Psychologist explains why Gen Z feels everything 'more' - and talks about it openly

It was Gen Z that changed how India spoke about its emotions, making invisible battles like stress, burnout, and anxiety everyday conversations. Psychologists explain why it's a trend, how social media shapes it, and what it means for this emotional evolution and all of us.

Have a more-than-five-minute-long conversation with any member of Generation Z, and there's one thing you notice above everything else: they speak this language of emotions with an ease that has never been seen in a generation before. Where millennials grew up brushing things off as "tension" or "overthinking", Gen Z is comfortable naming the uncomfortable: burnout, anxiety, delulu, OCD, and everything in between.

Some say they are being over-dramatic; psychologists say they are finally breaking patterns of silence. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. We reached out to Ms. Nishtha Jain, Counselling Psychologist at Lissun, Mental Health Platform, to help throw light on the subject. What is not disputable, though, is that this generation has completely turned the rules around in the way we speak about mental health, and in so doing, they have forced the rest of us to have a rethink about our emotional vocabulary too.

Their superpower is emotional literacy. Gen Z has no fear in naming what they feel. Actually, they are really good at naming it. They grew up with therapy content, mental health creators, open conversations, and way less stigma than their parents ever did. That's why what the older generation dismisses as "shyness" is confidently labeled "social anxiety," and what is just regular tiredness becomes "burnout." That's not hyperbole; that's how they feel about themselves. And that's one of the reasons they're more likely to get help than suffer in silence. But sometimes, this emotional vocabulary blurs the lines: more language, more expression, but sometimes more mislabeling. According to psychologists, that is a trend-on the rise-to make regular discomfort into clinical terms. Of course, this does not belie their feelings but reminds us that self-awareness needs to go hand in glove with accuracy. We're understanding, not self-diagnosing. Social-media effect: overstimulation, endless comparison Gen Z lives in a world of "input overload": notifications, reels, messages, curated perfection, loops of comparison. Their minds almost never get a second of quiet time. The overstimulation makes the emotions bigger, faster, and much harder to process. Add to that the pressure to be successful, relevant, productive, and emotionally aware at once, and it's little wonder they lean so heavily on mental health vocabulary to explain their internal world. They created "safe spaces" for everyone, even the generations before them. One of the most powerful shifts Gen Z has driven is in creating safe spaces around emotional struggles. Because they are unapologetic about naming their feelings, the older generations are starting to open up, too. What was once “Don’t talk about it” has become “Let’s talk about it.” According to therapists, this openness trickles into small towns, conservative families, workplaces, and schools-places that had no emotional vocabulary whatsoever before the emergence of Gen Z. In other words, Gen Z isn't just changing how they feel; they're changing how we all understand mental health.