I don’t want a label, I want language. I’m not malfunctioning, I’m responding. This is about how diagnosis can feel more like surveillance than support, and the quiet desperation of wanting to be seen without being boxed in.

What if the strongest people you know are just the most abandoned? Hyper-independence isn’t a virtue, it’s a wound. And we’ve been dressing it up in hustle culture and bootstraps for far too long.

We talk about addiction like it wears a trench coat and waits in alleyways, but sometimes it lives in our daily rituals: the cigarette after lunch, the three-hour TikTok spiral, the snack you didn’t even taste. In this piece, we explore the invisible weight of “soft addictions”—habits that don’t scream danger, but quietly pull the soul apart. Blending personal reflection, Gen Z cultural realism, and psychological insight, we trace the fine line between coping and self-erasure