High Pressure and the Pursuit of Self-Development

# High Pressure and the Pursuit of Self-Development We live in a time when more and more people are expected to "tolerate more", perform better and at the same time be in continuous development. On the surface this can look like a positive project: more knowledge about mental health, more openness, more tools, more focus on coping. Still, we see a paradox that deserves to be taken seriously: objectively the population is in many ways healthier than before — we live longer, have better medical care and material security — but subjectively many report feeling worse. More people describe themselves as stressed, overloaded, pressured and inadequate. One of the clearest Norwegian voices challenging this development is psychologist and social philosopher Ole Jakob Madsen, professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo. In the book **"Generation Performance. What's Wrong With Us?"** he casts a critical eye on how we understand mental ill-health, life skills and pressure — especially among young people. Madsen's project is not to downplay suffering, but to broaden the perspective: What happens if we place what hurts most with the individual, instead of examining the culture and systems that create that pain? This text explores some of the central points in Madsen's work, and what they mean for young people, parents, teachers and us as a society. ## Performance culture as a life project In a performance-oriented climate life is often treated as a project to be optimized. This is not limited to school and career, but extends into identity, body, friendships, leisure and mental health. Many young people feel they must plan and discipline themselves from a very early age: choose the "right" study track, the "right" activities, the "right" social network, build a CV, keep training routines, eat "clean", sleep optimally — and preferably document everything along the way. It is easy to see how this can give a sense of meaning and control. The problem arises when the self becomes a workplace without rest, where self-worth is tied to achievement. For many, life becomes a form of continuous evaluation: Have I done enough? Am I good enough? Am I heading in the right direction? What once could be ordinary developmental worries can today grow into a constant inner "performance report". Madsen points out particularly that this kind of pressure seems to hit **young girls** hard, with increasing reports of stress, body pressure, sleep problems, school pressure and mental ailments. This does not mean boys are not affected, but that the expressions and burdens often look different — and that there is a pattern in who is most likely to internalize demands to perform across many arenas at once. ## Life skills in school: a solution that can shift responsibility When **public health and life skills** were introduced as a cross-curricular theme in the curriculum, it was welcomed by many. The idea is appealing: school should help children and young people learn to handle thoughts, feelings, relationships, stress and choices. Madsen's critical question, however, is important: *What if we make it too easy on ourselves by teaching young people to tolerate more pressure, instead of reducing the pressure?* Here lies a central concern: life skills can end up as a project where responsibility for psychological burdens is placed on the individual. If a student feels burned out by school, grade-chasing, social comparison and future uncertainty, it is tempting to respond with more "resilience training", more coping techniques, more tools. But if the system itself produces what causes the pain, the measures can become a way of adapting young people to an unsustainable climate. This does not mean coping tools are useless. Many benefit from understanding the stress response, working on self-regulation, sleep and boundary-setting. The point is that such measures easily become **individualizing**: it's *you* who must adjust, *you* who must learn to tolerate, *you* who must "work on yourself" — while structural conditions remain unchanged. ## Skepticism toward the term "generation performance" Madsen is also critical of the very label **"generation performance"**. He argues the term can become a simplification that both stigmatizes and obscures. On one hand it can function as a recognizable story about pressure and high demands. On the other hand it risks turning young people into a "type": a generation that is weaker, more vulnerable or more demanding than before. When we create broad labels, two things often happen at the same time: 1. We lose nuance — because young people live very different lives, with different resources, burdens and opportunities. 2. We risk creating a self-fulfilling expectation — where young people more easily interpret normal reactions (stress before an exam, uncertainty in relationships, grief, disappointment) as signs that "something is wrong with me". It is entirely possible to acknowledge that the pressure is real, without turning an entire generation into a problem. ## Psychologization: from life's pain to the individual's fault One of the most consistent themes in Madsen's critique is **psychologization**: the tendency to understand more and more human experiences through a psychological language that points inward — toward the individual's inner life — rather than looking outward toward culture, economy, technology and politics. Psychologization may sound positive: more knowledge, more awareness, more help. But Madsen warns of a side effect: we can end up interpreting life's burdens as personal flaws or internal dysfunction. If you are exhausted because you balance school, a part-time job, training, social life and expectations to succeed on all fronts, you may start thinking: *I'm bad at stress management.* If you are sad after a breakup, you may think: *I'm psychologically vulnerable.* If you feel anxious in an uncertain world, you may think: *I have anxiety.* Sometimes this is true — and sometimes it is a linguistic slide that makes normal human reactions read as symptoms. Then you may start looking for a "cure" for something that might first and foremost need understanding, support, time and meaning. ## The power of language: identity in labels How we talk about mental health affects how young people understand themselves. Words like "stressed", "pressed" and "overloaded" can be precise descriptions of a situation — but they can also become identity markers. When a person repeatedly describes themselves with such terms, internalization can occur gradually: - *I am someone who is stressed.* - *I can't tolerate much.* - *I get overwhelmed quickly.* Then language becomes not only a report of how you feel, but a story about who you are. This can narrow the scope for action: If I "am" someone who can't tolerate pressure, all pressure will also be experienced as a threat. This is where it becomes important to distinguish between: - **state** (I am stressed now) - **identity** (I am a stressed person) Madsen's point is not that we should stop talking about mental health, but that we must be careful with how language shapes self-understanding — especially in adolescence, when identity is being formed. ## The self-development culture: help or additional demand? Many young people today face a massive flow of advice on self-help and personal development: how to regulate emotions, become more productive, think positively, set goals, visualize, meditate, eat right, train smart, sleep better, "manifest" and optimize. Some of this is valuable. But Madsen raises an important risk: self-development can become yet another performance arena. Then it's no longer just about feeling better, but about being "good" at feeling good. This can create a strange double burden: - you are struggling - and you feel that you are handling it poorly Instead of easing the pressure, self-help language can at worst intensify shame and self-criticism. You feel you have failed both in life and in the attempt to manage life. ## The therapeutic public sphere and the unease it can bring We have gained a public sphere with much more psychological language than before. This can be a great advantage: more openness can reduce taboo and make it easier to seek help. At the same time Madsen points out that constant discussions about mental problems can also have a downside: they can create an expectation that you must continuously monitor your own mental state. If you are constantly reminded to "check in", "monitor stress levels", "map triggers" and "work on patterns", it can make you more self-focused and more worried. Some will experience this as support, others as an amplification of unease. This is a known dynamic in psychology: attention is not neutral. What we direct attention to tends to grow in significance. ## Normalization without trivialization A central point I believe is important to preserve in this debate is the possibility of understanding mental health that does not always have to be anchored in diagnoses. This does not mean diagnoses are irrelevant or that treatment is unnecessary. It means we also need a language for the human that does not automatically become medical or psychiatric. Many of life's pains are not illness, but reactions: - Grief is a reaction to loss. - Worry can be a reaction to uncertainty. - Stress can be a reaction to demands without enough resources. - Emptiness can be a reaction to disconnection from meaning. From this perspective the question often becomes less: *What's wrong with me?* And more: *What is happening to me — and in my life — that makes me feel like this?* Madsen's critique lands precisely here: If we exclusively teach young people to interpret discomfort as a sign of psychological malfunction, we also deprive them of an existential language. We risk turning life's basic conditions — uncertainty, vulnerability, disappointment, comparison and ambivalence — into deviations. ## Politics, culture and what we cannot meditate away One of the most challenging, but also most liberating, perspectives in Madsen's work is this: Some of what makes young people tired cannot be solved by individual techniques alone. If school and assessment systems feel ruthless, if the housing market makes the future insecure, if social media drives comparison around the clock, if working life demands availability and flexibility, and if the pace of society keeps increasing — then learning stress management helps, but is not sufficient. Here lies the political dimension: pressure is not only an internal phenomenon. Pressure is also produced by frameworks, expectations and competition. When we only talk about individual coping, we can lose the opportunity to ask the bigger questions: - What demands do we place on children and young people? - What is rewarded — and what is punished — in school? - How is self-image shaped by constant visibility and comparison? - Which lives are actually possible to live within today's structures? Looking outward is not an abdication of responsibility. It is a necessary correction of a one-sided inward gaze. ## Tolerating life without turning life into a project There is a difference between taking responsibility for yourself and turning yourself into an eternal self-improvement project. Faced with high pressure it can be useful to practice another form of coping: one that includes acceptance, limits and humanity. Better mental health is not always about removing discomfort. Sometimes it is about understanding the discomfort, placing it in context, and living with it without interpreting it as personal failure. Madsen's books **"Generation Performance. What's Wrong With Us?"** and **"It's Inward We Must Go"** represent an important corrective in a time when the solution is often presented as more self-insight, more therapy and more self-development. Sometimes it is precisely this direction — the idea that everything must be solved "inwardly" — that helps maintain the problem. Saying this is not being against psychology. It is taking psychology seriously in its broadest form: as a field that must also understand people in light of culture, language, community and society. ## A more sustainable language about pressure If we are to meet performance pressure wisely, we need a language that embraces both individual and structure, both feelings and frameworks. A language that can say: - "It is understandable that you are tired" (normalization) - "What is it in your life that drains you?" (context) - "What can you influence — and what needs to change around you?" (realistic responsibility) - "You are more than what you achieve" (value) Then we can help young people tolerate life without reducing life to a competition. And we can acknowledge that it is not always the individual who is too weak — sometimes the frameworks are too tight. --- **Want to dive deeper into this topic?** This is a topic psychologist Sondre Risholm Liverød talks more about in the podcast episode with the same name as this article. You can find the episode as part of the exercise materials at [BeBalanced.ai](https://bebalanced.ai).