The world has imperceptibly changed. You can feel it if you’re a bit older. It’s no longer what it used to be. It is the same yet it feels differently. People are the same, their needs and expectations are largely the same, yet there is something that escapes the grip of your attention, something elusive, something that you can’t name properly, some sort of change in the quality of the everyday experience.
In my mental health field, this is also being felt. While years ago people would come with anxiety or depression and seek someone to talk to, so as to sort out their emotions or find better coping mechanisms, it is increasingly the case that the following situation happens:
– I feel low (or anxious) and I need some medication, doc.
– OK, it is perhaps important to also speak about your problems with a psychologist, besides the helping medication that I can provide.
– No, doc! Just give me the pills!
– Yes, but the medication helps you to regain a sense of control and some comfort while dealing with your problems, guided or accompanied by a psychotherapist.
– Nope!
– I should also point out that, when you combine medication with psychotherapy, the effectiveness of help is much higher and durable compared to medication alone.
– Just give me the pills, doc! Okay!?! I don’t have the time for this bullshit! I have a life to live and I don’t have time to waste on speaking with some kind of a freak, while I know that medication is effective ‘cause it was effective for my friend/relative/etc.
– Yes, but medication alone can’t help you make better decisions about your life or see what’s wrong! This is the role of a psychotherapist – to prevent you from remaining hooked on medication for many years from now on.
– Yeah, whatever!… Just give me those pills!
This generic discussion (which is not as fictional as I’d like it to be) didn’t use to happen some years ago. But it happens now. I suspect that it happens more in the mind of my patients but, because of the politeness required in the consulting room, few people dare to say it loud. Those people coming for help and still accepting psychotherapy (or even the less challenging “psychological counselling”), are roughly divided in 2 categories: those who fear or dislike the idea of taking antidepressants and those who are genuinely interested about solving their problems once and for all, namely those who are taking responsibility for their mental health while not trying to avoid the harder path.
Medication is effective; this is a fact. Most people manage to control their symptoms with the right doses or the right combination of pills. But this is an easy solution, because it involves covering the reasons for their distress (be it anxiety or depression, with the multitude of situations which can trigger them, such as loss, rejection, disappointment and so on). A better alternative is to work on the acceptance of the events triggering the bad feelings or on the hidden conflict that generated the symptoms. This involves uncovering or bringing to light what is hidden in the psyche. And this work involves discussing with a psychologist. Yet, this work is hard; it requires a degree of frustration and a degree of responsibility for oneself. Responsibility or commitment. Commitment to offer the best quality of care for oneself.
And that’s how we end up to the reason for this article, also mentioned in its title: low commitment.
If I take a circular look around me and in other domains of life, starting from politics, administration, management, welfare, family life, and ending with the services offered on the internet, including social media, I can’t overlook the fact that people have begun to have low expectations, and consequently, they are given low quality stuff. On the other hand, reactively, they also display a low degree of commitment to what they say, to what they do, to their jobs and their relationships. If everything is low quality stuff, why should I commit to something of a better quality? Why should I care to give the most of myself? Why should I do this when giving a lower quality service is also good and generates the same income and pretty much the same feedback?! It is adaptive to lower one’s standards, isn’t it?
Why should I commit to a difficult psychotherapy process if the same outcome can be achieved with medication?!
Why should I commit to a high quality social media presence or consumption while nobody cares anyway and people aren’t even able to recognize quality anyway?!
Why should I commit to a high quality professional service at my workplace if I get paid the same amount of money and the boss despises me anyway?!
Why should I commit to maintaining relationships while I can pay for most of the things I want or need?!
Why should I commit to assuming responsibility in a world that appears to be doomed or seems to go downwards anyway?!
And so on.
It appears to me that people are no longer “putting heart and soul” in what they are doing, either for others or for themselves. They are letting themselves down and also letting the others down as well. The bare minimum is as good as the standard, since nobody cares and nobody expects anything better anyway.
The word “commitment” doesn’t exist in my native language. It is approximately translated by “devotion” or “dedication” but it doesn’t have a direct equivalent. Sometimes I believe that it’s me and not the world, since being committed to something or somebody in my culture is not valued as a stand-alone concept. It is very weird to say that “you remain devoted or dedicated to your children or to your partner” or “you remain faithful to your values or principles”. These are expressions that are rarely used. So it could be me. But then, working with international patients, I can’t overlook the same pattern. They are no longer committed to themselves in the same way they were some years ago. They do have… low self-commitment.
Solutions?
First, it needs to be a problem. And it is not yet.
What I see is a pattern. People do not seem to be bothered by the fact that they are no longer offering quality stuff to themselves, including high quality mental health care. I do prescribe anything that is needed and required, I offer the possibility of psychotherapy, and then I allow the freedom of choice for the patients. It is not my role to criticize their decisions, while it is still my role to advise them to offer to themselves the best possible care (including the psychological work). But all this gives way to other, deeper reflections…
Has the self-esteem of the general population become so low? Are we becoming so worn-out emotionally so that we accept lesser quality for ourselves? Are we so prone to abandon ourselves, at the tiniest sign that we might become frustrated, when dealing with our own life challenges? Have we become so fragile so that we can’t dare to fully commit to our own lives?
And also, a deeper question: How are going to be the future children of these fragile adults of today? Are they going to become parentified, assuming the responsibilities that their own parents refused for themselves? Or are they going to expect even less from this life, not being committed to pretty much anything, living lives of meaninglessness among the ruins of an increasingly decaying civilization?
Read also On Being Born.
https://cezar.vivaldi.net/2026/07/08/low-commitment/
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