Have you noticed how low our collective tolerance for discomfort has become?
We see it everywhere: emotional support animals in grocery stores, fidget tools for basic focus, a growing inability to handle minor everyday friction. Some accommodations are genuinely necessary. But something deeper is happening in our culture. We have systematically trained ourselves — and our children — to mistake discomfort for danger.
There's actually a name for this. Researchers Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff call it "safetyism" — a culture that treats emotional safety like a sacred value, built on the idea that most of us can't handle discomfort, that discomfort itself is dangerous rather than just uncomfortable. It's not only a theory. Studies have found the beliefs underneath safetyism track with distorted thinking patterns, the same ones therapists work to unwind, while resilience and clear thinking predict the opposite. So this isn't just a vibe I'm picking up on with clients. It's measurable.
Somewhere along the line, we stopped teaching problem-solving. In an effort to protect young people from stress or pain, we insulated them from the very experiences that build emotional muscle.
By the time they reach adulthood, many don't have the tools for real conflict resolution. Instead of leaning into a hard conversation, they look for the exit.
The Weaponization of "Therapy Speak"
Today, when people hit a disagreement or a family friction point, they don't sit down and work through it. They block. They go silent. They call ordinary interpersonal conflict "toxic" and dress up total avoidance as self-care.
Psychologists have a word for what's happening to our language, too — "concept creep." It's the slow stretching of words like trauma, abuse, and boundaries to cover things far milder than what they were built for. Clinical language made for real, specific harm gets borrowed for everyday conflict, and somewhere in that borrowing, it loses the meaning that made it useful.
We call it "setting boundaries." Often, it isn't a boundary at all. A boundary governs your own actions. Weaponized avoidance is meant to control or punish someone else. Here's a test I use, and I wish more people used it before they reached for the word: "I will..." is a boundary. "You must..." is a demand wearing a boundary's clothes.
Behind our screens, it gets worse. Digital life rewards the sharp cut and the harsh judgment, and it strips out the face-to-face feedback that actually builds empathy. The numbers back this up — one analysis of nearly 14,000 college students found empathy dropped roughly 40% between the late 1970s and 2009, with the steepest fall after 2000, right alongside always-on digital communication. We've become a culture that chases short-term relief over long-term connection. You can see it in the data. I see it in my inbox every week.
A Truth I Live — Personal and Professional
I don't just observe this dynamic through my clientele. Giving someone the gift of your time means you become their confidant, and I hear this story more than any other. I live it too, as a parent.
My family has felt the weight of this shift firsthand. We are currently estranged from our son — a situation shaped by outside dynamics and by the modern instinct to choose complete cutoff over open, honest dialogue. Watching a child walk away, watching "boundaries" get used as a shield against a hard, loving conversation — that's a heartbreak that runs deep. I'm not writing about this from a distance.
I also know my family isn't alone in this, not even close. Cornell sociologist Karl Pillemer ran the first large national survey on family estrangement in this country. He found 27% of adults — around 67 million people — have cut off contact with a family member. About 10% are estranged from a parent or child specifically. And here's the part that matters most if you're living inside it: his research found that most people who go no-contact still long for reconnection, even while the estrangement is tied to more anxiety, more depression, more isolation. The relief is real. So is the grief sitting underneath it.
In my work, I talk to so many people quietly carrying this exact grief. Watching someone they love pull away. Unable, or unwilling, to do the give-and-take that real relationships require.
Let's Talk About It
At The Regan Method, I believe healing and resilience don't come from running away from discomfort. They come from walking through it.
We have to stop confusing emotional strength with total isolation. We need nervous systems that can withstand a difference of opinion, a hard discussion, the messy reality of family life.
If you're navigating family estrangement, struggling with conflict avoidance, or just worn down by a culture that tells you to cut ties instead of build bridges — I see you. My door is open.
Let's start having the hard conversations again.
I'll say this plainly: I'm not a therapist. I'm not a social psychologist or a sociologist or any of the experts I've cited here. I'm a woman, a mother, a friend, a business owner — a literal human being walking this earth who has watched this play out all around me and been shaped by it herself. That's exactly why I feel authorized to research this and speak on it. Every one of us should. We don't make the world any better by staying silent.
— Mary