As my premenstrual phase approaches, I experience a predictable yet overwhelming transformation—a rising tide of insecurity that invariably culminates in tears. These nights become internal battlegrounds where my mind wages war against my self-worth. During these episodes, my thoughts spiral into a vortex of self-doubt. I question my fundamental value as a human being, scrutinise whether I have anything meaningful to contribute to the world, search for evidence that no one cares, and ultimately confront the devastating question of whether I deserve to exist at all.

These moments transform me into someone I barely recognise—a person convinced of their own worthlessness, huddled under blankets while my thoughts turn viciously self-destructive. The person who normally navigates life with reasonable assurance dissolves completely, replaced by someone drowning in existential dread. What makes this particularly insidious is how real these distortions feel. It’s not that I’m simply “sad” or “moody”—it’s as though my entire perception of reality undergoes a fundamental shift, one that centres me within a narrative of failure and rejection that feels utterly convincing.

The gaslighting surrounding this experience is particularly maddening. The same society that reduces premenstrual symptoms to jokes about chocolate cravings and mood swings will simultaneously dismiss the genuine suffering of those with severe PMS or PMDD as exaggeration or weakness. We’re told both that our experiences aren’t real and that we should be strong enough to overcome them. Medical professionals often minimise these symptoms as “just part of being female,” offering birth control as a one-size-fits-all solution without acknowledging the complex interplay of hormones, neurotransmitters, genetics, and environmental factors that create these experiences.

This expectation of mastery over biochemistry feels particularly cruel when you consider its impossibility. Yet society’s primary response remains: “Just recognise these feelings aren’t real and push through it.” Imagine telling someone in the midst of a migraine to simply decide the pain isn’t there, or suggesting to someone with food poisoning that they should attend that important meeting anyway. The physical reality of hormonal fluctuations creates neurochemical changes that can’t be reasoned away through sheer force of will.

What’s equally frustrating is the cultural double standard around emotional regulation. Men’s anger is frequently contextualised, explained, and even valorised as righteous or protective. Their emotional outbursts become character development in films or justifiable reactions to provocation. Yet women’s hormonal shifts—biological processes beyond conscious control—are treated as character flaws requiring containment and apology. We’re expected to mask our suffering behind pleasant smiles and productivity, continuing to function in workplaces, relationships, and communities that offer little accommodation for these cyclical challenges.

What gives me hope, despite these frustrations, is the growing chorus of voices refusing to remain silent about these experiences. Each person who speaks honestly about premenstrual suffering helps chip away at the stigma surrounding it. Each researcher who takes these symptoms seriously contributes to a better understanding and treatment options. Each workplace that implements flexible policies acknowledging the reality of cyclical health challenges moves us closer to a world that accommodates human bodies as they actually exist, not as productivity machines expected to function without fluctuation.

Yet these issues aren’t confined to gender equality: I’ve noticed a pattern among older generations of finding a strange sense of pride in the hardships and suffering they’ve endured throughout their lives. This glorification of suffering manifests in countless ways—the boomer who trudged five miles through snow to school (uphill both ways, naturally), the parent who dismisses their child’s mental health struggles with “we didn’t have depression in my day,” the supervisor who expects 60-hour work weeks because “that’s how I paid my dues.” It’s as though suffering has become so deeply intertwined with identity that alleviating it for others feels like devaluing one’s own life experience.

This stoic silence they prize isn’t strength—it’s learned helplessness dressed up as virtue. When we confuse endurance of broken systems with character building, we create a toxic legacy that preserves those systems rather than evolving beyond them. The person who works through illness without healthcare isn’t displaying admirable grit—they’re being exploited by a system that values their productivity over their humanity. Celebrating this as some kind of moral victory only ensures the cycle continues.

I find it particularly troubling how many older adults view advocacy as entitlement. When younger generations push back against student debt, unaffordable housing, climate inaction, or workplace exploitation, they’re often characterised as weak, spoiled, or unwilling to “pay their dues.” Yet what is more entitled than expecting others to silently endure hardships you yourself found unbearable, simply because you did? There’s an immense selfishness in the sentiment, “I suffered, therefore you should suffer too”—a failure of imagination and empathy that betrays the fundamental responsibility of each generation to improve conditions for the next.

The truth is that questioning and dismantling harmful systems requires tremendous courage. It means facing ridicule, resistance, and the anxiety of challenging established norms. It means risking failure in pursuit of something better. This willingness to name problems and work toward solutions—even when that work is messy, imperfect, and criticised—demonstrates a far greater strength than quiet endurance ever could. The person who speaks up about workplace harassment, advocates for accessible buildings, or protests for climate action isn’t avoiding reality—they’re actively engaging with it, refusing to accept that suffering is inevitable.

Nevertheless, this intergenerational tension serves a social evolutionary purpose. Each generation enters adulthood with fresh eyes, unclouded by the resigned acceptance that comes from decades of navigating broken systems. They see absurdities their elders have become numb to, and they possess the energy and optimism to believe change is possible. When they ask “why does it have to be this way?” they’re performing a vital function—challenging norms that may have outlived their usefulness.

History bears this out repeatedly. The civil rights movement was largely youth-driven. Environmental activism, LGBTQ+ rights, labour reforms—all these movements found their energy in younger generations questioning what their elders had accepted as immutable reality. While experience and wisdom are valuable, so too is the refusal to accept unnecessary suffering as inevitable. When older generations interpret this questioning as disrespect rather than necessary evolution, they misunderstand their own role in the human story.

The healthiest societies are those where elders channel their experience into supporting, rather than resisting, necessary change. Instead of saying “we survived it, so can you,” they could say “we survived it, but you shouldn’t have to.” They could offer wisdom about effective advocacy strategies, provide historical context for current struggles, and use their established positions to amplify younger voices pushing for change. They could acknowledge that their adaptation to difficult circumstances, while impressive, doesn’t mean those circumstances were just or necessary.

Perhaps most importantly, this generational torch-passing requires humility—the recognition that surviving a flawed system doesn’t make one an expert on how that system should evolve. The parent who worked three jobs to afford college should be championing affordable education, not criticising students for demanding it. The person who endured workplace discrimination should be the loudest voice supporting protections, not telling others to “toughen up.” Our scars should make us more compassionate, not less. Each generation should suffer less than the one before—not because they’re weaker, but because that’s what progress actually means.

Ironically, however, it is possible that our scientific approach to problem-solving, while beneficial in many ways, has inadvertently created obstacles to social progress. This shift from religious to scientific justification for marginalisation represents less of a paradigm change than we might imagine. The language has evolved, but the underlying impulse remains: categorise human variation, establish a “normal” against which all are measured, and then pathologise those who fall outside these arbitrary boundaries. Where we once burned witches for their unusual behaviours or knowledge, we now medicate, institutionalise, or socially ostracise those deemed “disordered.” The white coat has replaced the clerical collar, but the power to define acceptable existence remains equally concentrated and often just as unquestioned.

What’s particularly insidious about the scientific framing is how it positions itself as objective and therefore beyond critique. When religious authorities declared difference sinful, at least the subjective nature of morality left room for philosophical debate. But how does one argue with a DSM diagnosis, with brain scans, with genetic research? Science presents itself as the impartial observer, merely documenting reality rather than constructing it. Yet the history of psychiatry is rife with examples of how cultural biases shape supposedly objective criteria—homosexuality’s long classification as mental illness, women’s “hysteria,” the racial disparities in schizophrenia diagnoses. These weren’t scientific discoveries but social constructs dressed in clinical language.

The medicalisation of human difference serves multiple agendas beyond health. It creates profitable markets for pharmaceutical companies, maintains existing power structures by individualising systemic problems, and absolves society of responsibility for creating hostile environments. When we frame a child’s inability to sit still for eight hours as a disorder requiring medication rather than questioning the developmental appropriateness of our educational model, we’re using science to enforce conformity rather than to understand humanity’s natural diversity.

These “disorders” often reveal their contextual nature when examined closely. The same ADHD traits that make classroom success difficult can drive innovation in entrepreneurial settings. Autistic pattern recognition and attention to detail become assets in scientific research or technological development. What we call “symptoms” in one context become “skills” in another. This reveals the arbitrary nature of our categorisations—these aren’t inherent deficits but different ways of processing and engaging with the world, advantageous in some environments and challenging in others.

The framing of neurodiversity as variation rather than pathology means recognising that these challenges arise from the interaction between individual neurotypes and environments designed for a different neurological profile. It means shifting from a model of “fixing” individuals to creating adaptable systems that accommodate diverse needs, understanding that the goal isn’t to eliminate difference but to create spaces where difference can flourish without unnecessary suffering.

My personal struggles stem from a few interconnected yet easily labelled groups: CPTSD, PMDD, ASD, and ADHD. These labels have provided frameworks to understand experiences that once felt like personal failures, connected me with others sharing similar challenges, and given me language to advocate for needed accommodations. Yet simultaneously, they’ve boxed me into clinical categories that often fail to capture the fluid nature of my lived experience. They’ve subjected me to others’ preconceptions about what these diagnoses mean. They’ve sometimes reduced complex aspects of my humanity to symptom checklists.

What I’ve come to understand is that these conditions aren’t separable from who I am—they’re integral to my perception, my thinking patterns and emotions, my very experience of being alive. The hyperfocus of ADHD that sometimes disrupts daily functioning also enables deep creative immersion. The sensory sensitivities of autism that can make public spaces overwhelming also allow me to notice subtle patterns others miss. The emotional intensity of PMDD that periodically convinces me I’m worthless also connects me to empathy when in balance. Even CPTSD has given me a fierce commitment to preventing similar suffering for others.

The pathology paradigm would have me view these aspects of myself as broken parts requiring repair. The neurodiversity paradigm invites me to see them as complex elements of a unique neurological ecosystem. This doesn’t romanticise suffering or deny the need for support and accommodation—it refuses to locate the problem exclusively within individuals rather than in the interaction between diverse minds and inflexible environments.

What I ultimately hope for isn’t a world without diagnostic language but one where diagnosis serves understanding rather than limitation. I want a society that recognises divergence as essential to human evolution—that values the inventors, artists, philosophers, and revolutionaries whose minds work differently. I want systems flexible enough to accommodate various neurotypes without requiring conformity as the price of participation. I want conversations about neurodiversity that acknowledge both genuine challenges and unique strengths without romanticising or pathologising either.

Progress has always depended on those who think differently—those who question established norms, imagine alternative possibilities, and feel deeply enough about injustice to demand change. If my particular neurological cocktail has made me that kind of person, then perhaps these aspects of myself that society labels as disorders are precisely what this disordered world needs.

However, my realisations here didn’t happen overnight. They accumulated through countless moments of swallowed responses, enduring casual cruelty and trampled boundaries. Society teaches us—especially those socialised as women, as minorities, as anyone without traditional power—that our discomfort matters less than others’ comfort. That keeping peace matters more than speaking truth. That rocking the boat is worse than drowning silently within it.

The mythology of “being the better person” is particularly insidious because it disguises submission as moral superiority. It transforms very real trauma into some kind of spiritual achievement. “Look how much abuse you can take without complaint! How evolved you must be!” Meanwhile, those who speak up, demand respect, and refuse mistreatment are labelled difficult, aggressive, troublemakers.

This doesn’t mean that we should become callous or cruel, but recognise that healthy relationships—whether personal, professional, or societal—require honesty, boundaries, and mutual respect. Allowing people to behave badly toward you doesn’t help them grow; it enables patterns that ultimately harm everyone involved. Sometimes the most compassionate act is refusing to participate in someone else’s harmful behaviours, even when that refusal creates discomfort.

I’ve discovered that standing up for yourself and standing up for others are connected. Each time I practice defending my own boundaries, I strengthen the muscle that allows me to defend others when needed. Each time I speak truth in the face of power, I chip away at the conditioning that once kept me silent when witnessing injustice. The skills are transferable, the courage cumulative.

These moments matter because they’re accessible to all of us. Not everyone can lead movements or change laws, but everyone has opportunities to choose courage over comfort. The colleague being spoken over in meetings. The cashier being berated by an angry customer. The neighbour whose accent becomes the butt of jokes. The child trying to express an identity others find uncomfortable.

There’s a certain reciprocity to this practice: when I extend myself for others it creates ripples that eventually return. Not in transactional ways, not as direct exchanges, but in the gradual cultivation of communities where mutual support becomes normalised rather than exceptional. Where speaking up becomes contagious. Where silence in the face of wrong becomes less comfortable than the risk of addressing it.

Nevertheless, I still sometimes find myself falling into old patterns, choosing peace over truth in moments when courage fails me. I still sometimes struggle to distinguish between necessary confrontations and unnecessary battles. But even in those moments, I’m conscious in a way I wasn’t before—aware that I’m making a choice rather than following a script I never consented to.

Perhaps that’s the most important transformation: recognising that we always have choices, even when none of them are easy. The choice to speak or remain silent, intervene or walk away, prioritise tranquillity or truth. These choices may be constrained by circumstances, complicated by power differentials, clouded by past trauma—but acknowledging them as choices is itself an act of reclaiming power.

In doing so, I’ve found something that feels like integrity. Not perfect, not uncompromising, but honest. A way of moving through the world that honours both my own humanity and that of others. A recognition that true healing, both personal and collective, begins not with silence but with truth-telling, however uncomfortable. And that sometimes, the most compassionate thing we can do for ourselves and others is simply to stop accepting the unacceptable.