The Exhausting Trend of Pathologizing Human Flaws

I’ve realized something lately: the most dangerous place to be these days is the internet.

If you spend enough time scrolling through relationship advice and pop-psychology posts, you will eventually start questioning your own sanity. I see so many posts treating human relationships like literal war zones. I read an article today that told me if a partner asks for space, they are “stonewalling” and withholding their “currency.” The advice? Ghost them back. Trigger a crisis. “Take your power back.”

Am I the only one who finds this absolutely exhausting?

It feels like the internet has taken severe clinical terms and turned them into weapons against anyone who just… acts like a human. I was reading a piece by a clinical psychologist recently, and they actually have a word for what we are doing: pathologizing. It is the tendency to view a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors solely from the perspective of diagnosing them.

There is a famous quote by Abraham Maslow: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” When the internet arms everyone with a hammer made of therapy buzzwords, suddenly every single human flaw looks like a personality disorder. We completely lose the actual, breathing person in front of us.

And honestly? It made me start questioning my own completely normal behavior.

Conversational Empathy is Not Narcissism

Let me give you a tiny, everyday example.

Someone says, “Oh my god, I had this plant and I did XYZ and it still didn’t bloom.”

And I immediately reply, “Oh my god, I have the same plant! Mine survived when I did ABC, maybe you can try that too.”

According to the internet’s current obsession with diagnosing everyone, bringing the conversation back to my own experience makes me a narcissist. It means I have to make everything about me.

But out here in the real world? That is just conversational empathy. It is how human beings connect. We share a problem, and we relate our own messy experiences to show the other person: I hear you. I’ve been there. We have common ground.

When Protecting Your Peace Feels Like a Crime

Here is a deeper one. Just the other day, my long-distance partner called me after a long, exhausting day of work. His patience was thin, his tone was a bit short, and the conversation was feeling heavy.

Honestly? I just didn’t want to ruin my mood. So I just calmly told him that he seemed irritated, suggested he take some time to unwind, maybe have a cup of coffee, go for a walk, and said we could talk later. I ended the call.

Instantly, the internet voices crept in. Does this make me a narcissist? Am I stonewalling him? Am I punishing him by taking space?

No. I read the room, realized he needed space, and set a boundary to protect my own peace.

The Medicalization of Being Human

Sociologists call this phenomenon “medicalization”, which means bringing conditions that are totally normal into the purview of medicine and treating them as diseases. We have created this bizarre loop where we take a socially constructed, sanitized ideal of “perfect” behavior, pretend it is the biological norm, and then declare that any deviation from it is toxic.

We desperately need to draw a line between actual, clinical emotional abuse and simple self-preservation.

Let me get one thing straight. Hurting people is never justified. Extreme emotional manipulation, intentionally breaking someone’s spirit to build yourself up, and actively lacking remorse is abuse.

But having an ego? Wanting your needs met? Relating a friend’s story back to your own life? Stepping away from a phone call because you just don’t want to deal with anything?

That does not make you a monster. It just makes you a person who is trying to survive your own life.

If we didn’t think about ourselves, we wouldn’t survive. Sometimes putting yourself first is messy. Sometimes it disappoints people. Sometimes it means saying no when someone else desperately wanted you to say yes, or ending a conversation because the energy is heavy.

We are all on a spectrum. We all have a little bit of selfishness in us. You have it, I have it, and the people writing those tactical relationship articles have it. And honestly? I think it’s perfectly fine.

I’m not a villain for thinking about my own happiness, my own boundaries, and my own peace of mind.

I am not a therapist, and this isn’t clinical advice. I am just a person trying to navigate relationships in an era where everyone has a pocket diagnosis.

Thank you for reading. And by the way, just so you know, you can clap up to 50 times on a Medium story.