You’re on the Tube scrolling through perfectly curated lives, wondering why nobody else seems to be losing their mind over the sheer absurdity of existence. Why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is? Wake up, pretend everything’s normal, go to work, pretend some more, then collapse into bed and do it all again. Meanwhile, we’re spinning on a rock through space, mortality ticking in the background, and everyone’s acting like deciding between oat or dairy milk is the biggest drama of the day.
Truth is, loads of people feel this way. They’re just not saying it out loud because we’ve all agreed to participate in this weird collective performance where we pretend life makes perfect sense. But underneath the polite small talk about the weather and weekend plans, most people are quietly baffled by the enormity and strangeness of being alive. Especially in the UK, where we’ve perfected the art of keeping our existential dread buried under layers of irony and tea-drinking.
Why Does No One Talk About How Insane Life Is?
Related reading: Why Men Find It So Hard to Talk About Mental Health (And What Actually Works).
There’s a conspiracy of silence around life’s fundamental weirdness. We’re all navigating the same bizarre experience—consciousness, mortality, the pressure to “succeed,” the relentless pace of modern existence—yet we treat it like background noise. Why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is when it’s the most universal experience we share?
Part of it’s cultural. British reserve isn’t just about queuing politely and apologising when someone else bumps into you. We’ve been raised to keep our chaos internal. Admitting that life feels overwhelming, confusing, or downright mad might make us seem like we’re “not coping,” which violates the unspoken rule that everyone should be fine, all the time, no matter what.
But here’s the kicker: suppressing this awareness doesn’t make it go away. It just makes you feel isolated and weird for having perfectly normal reactions to genuinely abnormal circumstances. When you never acknowledge why nobody talks about how fucking insane life is, you start believing the problem is you, not the situation.
Common Myths About Finding Life Overwhelming
You might also enjoy: What Being Alone Really Feels Like (And What That Says About Your Mental Health).
Myth: Everyone Else Has It Figured Out
Reality: Absolutely nobody has it figured out. That colleague who seems impossibly together? They’re winging it too. The friend with the perfect Instagram feed? They’re having a private crisis about whether their life has meaning while editing photos of their brunch. Mental Health Foundation data shows over 8 million people in the UK experience anxiety disorders, and that’s just the diagnosed cases. The appearance of competence is humanity’s greatest collective performance.
Myth: Feeling Like Life Is Mad Means You’re Not Mentally Healthy
Reality: Recognising that existence is bizarre and overwhelming is actually a sign of awareness, not mental illness. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions are real and serious, but they’re different from existential bewilderment. You can be perfectly mentally healthy and still think, “What the actual hell is going on?” when you step back and look at the big picture. In fact, the NHS distinguishes between clinical mental health conditions and normal stress responses to life’s challenges.
Myth: Talking About It Makes It Worse
Reality: The opposite is true. When you voice the thought “why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is?” and someone responds with “RIGHT? Thank god it’s not just me,” the relief is immediate. Shared acknowledgment doesn’t amplify the problem—it diffuses the loneliness around it. Silence breeds shame. Conversation breeds solidarity.
The Things That Make Life Feel Particularly Unhinged
Let’s get specific about what makes modern existence feel like you’re taking crazy pills while everyone else acts normal.
The Mortality Awareness That Hits at Random
You’re waiting for the kettle to boil, and suddenly—BAM—you remember you’re going to die. So is everyone you love. And we just… carry on making tea? The fact that we can function at all with this knowledge constantly available in our minds is extraordinary. Yet we’re supposed to worry about whether we’ve upset someone by taking too long to reply to a text.
This isn’t morbid. It’s reality knocking. And the fact that we’ve all agreed not to mention it most of the time is one of the strangest social contracts humans have ever made. Why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is when this thought alone could derail your entire Tuesday?
The Performance of Normalcy
Every single day, you wake up and participate in systems that would seem absolutely bonkers to someone from even 100 years ago. You stare at a glowing rectangle for hours while your body slowly atrophies. You exchange your finite life hours for money to pay for a roof over your head on a planet you were born on without asking. You’re expected to have opinions about everything while experts can’t agree on anything.
And throughout all this, you’re supposed to maintain a pleasant demeanor, respond to emails promptly, and act like this is all perfectly reasonable. The cognitive dissonance is massive, yet we treat people who question the system as the weird ones.
The Acceleration Nobody Consented To
Life moves faster than human brains were designed to handle. Your great-grandparents probably did one job their whole lives, knew everyone in their village, and had time to be properly bored. Now you’re supposed to have a career (not just a job—a passion-filled CAREER), maintain a social media presence, stay informed about global politics, exercise regularly, eat well, pursue hobbies, nurture relationships, and also somehow find time to just… exist?
The pace is relentless. Information overload is constant. And when you feel overwhelmed by it all, the response is often “better time management” or “self-care,” as if the problem is your personal failing rather than a genuinely unsustainable lifestyle that’s been normalized.
The Meaning Crisis Nobody Mentions
Traditional structures that gave people meaning—religion, community, clear life milestones—have largely dissolved, especially for younger generations. But nothing’s really replaced them. You’re supposed to create your own meaning through career success or personal achievements or finding your “purpose,” which is an enormous weight to carry.
Plus, everything feels both incredibly important and completely meaningless at the same time. Should you stress about your performance review when climate change exists? Does anything actually matter when the universe is infinite and indifferent? These aren’t questions with easy answers, yet we’re all expected to confidently navigate them while also remembering to pay the council tax on time.
Why the Silence Around Life’s Insanity Is Harmful
When we don’t acknowledge why nobody talks about how fucking insane life is, we create several problems:
Isolation increases. You think you’re the only one struggling with these thoughts, which makes you feel broken or weak. Meanwhile, the person sitting next to you on the bus is having the exact same internal experience but hiding it just as carefully.
Shame grows. If everyone else seems fine and you’re not, the logical conclusion feels like personal failure. You blame yourself for not coping better with circumstances that are objectively difficult to cope with.
Mental health suffers. The gap between your internal reality and what you’re allowed to express externally creates stress. Constantly performing “fine” when you feel bewildered is exhausting. Mind UK identifies this kind of emotional suppression as a significant contributor to stress and anxiety.
Solutions stay surface-level. If we can’t talk honestly about the problem, we can’t develop meaningful responses. We end up with “productivity hacks” and “wellness tips” when what we actually need is fundamental acknowledgment that modern life is structurally overwhelming for most people.
Mental Health Strategies When Life Feels Absurd
Right, so life is objectively mad and everyone’s pretending otherwise. What do you actually do with that information?
Name It Without Pathologizing It
Start distinguishing between “I’m having a normal reaction to abnormal circumstances” and “I’m experiencing symptoms of a mental health condition that needs treatment.” Both are valid, but they’re different. Feeling existentially overwhelmed by modern life doesn’t automatically mean you’re unwell. It might just mean you’re paying attention.
That said, if you’re experiencing persistent low mood, anxiety that interferes with daily functioning, sleep disruption, or thoughts of self-harm, that’s when to seek proper support. The NHS provides clear guidance on accessing mental health support when you need it.
Find Your People
The relief of discovering someone else also thinks life is completely bonkers cannot be overstated. You need at least one person you can be properly honest with—someone who won’t respond to “everything feels mental” with toxic positivity or immediate solutions, but will instead say “yeah, it really fucking does, doesn’t it?”
These conversations are harder to find in the UK because of our cultural tendency to keep things light, but they’re out there. Sometimes they happen at 2am after a few drinks. Sometimes they happen in therapy. Sometimes they happen in online communities where anonymity makes honesty easier. Seek them out deliberately.
Build Micro-Rituals of Grounding
When life feels too big and strange, shrink your focus to something manageable and immediate. Physical sensation is your friend here. The taste of your morning coffee. The feeling of cold water on your face. The weight of your body in a chair.
These aren’t solutions to existential confusion, but they’re anchors. When your brain is spiraling about mortality and meaning and why nobody talks about how fucking insane life is, bringing attention back to simple, present-moment sensory experiences can interrupt the spiral. You’re not fixing anything—you’re just giving yourself a break from the enormity.
Something as simple as a small journal can help with this. Not for gratitude lists or productivity tracking, but for recording moments when you felt properly present. Just a sentence or two. “Noticed the sunlight on the kitchen wall. Felt okay for five minutes.” That’s it.
Embrace Absurdism (The Philosophy, Not Just the Feeling)
Albert Camus spent a lot of time thinking about this exact problem—how do you live meaningfully when life is fundamentally absurd? His answer wasn’t depression or nihilism. It was to acknowledge the absurdity fully and then choose to engage with life anyway, on your own terms.
You can hold two thoughts simultaneously: “This is all mad and meaningless in the grand scheme” AND “I’m going to care about things anyway because I’m alive and caring feels better than not caring.” That’s not contradiction—that’s maturity. You don’t need to resolve the fundamental questions to live well. You just need to stop waiting for them to be resolved before you start living.
Limit Your Exposure to Performance Culture
Social media makes everything worse because it’s a highlight reel of everyone else’s performance of having-it-together. When you’re already feeling overwhelmed by life’s strangeness, seeing 200 people pretend everything’s perfect makes you feel like the only one who’s struggling.
You don’t need to quit entirely (though some people find that helpful). But set boundaries. Unfollow accounts that make you feel inadequate. Mute people who only share their wins. Seek out accounts that are honest about the mess. The less time you spend comparing your internal reality to everyone else’s external performance, the better.
Create Structure in the Chaos
When everything feels meaningless and overwhelming, routine becomes a life raft. Not a rigid, joyless schedule, but a few predictable elements that don’t require decision-making or deep thought. Wake at roughly the same time. Eat meals at regular intervals. Move your body somehow each day. Go to bed before midnight.
These sound trivial when you’re contemplating existence, but they’re not. When your brain is busy questioning everything, having some things on autopilot preserves mental energy for the bigger stuff. Structure isn’t about control—it’s about reducing unnecessary cognitive load.
Your 14-Day Reality Check Plan
Acknowledging that life is mad doesn’t require a massive overhaul. Start small. Here’s a fortnight of gentle shifts that help you live with the absurdity rather than being crushed by it.
- Day 1-2: Have one properly honest conversation. Tell someone you trust that you find modern life overwhelming and bizarre. Notice how they respond (it’ll probably be with relief and agreement).
- Day 3-4: Spend 10 minutes each day doing something that requires your full attention. Cook something from scratch, draw, play an instrument, go for a walk without your phone. Practice being present rather than thinking about being present.
- Day 5-6: Identify one aspect of “normal life” that you find particularly absurd. Write it down. Get specific about what bothers you about it. Permission to think it’s mad without immediately needing to fix it.
- Day 7-8: Create one small ritual that grounds you. Morning coffee in actual silence. Five minutes of stretching before bed. Standing outside for two minutes. Make it non-negotiable for these two days.
- Day 9-10: Reduce information intake by half. Less news, less social media, fewer podcasts and articles. Notice whether the world actually falls apart without your constant monitoring (it won’t).
- Day 11-12: Do something that feels meaningful to you personally, regardless of whether it’s “productive” or impressive. Play with a pet. Help a neighbor. Make art nobody will see. Choose engagement over achievement.
- Day 13-14: Revisit the honest conversation from Day 1. Have another one, either with the same person or someone new. Make this a practice rather than a one-off release valve.
Mistakes to Avoid When Life Feels Overwhelming
Mistake 1: Trying to “Fix” the Fundamental Weirdness
Why it’s a problem: You can’t fix existential confusion because it’s not broken—it’s just reality. Trying to eliminate uncertainty, absurdity, or mortality from the human experience is a losing battle that creates more suffering than it resolves.
What to do instead: Shift from fixing to accommodating. Learn to live alongside the strangeness rather than waiting for it to go away. Build coping strategies for when it feels particularly intense, but stop treating your awareness of life’s absurdity as a problem to be solved.
Mistake 2: Comparing Your Internal Experience to Everyone’s External Presentation
Why it’s a problem: You’re comparing your messy, complicated internal reality to everyone else’s carefully curated public image. Obviously you’ll come up short. Why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is? Because we’re all performing competence while privately flailing.
What to do instead: Remember that every single person you see—even the ones who seem impossibly sorted—has a private internal world full of doubt, confusion, and occasional existential panic. You’re not uniquely broken. You’re just unusually aware of what everyone else is hiding.
Mistake 3: Using Constant Distraction as a Strategy
Why it’s a problem: Staying busy enough to never think about the big questions works temporarily, but it’s exhausting and unsustainable. Eventually the thoughts catch up, often at inconvenient times like 3am or during important meetings.
What to do instead: Schedule time for existential thinking. Sounds weird, but it works. Give yourself 20 minutes to properly contemplate mortality, meaninglessness, whatever’s bothering you. Write it down if that helps. Then close the notebook and get on with your day. Contained acknowledgment beats suppressed panic.
Mistake 4: Expecting One Answer to Resolve Everything
Why it’s a problem: Whether it’s therapy, meditation, religion, philosophy, or any other framework—there’s no single solution that makes life suddenly make sense. Looking for one keeps you perpetually disappointed and seeking rather than living.
What to do instead: Collect tools rather than searching for The Answer. Different strategies work for different moments. Sometimes you need structure, sometimes you need to talk, sometimes you need physical movement, sometimes you need to just sit with the discomfort. Build a varied toolkit.
Your Reality Check Essentials
- Accept that finding life absurd is a sign of awareness, not weakness or mental illness
- Seek out one person who’ll be properly honest about struggling with existence
- Build daily rituals that ground you in immediate, physical reality
- Stop performing constant competence when you’re actually bewildered—it’s exhausting
- Reduce exposure to social media performance culture that makes everyone look sorted
- Create structure in small ways even when bigger meaning feels unclear
- Remember that you don’t need to resolve existential questions before you’re allowed to enjoy your life
- Practice contained acknowledgment rather than constant suppression of big thoughts
Common Questions About Life’s Fundamental Weirdness
Is it normal to constantly think about how strange existence is?
Completely normal, especially if you’re someone who thinks deeply about things generally. Some people naturally have more existential awareness than others—it’s not better or worse, just different. However, if these thoughts are preventing you from functioning day-to-day or causing significant distress, that’s worth discussing with a mental health professional. The line is whether the thoughts are interesting/unsettling versus actively debilitating.
Why do some people seem completely unbothered by existential questions?
Different brains, different priorities, different coping mechanisms. Some people genuinely don’t think about these things much. Others think about them but have found frameworks (religious, philosophical, or otherwise) that satisfy them. Many are bothered but hide it extremely well because that’s what we’re taught to do. Don’t assume apparent peace means actual peace—you can’t see inside anyone else’s head.
Does acknowledging life’s absurdity mean nothing matters?
Nope. It means nothing matters cosmically or objectively, but things can still matter personally and subjectively. Your relationships, your experiences, your choices—they matter to you and the people around you, which is enough. You don’t need cosmic significance to justify caring about things. Why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is and still find meaning? Because humans are brilliant at creating meaning even in absurdity.
How do I talk about this without sounding melodramatic or attention-seeking?
Choose your audience carefully. Not everyone is equipped for or interested in these conversations, and that’s fine. Find people who engage with ideas rather than dismiss them. Frame it as curiosity rather than crisis: “Do you ever think about how weird it is that we all just agreed to do this whole life thing?” is often better received than “Everything is meaningless and I can’t cope.” But honestly? If someone thinks you’re being melodramatic for acknowledging genuine complexity, that’s their limitation, not your problem.
Should I be doing more to “find my purpose” or is that pressure part of the problem?
The pressure to find One True Purpose is absolutely part of the problem. It’s a fairly modern, Western concept that’s been weaponized by productivity culture. Most humans throughout history didn’t agonize over their purpose—they lived, worked, loved, and died without needing a grand narrative. You can have many purposes that shift over time. You can have no grand purpose and just try to be kind and engaged. Purpose doesn’t have to be found—it can be created in small daily choices.
Making Peace with the Beautiful Mess
So why does no one talk about how fucking insane life is? Because we’re scared that saying it out loud makes us broken, dramatic, or unable to cope. Because we’ve been taught to keep our confusion private. Because admitting life is overwhelming feels like weakness in a culture that values constant competence.
But here’s what’s true: life IS mental. Completely, objectively, undeniably strange. We’re conscious beings on a spinning rock, trying to find meaning in temporary existence, bombarded by more information than our brains evolved to handle, expected to perform constant productivity while also somehow being present and mindful. And we’re doing all this while knowing we’re going to die and so is everyone we love.
That’s not pessimism. That’s just… reality. And acknowledging it doesn’t make you negative or ungrateful. It makes you honest. The relief that comes from someone else saying “yes, this is bonkers” is immediate and profound because it breaks the isolation that silence creates.
You don’t need to fix the fundamental absurdity. You just need to stop pretending it isn’t there. Talk about it with people who get it. Build small structures that help you function. Create meaning where you find it without needing cosmic validation. Be present when you can, distracted when you need to be, and honest about the fact that none of us actually know what we’re doing.
Life’s weird. You’re not broken for noticing. And you’re definitely not alone—even if the silence around you sometimes suggests otherwise. Start the conversation. Someone near you needs to hear it too.
