“Older generations were taught to endure. Gen Z was taught to express,” says Dr Sakshi Mandhyan, psychologist and founder at Mandhyan Care, in a conversation with indianexpress.com.So let me express this: I’m tired. Not the kind of tired that a weekend fixes, but the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from being constantly vigilant about everything, all at once.It’s 7.30 am on a Monday. The sink is full of dishes I promised myself I’d wash yesterday, because our house help failed to show up. The inverter battery needs to be checked because power cuts in Noida are unpredictable. My phone has several notifications: work emails, a reminder about the mutual fund auto payment, my mother asking if I’ve eaten, and a text from my landlord asking about the rent. By the time I’ve responded to emails, paid my bills, taken a shower and done the dishes, it’s 10 am, and I’m not even close to leaving for work yet.This is what expressing looks like today. Not complaining. Not being dramatic. Just naming the reality that previous generations lived, but never had the language to articulate.The previous generation moved out, too, yes. But they didn’t do it while being available on Microsoft Teams until late in the night, comparing their lives to curated Instagram reels, navigating a gig economy with zero job security, and watching the planet quite literally burn on their X feed.People call Gen Z too sensitive. But they don’t see our daily struggles. They don’t see me budgeting my salary to cover rent, groceries, electricity, and still trying to save something for myself. They don’t see me taking a late-night Uber home, sharing my live location with three friends, keys wedged between my knuckles just in case. They don’t see the mental mathematics of survival I do every single day, calculating commute times against meeting schedules, weighing whether that stomach ache is serious enough to take a sick day I might need later, and deciding if I can afford therapy this month or if I’ll just journal through the anxiety instead.We’re the generation that grew up watching the world on our screens, climate catastrophes, pandemics, and economic crashes, while being told to post our best lives on Instagram. We didn’t choose to be anxious. We inherited a world designed to make us so.Story continues below this adThis isn’t just an isolated experience. When my friend mustered up the courage to tell her older colleagues that she’s ‘taking a mental health day,’ she vividly remembered the flicker of judgment she could see in their eyes, the unspoken, ‘back in our days, we just pushed through.’But what they don’t understand is that acknowledging mental health isn’t a weakness for us. It’s a survival skill. And recently, when Ananya Panday stood up for Gen Z on this very issue, she articulated something that so many of us have been trying to explain. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Social Media Dissect (@socialmediadissect) The debate that caught everyone’s attentionIn a recent episode of Two Much with Kajol and Twinkle, a pointed exchange unfolded when Twinkle Khanna and Farah Khan took a jibe at Gen Z actor Panday for defending our focus on mental health. The conversation, also featuring Kajol, veered from jokes about Gen Z’s reliance on Google Maps to a spirited debate on emotional awareness and social media’s impact.It all began with Khanna’s question: “Gen Z needs Google Maps to walk down their own street.” While Kajol and Khan nodded in amusement, Panday was quick to disagree. “Gen Z knows a lot more than what people give them credit for,” she said, prompting Khan to quip, “What do they know? They know about sourdough and all that.”ALSO READ | How the pressure maintaining multiple identities is draining Gen ZDefending her generation, Panday added, “They’re very in touch with their emotions. We’re the first generation that talks about feelings, embraces mental health and freedom of expression.” Khanna shot back with a smirk, “They’re traumatised by everything,” while Khan added, “They’re expressing it a bit too much. Even getting out of something is a mental health issue now.”Story continues below this adThe laughter in the room was audible. But for many of us watching, it stung.Why this is real, and it’s validWhen I shared my experiences with mental health professionals, I expected clinical detachment. What I got instead was validation and an explanation for why what we’re feeling isn’t just “in our heads”.Manasvi Azad, a counselling psychologist specialising in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), tells indianexpress.com, “For a long time, especially in a developing country like India, most people were occupied with the lower layers of Maslow’s hierarchy: survival, safety, stability. Emotional language wasn’t a priority. Gen Z is the first generation to grow up with relatively more access and exposure, and they’ve used social media to create the emotional vocabulary many of us never had.”This isn’t about us being weaker. It’s about us being the first generation with the tools and the permission to name what we’re experiencing. Azad explains, “What looks like ‘new sensitivity’ is really new awareness.”Story continues below this adBut it’s not just awareness that sets us apart. It’s what we’re aware of. Dr Mandhyan addresses the elephant in the room: constant connectivity. “Our brain is not designed for nonstop input. Information overload leads to mental fatigue. It breaks the sense of continuity. The perception of oversensitivity often reflects an environment that never slows down,” she says, adding, “In therapy, I am noticing a surge in the symptoms of palpitation, feeling of overwhelm, insomnia and information overload that are rooted in overstimulation due to sustained digital interruption.”This matches exactly what I feel scrolling through my phone at midnight, watching cloud bursts in Uttarakhand, layoffs in Bengaluru, and someone’s picture-perfect life in Goa, all within five minutes. My nervous system doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and a digital one. And apparently, that’s normal.Karishma Desai Shah, counselling psychologist and founder at Nimitt Counselling and Psychotherapy Services, adds, “There is an information boom at each step. There are also multiple choices available, which appears to make our lives smoother, but might also lead us to decision-fatigue and the pressure to make the perfect choice. On top of this, the perpetually present social media around makes the opinions, comparisons, judgments, praises, everything louder.” When older generations dismiss these feelings, it shuts down meaningful conversation, like when Twinkle told Ananya that ‘everything is trauma’ (Source: Freepik)Is going to therapy a weakness?When Khan joked that Gen Z treats “even getting out of something” as a mental health issue, she touched on a deeper generational divide: the belief that seeking help equals fragility.Story continues below this adBut clinically, the opposite is true. Azad is emphatic about this: “One of the biggest barriers to therapy is the belief that expressing emotions makes you fragile. Clinically, we see the opposite. Suppressing emotions leads to frustration, burnout, and even physical symptoms. In CBT, change begins with awareness: you can only regulate what you can name.”She continues, “Research has consistently shown that emotional expression lowers stress, improves coping, and prevents internalisation issues like anxiety and depression. Emotional openness is not a weakness; it’s psychological hygiene.”Shah echoes this from a psychotherapy perspective, mentioning that the very basis of healing is “emotional awareness”. The process of becoming more aware of your emotions helps in gaining a sense of control over your emotions and, hence, being able to choose how you want to express yourself. “This openness and knowledge of your emotions lead to a sense of self-control and freedom instead of fragility,” Shah adds.Dr Mandhyan speaks from a neuroscientific perspective, stressing, “Emotional expression activates the thinking part of the brain, which reduces the intensity of difficult feelings. This is called affect labelling, and it is a powerful regulation skill. I regularly see clients become more stable when they talk through their internal experiences early instead of letting emotions accumulate.”Story continues below this adThe trauma debateOne of the most common dismissals I hear is variations of: ‘Everything is trauma now. You don’t know real hardship.’ But Azad challenges this head-on, “A major misconception is that ‘everything is trauma’. But trauma isn’t defined only by extreme events like war. It’s shaped by access to resources, a stable home environment, social support, and a sense of safety. Many young people don’t have these buffers.”ALSO READ | Gen Z, try and steer clear of performative partners — they promise nothing but confusion and heartbreakShe highlights that “When older generations dismiss these feelings, it shuts down meaningful conversation, like when Twinkle told Ananya that ‘everything is trauma’, reducing emotional literacy to exaggeration rather than recognising it as a genuine reflection.”What this generation is buildingWhat excites the experts most isn’t just that we’re talking about mental health — it’s how we’re changing the entire landscape of emotional wellness.Azad observes something that challenges the “fragile snowflake” narrative: “Gen Z is more consistent, patient, and process-oriented. They don’t expect ‘quick fixes’, contrary to popular belief, I have found them to be more patient and resilient; they see therapy as long-term work and show up willing to put in the effort.”Story continues below this adShah sees this shift in her practice daily, stating how Gen Z are “the most open about their mental health struggles” and much more emotionally aware and present for themselves.Dr Mandhyan sums up what this all means. She says, “This creates emotional literacy, not oversensitivity. They are allowed to name feelings instead of suppressing them. This early practice strengthens emotional granularity.”Why this mattersThe dismissal of Gen Z’s mental health concerns as being too sensitive isn’t just unfair, it’s dangerous. When we’re told we’re overreacting for naming our anxiety, for setting boundaries, for refusing to normalise burnout, it translates to our pain and struggles not being taken seriously.But our pain is real. The world we’ve inherited is objectively more complex, more precarious, more demanding than any before it. We’re not weak for acknowledging that. We’re honest.Story continues below this adAnd that honesty, that willingness to say ‘I’m not okay’ when previous generations smiled through suffering, isn’t just brave, it’s revolutionary. We’re not just talking about feelings. We’re dismantling the stigma that kept our parents’ generation silent.