The Problem Is Not You, It's the System
By Zsuzsa Gyarmati
Ever since the election results, I’ve been observing myself and those around me. I find myself marvelling at the similarities and differences in our reactions. What seems common to all of us: just as the regime affected our mental health, our worldview, and our relationships over long years, its collapse is now shaping our personal spaces too.
I noticed one layer of this within my own relationship:
The quiet erosion of recent years wasn’t dramatic or showy. Conversations gradually faded away, alongside a dropping interest or enthusiasm for shared topics. The plans and daydreams that used to hold us together were replaced by suffocating dilemmas and anxious weighing of options. Often, it was just easier not to talk.
Back then, we saw this "merely" as a relationship issue, so we tried to address our isolation as a couple with "standard" psychological tools: communication techniques, shared experiences, creating new spaces for connection. These worked up to a point, but it felt as if there were an immovable core that simply wouldn't dissolve.
Now, I feel like I can take a few deeper—cleaner—breaths. And as I breathe, I can feel that immovable core starting to shift.
The shrinking of social space touches everyone differently, in different places. For a long time, uniting in anger against the system worked for us, but over time, even that closed in on us: like breathing the exact same air over and over again in a sealed room.
As the initiatives that mattered to us gradually turned into isolated pockets or vanished entirely, it felt as though we ourselves—our world—turned into an isolated pocket too. And our shared space was no longer a safe bubble: it became a space for merely enduring reality.
Now, I feel the space, the air, the movement again—even though, in terms of concrete facts, our circumstances haven't changed. This feeling might be temporary, or partly an illusion. Yet it points to something that feels crucial:
Hope is not a luxury; it is a necessity, just like fresh air. And while we can learn to breathe deeply, go to therapy, yoga, or meditation, it makes a world of difference what quality of air we are forced to inhale.
You can read more about my professional approach and perspective here, and you can find my professional CV here.
By Zsuzsa Gyarmati
“I’m just sick of it. I try to be patient. I try to be devoted. Listen to his feelings, empathize. Meanwhile, keep going with my own stuff. Yet here I am again, feeling like I can’t handle it. Yeah, I know, I should get more me-time. Write a gratitude journal. I should pay better attention to those things too, I know. But I don’t feel like it helps, and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
– An excerpt from a friend’s voice message, who is at home with two young kids. And yes, a voice message, because if we waited until we could call each other, we wouldn’t be able to participate in each other’s lives even this much.
I wonder why she framed it this way. How many times must she have received the idea of “me-time” or a gratitude journal as a response to her struggles? Right before or after someone added that this is the most beautiful period of her life, and that it flies by so fast?
Self-care is indeed important. But what if we use it merely as a way to leave those who are suffering on their own?
Anyone who has seen a mother with young children up close lately will likely recognize the feelings of isolation, the endless sea of expectations, constant anxiety, and guilt. Having a financial, social, or informational safety net doesn't necessarily relieve this pressure, but the lack of one inevitably amplifies it.
And this is where self-care comes into the picture—the capacity to consciously and actively take steps to preserve our physical, mental, emotional, and social health.
One of the problems is that we are far from equal in terms of how accessible all of this is to us. This is when we hear things like “you have time for what you want,” or more deeply, “you just don’t want it enough,” and at the deepest level, the fatalistic pit of victim-blaming—the familiar “you attract it.”
Let’s be clear:
We do NOT have time for what we would like to have time for.
We have time for whatever is left after our wage labor and our unpaid (and often invisible) work. In the life of a parent (especially a mother), the latter often only pauses if she physically steps out of the space. At home, she is constantly surrounded by tasks and expectations.
The other problem I see is that when crowds of people share that despite all their efforts, they are doing poorly, overwhelmed, and exhausted—and I respond by telling them to SELF-care—what is the real message? That they cannot expect help, and that the problem ultimately lies within them.
So should we not practice self-care?
Self-care is truly an indispensable tool. I can't imagine my counseling work without it. But it doesn't solve structural problems; it won't create greater equality, and it won't make life fairer for the masses. Offered as the sole response, it invalidates the complaint, rejects—and isolates the person who is suffering even further.
It sends the message: “It’s your fault.”
So what can be done?
To start with, let's turn our thinking around: what can we do for those suffering around us? First of all, let's listen to them, let's believe them. If we can, let's take actual burdens off their shoulders and offer them real care instead of prescribing self-care. If we have spare resources—be it time, money, or expertise—let's support initiatives aiming for systemic change in causes that matter to us.
But above all: let’s not leave each other alone.
You can read more about my professional approach and perspective here, and you can find my professional CV here.
By Zsuzsa Gyarmati
Building on the book "A Different Way to Learn" by Naomi Fisher
When someone struggles significantly to integrate into the social system—into "adult life"—they usually encounter two types of explanations: either the issue lies with them and their efforts, or it lies with their neurological functioning. Both approaches can offer a foothold and support, but both can also lead us astray.
When we emphasize personal responsibility, we encourage growth in the best cases, but in worse cases, we simply dismiss the individual as lazy or incompetent. Someone who doesn't deserve support because they aren't doing enough for themselves.
When we look for the explanation in their "brain," we usually arrive at diagnoses. Here, we talk about neurological wiring, hormonal regulation, and chemical balance. This path often brings relief: "I’m not a bad person, my brain just works differently."
These explanations are not inherently wrong, but they overlook something crucial: context. Behaviour, after all, is born at the intersection of the individual and the situation.
What counts as a divergence in one environment can be everyday norm in another. A child who reads early is an exception here, perhaps even viewed as a sign of a problem, whereas in England it’s expected—there, falling behind becomes the issue.
A personal example: in Germany, I felt like I was "too much" and overly emotional, which amplified my social anxiety. In Spain, the exact same way of being felt completely normal. I didn't change—the yardstick did.
This holds true not just across cultures, but across social categories as well: we assign vastly different meanings to the exact same behaviour depending on who is doing it. For instance, we judge intense, challenging behaviour differently in a boy than in a girl.
Yet, when someone doesn't function as expected, our first instinct is to look for the cause within the individual, not in the situation—and especially not in the fit between the two.
Only a small, privileged group of adults gets to choose their environment, its pace, and its load. For everyone else, there is no choice. There is, however, a diagnosis—and with it, the chance to at least partially escape the blame.
As long as the question remains "is the individual at fault, or is it their brain?", we’ve already made up our minds. We aren't looking for a real solution, but rather for ways to adapt the individual to the system. Leaving untouched the very environment in which their way of functioning became a problem in the first place.
Just as a water plant cannot survive in a desert, we cannot expect a human being to adapt to any environment—regardless of their basic needs.
You can read more about my professional approach and perspective here, and you can find my professional CV here.
By Zsuzsa Gyarmati
Building on the book Empire of Normality by Robert Chapman
Whenever I hear "well, are they normal???" I feel a visceral discomfort. We easily label anyone we don't understand or don't like, while it seems more and more people feel "abnormal." Others see themselves as normal and think it’s the world that has gone mad.
What about normality as a scientific category? And what about diagnoses?
According to many professionals, diagnoses like autism, ADHD, or mood disorders like depression have multiplied because we know so much more about these phenomena and diagnose them more accurately. Others believe certain civilization factors (such as the digital age or harmful substances) are behind it. We know these phenomena are the result of multi-factor processes, and it’s also increasingly likely that they are umbrella terms for several different phenomena. So, completely different biological processes likely underlie the same diagnosis.
While more and more people fall outside the boundaries of normality, system-critical perspectives rarely appear among mainstream explanations. Yet, as we will see, normality as a concept is itself a social construct—and far harder to pin down than we’d like to believe when using it.
Where Does the Concept of Normality Come From?
Looking at human history, it is a remarkably young concept, less than a hundred years old. We borrowed the ideal of normality from astronomical methodology, creating the statistical concept of the "average person," which we then imposed on ourselves as an ideal to be achieved and held accountable to.
In the "marriage" of industrialization and capitalism, the average person also became an industrial standard: productive, interchangeable, and efficient. In this view, deviating from the average isn't just eccentricity—it equals being "defective." When the concept entered modern psychiatric practice in the twentieth century, it offered a convenient explanation for why masses of people seemed "unfit" to integrate into the modern social system.
To be clear: care based on diagnoses—whether pharmacological or therapeutic—is a genuine lifeline for countless people. At the same time, we must see how our current systems shield society from necessary self-reflection: if the flaw lies within the individual, we don't have to question the fairness of the system.
"But surely we can't even use the word normal today! Nowadays everything is accepted, isn't it?"
By all appearances, we really have crossed a threshold: the feeling of inadequacy shared by such vast numbers cannot be an individual failure or individual responsibility. Behind the flood of diagnoses, a community is forming that demands systemic transformation instead of "fixing themselves."
At the same time, there is no sign that this movement is forcing the system into self-reflection. Instead of suppressing criticism, market logic "invites it to the table," turning it into a performative product through tokenism and other symbolic gestures. While life may indeed get a little easier for certain privileged groups, the masses continue to be failed by the system.
But if this, too, is a trap, what can be done?
I don't know what the solution might be either. It is painful to see crowds of people viewing themselves as defective—thinking they are the only ones who somehow "can't handle adulthood," that what seems so easy for "everyone else" is somehow impossible for them.
I believe that organizing into communities helps. That local actions matter. That how we treat each other in everyday life matters, whether we are capable of looking at one another differently: with genuine solidarity and the intent to truly understand. Do we encourage and support one another in searching for possibilities of liberation?
You can read more about my professional approach and perspective here, and you can find my professional CV here.