(Source mentioned at end of post)
Have you ever had that persistent, silent feeling that you are wasting your life?
No matter how hard you try to keep yourself busy—surrounded by people, goals, obligations—deep down it feels like something essential is missing. As if you are merely existing, not truly living.
Perhaps you’ve tried to explain this as anxiety.
Maybe a doctor has called it depression.
And perhaps they prescribed something to silence that discomfort—a pill in the morning, another at night.
And time goes by, numbing what you should be urgently listening to.
But what if I told you this suffering is not a mistake?
What if I told you it is not something to be suppressed—but rather, a calling?
Carl Gustaf Jung—one of the greatest names in depth psychology—believed that what we call mental disorder is often not a pathology. It is an attempt by the psyche to heal itself. A warning that your life, as it is, does not serve your soul.
You may be living a routine that was imposed on you—a job that consumes you, relationships that drain your energy, dreams that aren’t even yours. Meanwhile…
Your essence screams for freedom.
But no one taught you to listen to that scream.
On the contrary, they taught you to silence it—to function, to adapt, to not disturb.
And so, you become ill in silence while the world applauds your productivity.
This is where Jung comes in.
For him, healing does not come from denial, but from diving in. It is not about masking the symptoms, but about understanding what they are trying to say. Because in Jung’s own words:
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”
In other words, you are sick because you are running away from the pain you need to feel in order to transform your life.
As long as you keep running, you will keep suffering.
This post is not for those who want distraction. It is for those who are tired of pretending—for those who feel they are sinking, but still hold a spark of hope that there is a way.
And there is.
But it starts with a brutal decision:
To stop running, and start listening.
Listening to yourself.
Listening to the unconscious.
Listening to the pain you tried to silence with medication, with addictions, with routines.
If you’ve made it this far, you may have already realized:
The emptiness you feel is not weakness.
It is the absence of yourself in your own life.
And it is time to change that.
You’ve been feeling sad—for days, weeks, maybe months.
You go to the doctor. He listens to you for 15 minutes—if he listens at all.
You talk about insomnia, anxiety, the tightness in your chest that appears for no reason, the constant feeling of being out of place, disconnected from your own existence.
He nods. Types a few words on the computer.
And then comes the verdict: “It’s anxiety. Let’s start with this medication.”
Done.
In a few days or weeks, your pain has been reduced to a “chemical imbalance.”
And what was once an existential cry becomes a number on a prescription label.
What no one tells you is that this type of treatment is not interested in your soul.
It is interested in your functionality.
The logic is simple:
You need to keep working.
Keep consuming.
Keep producing.
Keep the gears of the system turning.
The medication allows you to endure the unbearable.
And that’s why it is offered as a definitive solution.
But this solution, as Jung said, is a trap.
Jung believed that most modern neurosis does not arise from an internal failure of the brain, but from the disconnection between the life we lead and the life we should be living.
When you ignore your vocation, your most authentic impulses, your inner truths—the soul begins to sicken. And since it has no literal voice, it speaks through the body and mind:
Anxiety.
Panic attacks.
Hopelessness.
But instead of listening, we are trained to silence it.
To neutralize any discomfort with chemicals.
To return to “normal” as quickly as possible.
But what is this “normal”?
A job you hate but can’t quit.
Superficial relationships that serve to maintain appearances.
Empty goals.
Mechanical routines.
And a constant feeling that you are surviving instead of living.
The anxiety you feel is not a failure.
It is your soul telling you:
“This life is not yours. You are betraying me.”
And if you ignore this for too long, the body starts to scream louder.
But the system is always ready—with a new dose, a new label, a new sedative.
And the more you adapt to this model, the further you distance yourself from yourself—until you feel nothing anymore.
Neither pain.
Nor pleasure.
Just this chronic numbness they call “adult life.”
Carl Jung warned that by medicating the symptom without understanding its root, we create an illusion of healing.
The person improves on the outside, but inside remains lost.
And in the long run, this division—between what is felt and what is lived—generates an even greater collapse.
Because there is no way to escape the soul forever.
It will demand its price—whether in the form of burnout, emotional collapses, or through an emptiness that nothing, absolutely nothing, can fill.
This mass medicalization is a reflection of something deeper:
A culture that does not know how to deal with suffering.
That fears pain—because it has lost the sense of its transformative value.
For Jung, suffering was necessary.
It was the beginning of the journey.
It was the call to individuation.
But in modern society, any discomfort is labeled as pathological.
And by fleeing from suffering, we also flee from the chance to become who we should be.
Source – Credit to Psyphoria for their amazing video production with this fantastic script, link. The passage has been reproduced verbatim from the script of the video. While modifying the language was possible, preserving the original essence of the video and its words felt more important. All credits and copyrights belong to the original author.