When “It Must Be Psychological” Sends a Child Down the Wrong Road...

A mother recently reached out to me about her daughter, who had been fainting since early adolescence. Not occasionally. Not during moments of stress. Some days it happened so often she lost count.

For seven years, this family lived inside that uncertainty. Seven years of hospital visits and referrals, but no real progress. Seven years of a child trying to grow up while never knowing when her body would give out. Seven years of parents waking up each morning hoping today would be different, and going to bed each night with no answers.

The mother asked the right questions after one hospital admission, like whether a thorough cardiac workup might help, but she was reassured that it wasn’t needed. So, she trusted the guidance she was given, as most people would. The focus then shifted to stress, anxiety, and emotional triggers. A psychiatrist tried medication, but nothing changed. Psychologists explored deeper causes, and she could not relate. Afterall, she wasn’t really experiencing any distress that preceded the spells. A neurologist said she was “attention seeking” and psyched her into getting a hold of herself otherwise he would need to do a surgery. Meanwhile, the fainting episodes were disrupting her schooling and leading to bullying. The symptoms came first, yet somehow she still became the one held responsible for them.

This is what happens once the system decides a symptom “must be psychological.” Everyone follows that path. New questions stop. Curiosity fades. The harder-to-consider explanations fall away.

When her mother called me for an appointment, we talked through everything carefully. A few details stood out right away: the sheer number of episodes, how long this had gone on, the total lack of response to psychiatric medication, and the absence of any emotional trigger. All of it pointed to one clear need before anything else: a full cardiac evaluation.

It took two simple tests.
Two.

And just like that, she finally had the answer: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): a physical condition. Treatable. Manageable. Real.

When I checked in with the mother afterward, she sent me a message I haven’t been able to forget:

“Think we are still processing things… I am so relieved and so happy I can’t tell you. She’s trying to come to terms with it. A lot of relief, some anger, and some fear all mixed in. It’s been 7 years of absolute misery for all of us. Just happy that you heard what I had been saying for so many years and which no one else could.”

Relief. Anger. Fear. All tangled together, because finally having an answer doesn’t erase the years spent without one. It doesn’t erase the times this girl fainted at home and at school. It doesn’t erase the bullying. It doesn’t erase the doubt she absorbed when people hinted her symptoms weren’t real. It doesn’t erase the emotional load her family carried while trying to hold everything together.

And it doesn’t erase the grief that a few simple tests could have changed the entire trajectory much earlier.

Her mother wants me to see her daughter now, not to solve the medical piece, but to help her make sense of the emotional aftermath. The diagnosis explains the fainting, but it doesn’t explain the years of being misunderstood.

I’m sharing this for psychologists, doctors, teachers, school staff, and anyone who works with young people who have unexplained symptoms:

Please rule out physical causes thoroughly before deciding they are psychological. Psychological explanations matter, but using them too soon can send a child down the wrong road for years.

“Nothing found” doesn’t mean “nothing there.”

And the cost of getting it wrong isn’t abstract. It shapes a young person’s confidence. It shapes how safe they feel in school. It shapes their relationships, their development, and their belief that adults will take them seriously.

If there’s one reminder I take from this, it’s this:

Stay curious. Slow down. Ask again. Make sure all the right doors have been opened.

Sometimes the difference between seven years of confusion and a clear path forward is one test no one thought was necessary.

(PS: There’s no identifying information in this story, but I still asked the family for permission to share it. They wanted others to hear what they went through, in the hope that fewer young people will face the same delays and misunderstandings.)

What If It's Not Depression or Anxiety, But an Existential Crisis?

We’re living in an era where anxiety and depression are so widespread, they almost feel normal. You wake up with a sense of dread, a weight pressing on your chest before you even open your eyes. You scroll through your phone to escape it, but everything on the screen either numbs you or makes it worse. You wonder if you're broken. Maybe you need medication. Maybe you need therapy. And maybe you do.

But what if what you're feeling isn't a clinical disorder? What if it's a signal?

What if you're not mentally ill, but in the grip of an existential crisis?

The Crisis No One Talks About

An existential crisis isn't just a buzzword or some abstract philosophy term. It's real. It's raw. And it's running rampant through a world that’s become more and more estranged and detached from meaning.

We’re told to chase success, wealth, likes, followers, productivity, hustle. But no one tells us why. We’re wired for purpose, but the system we live in is designed for output, not meaning. At least, not anymore. So when we do everything "right" and still feel empty, the dissonance is deafening. That disconnect creates distress that looks a lot like anxiety, like depression, like burnout.

We’re medicating and diagnosing what might be better understood as a deep human cry for direction.

A Voice from the Mountains: Happiness Happens

While spending time in the mountains recently, I chanced upon a book that resonated with me like how: Happiness Happens by Robin Singh. It echoed so clearly what I had been sensing but couldn't yet put into words.

In it, Singh writes, "We are not broken machines to be fixed; we are stories waiting to be understood." That line stayed with me. Because that’s what this moment feels like for so many of us, a confusing chapter in our story that hasn’t yet found its meaning.

Singh argues that what we often call unhappiness or even depression is sometimes the soul’s resistance to a life stripped of authenticity. That what we label as failure or discontent is actually a deep, unconscious rebellion against a meaningless existence. That perspective is not only radical; it's deeply compassionate.

Reading that book in the quiet of the mountains, I realized this isn’t just a personal struggle. It’s a cultural one. We're all trying to remember who we are underneath the noise.

You Are Not Alone. And You Are Not Broken.

More and more people are waking up in this fog. They feel disoriented, disillusioned, like something’s wrong but they can’t quite name it. They're tired all the time, but can’t sleep. They're surrounded by people, but feel isolated. Their lives are full of activity, but stripped of meaning.

This isn’t pathology. This is a wake-up call.

Because in the quiet moments, between the scrolling and the striving, your soul is trying to speak. It’s whispering, sometimes screaming: Is this it? Is this all there is?

That question isn’t something to fear. It’s something to follow.

What an Existential Crisis Looks Like

You might not even realize you're having one. Existential crises don’t show up like a flashing neon sign. They slip in through the cracks. They disguise themselves as low moods, spiraling thoughts and anxiety, or a general sense of disconnection. Here are some common signs:

• Persistent emptiness or numbness: Even when things are going "well," you feel detached, unmoved, like life is happening in grayscale.

• Loss of direction or motivation: Tasks you used to enjoy or care about now feel meaningless or robotic.

• Overthinking or questioning everything: You find yourself constantly wondering what the point of any of it is. Work, relationships, goals—none of it feels real or fulfilling.

• Feeling stuck or restless: You feel trapped in your current life, like something needs to change but you don’t know what or how.

• Mood swings and irritability: The frustration of not understanding your own feelings leads to sudden anger, sadness, or irritability.

• Isolation: You pull back from social connection, either because it feels fake or because you don’t want to burden others.

• A sense of spiritual disconnection: Even if you’re not religious, you feel like you’ve lost your sense of connection to something greater.

• No clear next step: You’re not chasing anything anymore. The old goals have faded or been met, and now there's nothing pulling you forward. The absence of direction becomes its own kind of anguish. You feel stagnant, unchallenged, and unsure what the next chapter should even look like.

These signs can easily be mistaken for mental illness. And sometimes they overlap. But at the core, this is your inner world demanding more than survival. It’s asking for truth, for meaning, for alignment.

Why This Hurts So Much

The pain of an existential crisis isn’t just emotional. It’s spiritual. It’s a fracture in your identity, your beliefs, your sense of belonging in the world.

Maybe you've lost faith in something you used to believe in. Maybe you’ve been chasing someone else’s version of success. Maybe your life is nothing like the one you imagined for yourself. That gap between who you are and who you thought you’d be? That hurts.

Or maybe you don’t even know what to want anymore. Maybe there’s no dream you're running toward, just a blur of days that feel exactly the same. That sense of stagnation, of being stuck in a loop without progress or passion, can be just as painful as failure.

But the pain isn't pointless. It's the pressure that cracks open the surface. It's the beginning of transformation, if you let it be.

Meaning Isn’t Given. It's Made.

The hardest truth in all of this is also the most liberating: no one is going to hand you meaning. It won’t fall into your lap with a dream job, a relationship, or a self-help book.

You have to build it. Brick by brick. Day by day. Choice by choice.

Purpose doesn’t show up fully formed. It reveals itself through action, through alignment, through saying yes to the things that make you feel alive and no to the things that keep you numb.

Robin Singh reminds us that happiness isn’t something to chase; it’s something that happens when we start showing up authentically. When we stop trying to fix ourselves and start trying to understand ourselves. That shift, from self-judgment to self-inquiry, is subtle but profound. It means replacing the question "What’s wrong with me?" with "What am I really feeling, needing, avoiding?"

It’s about trading the illusion of perfection for the honesty of presence. Singh’s point is that happiness doesn’t emerge from control or constant striving, but from connection, to ourselves, to our truth, to the moment we’re in. It’s the quiet peace that comes when we stop performing and start being real. And practically, that means doing things like keeping a daily journal to explore what you truly feel, instead of what you think you should feel, and asking yourself better questions, like "What actually gives me energy?" or "What am I curious about today?"

You don’t need to know the full map. Just the next step.

How to Start Finding Purpose

1. Stop performing, start listening: Turn down the noise. Get quiet. Listen to what actually moves you, not what impresses others.

2. Pay attention to pain: What breaks your heart? That’s often a clue. Pain can point to purpose. What you can't stand to ignore might be what you're here to change.

3. Reconnect with awe: Go outside. Watch the sky. Get small under the stars. Read something that shakes your worldview. Awe cracks the shell of numbness.

4. Create something. Anything: Write. Paint. Plant. Make music. When you create, you become a participant in life, not just a spectator.

5. Serve something bigger than yourself: We find ourselves when we give ourselves to something that matters. A cause, a community, an ideal. Purpose is often found in service.

6. Be willing to outgrow the old version of you: That identity you’re clinging to? It might be the thing holding you back. Growth often looks like letting go.

7. Talk to someone who gets it: Not everyone will understand what you're going through. Find someone who will hold space for you without trying to fix or label you.

This Is Your Invitation

If you're feeling lost, empty, like something's wrong with you, pause before you pathologize it.

Ask yourself: Could this be an existential crisis?

And if it is, don’t run from it. Step into it. Let it break you open. Let it strip away the illusions. Let it burn off the false identities.

Then start rebuilding, slowly, intentionally, around what truly matters to you.

Not what makes sense to others. Not what the world rewards. What matters to you.

This world doesn't need more perfect people. It needs more people who are awake. Who are alive. Who have stared into the void and come back with fire.

Maybe that’s you.

Maybe that’s what this pain is trying to show you.

You are not broken. You are becoming.