Maybe they wanted to be an artist but ended up in a government job because you can’t eat dreams.

Maybe they swore they’d leave town, yet here they are, running the family business.

And maybe you too see yourself in them.

Most of us didn’t choose our careers out of passion. We chose them out of necessity. And now, at 28, still figuring things out feels heavier than ever, especially in a world where every teenager seems to already own a startup.

Many of us weren’t just chasing a career, we were stepping into roles as family breadwinners, cultural torchbearers, and proof of success for our parents’ sacrifices. The weight of responsibility often shaped our choices before we even realized it.

The Psychology Behind the Grief of Unlived Lives

This longing for a parallel life is more than just a passing thought, it has deep psychological roots.

The “What If” Loop: Our Brain’s Obsession with Alternate Endings

Psychologists call this counterfactual thinking. Our brain’s tendency to replay past decisions and imagine different outcomes. It’s a survival mechanism. If we analyze our past mistakes, we might avoid similar ones in the future. But when this becomes obsessive, it can trap us in a cycle of regret, making us feel like we failed simply because we didn’t choose a different path.

Neuroscience also backs this up with studies that show how the medial prefrontal cortex (a region linked to self-reflection), lights up when we think about our past choices. The more emotional the memory, the stronger the brain’s response. That’s why we feel the deepest regret when our identity – our careers, relationships, or personal goals- is on the line.

Erik Erikson’s Theory

Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development explain why this grief intensifies at different life stages.

• In our 20s and 30s (Intimacy vs. Isolation), we’re making major life decisions like career, relationships, independence. This is also the time when regret creeps in because we compare ourselves to peers who “figured it out” faster or seem more successful.
• By middle age (Generativity vs. Stagnation), we start questioning our impact. Did we build something meaningful? Did we waste time? This is where people feel the strongest pull toward “what could have been.”
• In old age (Integrity vs. Despair), all those bottled-up regrets can start to bubble over and not in a poetic, healing way. You know that one grandpa on the block who grumbles at kids for existing? Or the aunty who always looks like life personally offended her? We joke and call them hags or grumps, but honestly that could be any of us if we don’t make peace with the “what ifs.” That kind of cynicism doesn’t just come from age but are the results of emotional leftovers from a life full of should-haves and could-haves, microwaved over and over till it sours.

We Pretend We’re Fine, Then Scroll and Compare Anyway

Ah yes, the age-old villain of every TED Talk, therapist’s office, and Sunday night existential crisis- social media. That highlight reel we keep doom-scrolling through has turned into a full-blown comparison Olympics. We’re out here watching everyone’s greatest hits- job promotions, Bali vacations, baby announcements- while sitting in our pajamas wondering if switching shampoos counts as personal growth.

What we don’t see is the behind-the-scenes mess. They also pushed through bad days, wrestled with silent doubts, and made compromises to get where they are. And yet, it’s so easy to believe everyone else made all the “right” choices while we accidentally took a nap during life’s roadmap briefing. No wonder this stuff feeds our grief; especially the grief of the life we never lived.

Rewriting the Grief: Finding Meaning in Your Current Life

So, how do we stop circling the what-ifs and start moving forward? How do we release the lives we didn’t live and fully embrace the one we’re in?

It starts with reframing regret- not as a sign of failure but as proof that we cared. That we had dreams. That we were capable of imagining different possibilities for ourselves. And that, in itself, is a beautiful thing.

1. The Myth of taking the “Right” Path

One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that there was one perfect path, and we missed it. But life isn’t a linear story with a single correct script. It’s a collection of choices, circumstances, and chance.

If you’re a Marvel fan like me, maybe you’ve had this thought too- the multiverse theory. Somewhere out there, another version of you chased her passion, moved to a new city, or married someone else. But here’s the thing we don’t consider: even in that timeline, she has regrets too.

Every choice comes with trade-offs. We romanticize the lives we didn’t live because we don’t see the behind-the-scenes: the doubts, the sacrifices, the struggles. But they’re always there. Just hidden behind a prettier filter.

2. Reframe Regret : What Did Your Choices Give You?

Instead of mourning what you lost, ask yourself: What did I gain?

Sure, you didn’t become an artist, but maybe you found stability and a way to support your family.

You didn’t move abroad, but you built a community where you are.

You didn’t follow your teenage dreams, but you discovered new ones along the way.

We call this benefit-finding– the practice of recognizing positive outcomes from past decisions, even if they weren’t what you originally planned.

It’s not about toxic positivity or pretending everything’s perfect. It’s about shifting your focus from “what I missed” to “what I gained.”

When we reframe our past decisions through this lens, we stop seeing them as mistakes and start seeing them as meaningful stepping stones. Because even the so-called wrong turns had something to offer.

3. Flip the Script on Your Story

The stories we tell ourselves about our past shape how we feel about our present. If you constantly replay your life as a series of missed opportunities, you’ll always feel like you fell short. But if you see it as a journey- one with detours, unexpected lessons, and second chances, it becomes a story of growth.

You’re not “too late” for anything.
There’s no invisible timeline you need to catch up to.
This is your life and you’re allowed to move through it at your own pace.

4. Find Ways to Honor Your Grief

Just because you didn’t take a certain path doesn’t mean you have to bury that part of yourself forever. Maybe you can’t go back and redo your 20s, but you can still:

• Take that art class.
• Visit the place you once couldn’t stop thinking about.
• Write, dance, create- whatever it was you once loved.
• Mentor someone who’s walking the path you once considered.

The dream doesn’t have to die, it can just grow up with you.

5. Letting Go of the Need to “Prove” Yourself

A lot of our grief comes from feeling like we need to show the world we made the right choices. That we have something to show for our decisions. But true contentment doesn’t come from external validation, but it comes from internal peace.

As Erikson’s theory suggests, we reach true life satisfaction when we stop trying to compare, compete, or prove, and instead find meaning in what we have.

And if you ever feel like you “should be further ahead” by now, remind yourself:

You are not a failure for taking a different path.
Your worth isn’t measured by a timeline or a title.
You are allowed to be proud of the life you’ve built, even if it’s not the one you imagined.

You Are More Than Your Grief

The grief of who you could have been is real. But so is the beauty of who you are now. Life was never about ticking all the right boxes. It’s about stumbling, learning, growing, and learning to hold space for both the dreams we lost and the person we became instead.

And if you ever find yourself looking back, wondering what could have been, just remember:

The version of you who made those choices was doing the best they could with what they knew.
The version of you today still has time to create, explore, and redefine what fulfillment looks like.
And the version of you in the future will thank you for choosing to be present, instead of living in the past.

The post The Grief of Who You Could Have Been: Rewritten first appeared on SUNGJEM AIER.