I spend most of my waking moments outside of sessions and my daily news routine (a very limited process, for mental health reasons) thinking about Severance. I watch the show, then watch the ‘after the episode’ videos on YouTube, and then listen to the podcast as well as read the extras (highly recommend if you haven’t already: The Lexington Letter and The You You Are). I’ve seen a few fan theories, but don’t want to get too deep into rabbit holes without forming my own. As a mental health professional, a lover of cognitive science, and a fan of film as well as puzzles and mysteries, I simply can’t get enough. And above all, it gives me hope for a better world in the darkest of circumstances.

When I was in high school, my dad told me the most important thing about this experience was to get to know myself. To learn about who I am. To emerge from the years of exploration and self-understanding to come through with a clearer perspective on myself. I approached it like there was an answer key in the back of a textbook. I approached a lot of things like that, and I imagine many of us do the same. We assume there’s a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answer.

We can do so much on automatic, and it’s often based on our first or most significant experiences of it. Our brains and bodies can detect danger, learn multiple languages, and train to acquire all kinds of skills that fall into the background of awareness. But today, the landscape of all 3 of these areas (danger, language, and skill) changes pretty much daily, if not minute by minute in some cases. Our world continues to change, and we find ourselves having to ‘relearn’ skills constantly. Imagine if you had to relearn how to walk or speak, just as you did when you were a baby, every single day. It would be no surprise how exhausted you’d feel.

If you’ve felt overwhelmed and burned out, it’s not something you’ve done on purpose. You were responding to your day to day life with the best approach you had.

So how do we disrupt it?