Most of us spend our lives in boxes—classrooms, offices, bedrooms—stuck in routines that don’t feel meaningful, expected to stay calm and productive no matter what we’re feeling.
We’re told to manage our symptoms instead of questioning the environment causing them.
The term zoochosis refers to the obsessive, repetitive, and self-destructive behaviors animals show when they’re held in captivity. Things like pacing, rocking, biting themselves, or shutting down completely. It happens when their environment is unnatural and they have no real control or way out.
That doesn’t sound too far off from how a lot of people are living now.
Most of us spend our lives in boxes—classrooms, offices, bedrooms—stuck in routines that don’t feel meaningful, expected to stay calm and productive no matter what we’re feeling. We’re constantly overstimulated by noise, screens, and pressure, but disconnected from anything that actually feels human. And when we start to break down, we’re told it’s a personal problem.
But what if it’s not?
What if anxiety, depression, burnout, and dissociation are just modern versions of zoochosis? What if our minds are reacting exactly how they should to a life that’s too fake, too controlled, and too far from what we were built for?
"We’re told to manage our symptoms instead of questioning the environment causing them."