Therapist Explains How Capitalism Affects Your Mental Health

Ever catch yourself feeling anxious and burned out—like there’s no good left in this world? Well, you’re definitely not alone. It can be hard to grasp the cause behind all this but thanks to TikTok user pearcetherapy, we can learn about one possible explanation—capitalism.

Therapist, writer, and educator L.S. Pearce went viral after creating part 2 of her “Capitalism Is Bad For Mental Health” video series, in which she points out how this system is deteriorating our emotional well-being. Her post went viral, collecting more than 124K views and 2.1K comments in just a few days. “It’s really no surprise that mental health issues are exploding in [the US] especially,” the creator of this video said.

Eventually, the clip made its way to the Anti Work subreddit, a community dedicated to those who mildly dislike or straight-up loathe the idea of overworking or working in general. Check out the full video below and make sure to share your thoughts in the comment section.

“You know it’s funny; I almost didn’t even make that TikTok because I thought it was too obvious. And I still think it’s obvious to people but maybe they hadn’t heard it articulated in that way before,” L.S. Pearce told Bored Panda. Read on for the whole interview.

The therapist has been working in the mental health field for about 15 years: “I started my career at a homeless shelter, and later supportive housing for people with mental illness, chemical dependency issues, and HIV, so I’ve seen a lot.”

“And I think I can safely speak for all social workers when I say that we understand that stability is fundamental, and you can’t really help anyone with anything until they have a safe, warm place to sleep, the medical care they need to treat their mental or physical ailments, and so forth.”

Pearce mentioned that it’s remarkable “how much a person who has spent years on the streets and may be dealing with serious issues around drug addiction or mental illness can grow and heal just by having some stability, by having their basic needs met. Now take that scenario and apply it to 320M Americans, most of us struggling to exist in this system.”

She continued: “In my current work as a therapist, I see how much people suffer and how much of their time and energy is spent just on the most basic things like trying to keep a roof over their head. Can you imagine the potential unleashed by human beings who didn’t have to spend all their time and mental energy on just existing?”

“People like to joke that we’d have flying cars by now, but I honestly think that’s understated; we’d have far more advancement across every field, not just technology or transportation. Not to mention that the level of peace and happiness experienced by every person would shoot up into the stratosphere.”

Pearce asks you to imagine having the time to pursue what you’re actually passionate about: “How much amazing art, how many life-changing inventions have we missed out on because their creators are too busy flipping burgers for 60 hours a week?”

The creator of this video didn’t expect it to receive so much attention: “Lately, I’ve just been using my TikTok to vent about societal issues in a satirical way! Most of my videos just get a few thousand views. But I think that people connected with this one because they see their lives in it.”

“Let’s be honest; this world isn’t working for most of us,” she told us. “It’s not even working for the world itself, as modern man has existed for 300,000 years and with just 200 years of capitalist, imperialist expansion we’ve managed to bring the planet to its knees with climate change, pollution and deforestation.”

According to L.S. Pearce, there are microplastics in everything, and “we’re draining the oceans of fish faster than they can replenish and the fish we do catch are choked with chemicals, there’s an enormous island of plastic garbage in the Pacific, and eventually, every coastal city will be underwater when the ice caps melt.”

“The society we’ve built makes the vast majority of us miserable,” that’s why so many people wake up in the morning “filled with dread because they have to go to a job they hate and that sucks the life out of them just so they can keep their healthcare. Many others are trying to earn a living out of a hodge-podge of several gig jobs, none of which offer any benefits. Wages have been suppressed for so long that everybody’s living off credit, which doesn’t allow you to get ahead.”

The therapist continued by saying that many are glorifying “van life” as a way to live within your means, trying to keep a positive outlook on living out of your car: “To make things worse, homeownership has always been one of the few paths to creating financial stability, and now that’s quickly vanishing into the distance as these investment firms are swooping in and buying up entire neighborhoods to make America a nation of permanent renters, flushing our money down the drain (or rather, into their pockets) indefinitely.”

Just that phrase—'earn a living'—“none of us asked to be here, so why do we have to ‘earn’ the right to stay alive?” Pearce continued by saying that it would be one thing if we were cavemen, scraping by on nuts and berries, “but we solved for starvation with the agricultural revolution and productivity with the industrial revolution.”

“In 1930, economist John Keynes predicted we’d have advanced in technology enough by now to be working 15-hour weeks. And we could all be working far less, but that’s not in the interest of the powers that be,” she explained.

When asked if our current economic system is the main reason behind our mental health issues, Pearce thinks that it’s many things, but capitalism is certainly a big one. “Just speaking from personal experience, I’ve suffered from terrible mental health for most of my life. From high school through my late 30's, I was regularly depressed and often suicidal.”

During this period, she was also working at least two jobs at a time, sometimes three, and was still dumpster diving for food. “I took out loans for grad school but they weren’t enough, and I was selling my blood plasma two or three times a week to buy groceries.”

Also, she had to keep terrible jobs just because she needed them: “I’ve spent many a lunch break quietly sobbing in a bathroom stall. For two decades, I was working my butt off just to tread water, every single unexpected car repair or veterinarian bill was a financial crisis, and I couldn’t see any way out.”

She added: “So imagine my surprise when I landed a stable, decent-paying career and—POOF!—my lifelong depression was gone almost overnight! I’m working *one* job and have the time now to pursue hobbies, I can take breaks when I need to and even travel, a lifelong dream!”

The therapist also mentioned that she’s not even living a lavish lifestyle, “just not having to worry about every single little thing has made such a huge difference.”

Talking about capitalism, it harms us in other ways too: “Human beings are a naturally social and cooperative species. We’re hairless, we don’t have big sharp teeth or claws, we’re not especially fast or strong in comparison to other animals. The way we’ve been able to survive and build everything we have is by banding together and working together.”

Capitalism “incentivizes selfishness and callous disregard for others. Rather than dog-eat-dog, it’s exploit or be exploited, and the person who is willing to do the most harm to others is the one with the opportunity to gain the most riches.”

Pearce thinks that most people now know about “Amazon workers (allegedly) urinating into bottles, dying on the warehouse floor while the others are told to keep working, or being taken away in ambulances with heatstroke because it was cheaper for Bezos to pay to keep an ambulance on-site than just install air conditioning.”

“This is clearly sociopathic behavior, but under capitalism, people like this are elevated to the status of gods,” she said. “We’re not meant to live like this, to see each other in these terms, looking for ways to wring every penny of profit out of each other, out of another human being. Yet, here we are.”

However, it’s possible to heal both ourselves and the Earth. “We all know how that needs to happen, it’s just that right now it’s only the people on the fringes, the outskirts, that are saying it out loud.”

“We need systemic change, a massive overhaul of our systems, and a redistribution of power and resources,” Pearce suggested. “And that feels scary to many people because change is scary, new things are scary. Many people would rather stay the same—even if that ‘sameness’ is suffering and misery—than take a risk on something new.”

The therapist continued: “The current system only works for a tiny handful of people on the top, people who’ve made it clear that too much is never enough, and they’ll never stop in their accumulation of more and more of the world’s resources. I, for one, would rather take a chance on something new, something that has a chance of improving everyone’s life.”

Pearce told us that people shy away from the idea of systemic change because it feels too big, and even if these ideas appeal to them, they don’t know where to begin. She suggested a starting place: “Start with yourself and your own communities. Our current system promotes tying one’s personal self-worth to our earning power and status, so for people struggling to make it, it can be hard to feel good about ourselves.”

“I’m telling you right now that you matter—and the world would be a worse place without you in it. You have some wonderful gifts to contribute beyond whatever money you’re making for your boss; what is it? You may already know what it is, or maybe you need to take some time to find it.”

“Furthermore, this system encourages isolation, encourages people to depend on the system itself rather than each other so that we have no hope of breaking out of it,” she explained. In her grandmother’s era, people would borrow cups of sugar from their neighbors, or keep an eye on each other’s kids while they played in the street: “Do you know your neighbors? Do you know what’s going on in your community?”

The creator of this video said that you might feel more connected to the people around you if you found ways to get involved. For example, “beach cleanups, getting together with other tenants to petition your landlord for improvements to the building, making sack lunches for the unhoused in your neighborhood, even running for city council.”

“During times of emergency, we humans are known for our generosity and selflessness, stepping up to help dig others out of the rubble of an earthquake, rescuing each other from floods or offering our homes to evacuees of a fire. We can expand that community mindset into daily life rather than reserving it only for crises. Wouldn’t that be nice, to both support and be supported by your community?”