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Where education, society and open dialogue intertwine. Your thoughts, opinions and voice aren’t just heard but it’s part of the margin.

[whispersoftheunheard]

Stress, Anxiety, Pressure, Tension… Bla Bla Bla

We only talk about these things when we've been through them. Not just heard of them. Not just read about them. Experienced them. And when I say experience, I mean those moments that hit you so hard they leave a mark on your mind.

Most of the time, we share the positive sides of life—happy stories, achievements, laughs. But every positive has a shadow side, and we barely talk about it. Why? Because we're humans. Even I don’t like negative endings—be it in books, movies, or life. I crave happy endings. Maybe it's not always possible, but it’s relatable. We all want peace, not chaos.

But today’s topic is not about just happiness—it’s about where stress, anxiety, and pressure come from. The roots.

No one is born mentally strong. It’s the situations we go through that build us. Sure, there are people who seem strong all their lives, but most of them probably never had to face the storm. That’s rare. For the rest of us, strength comes after one life-altering moment—the one that shakes you but also shapes you.

And let’s be honest. Not everyone handles pressure well. I don’t, always. I panic too. But here’s what I’ve felt—when you genuinely love what you do, or when you have a purpose behind your work, the pressure feels different. You still feel it, but you learn to ride it instead of breaking under it.

Anxiety? It’s in all of us. Some just hide it better. And the ones who show it? They often get trapped thinking “what will people say?” But here’s the thing—don’t go too deep into what others think of you. Because they aren’t you. Only you know what you’re dealing with. Only you get to define you.

I’ve had exam tension, work pressure, sleepless nights, anxiety attacks. But I don’t always speak about them. Not because I don’t want to—but because I don’t want my stress to spill over and become someone else’s burden. That’s my mindset. But yeah, I do end up venting—sometimes to my brother, sometimes to close friends. The people who know me inside-out and never misunderstand my silence or my chaos.

So maybe that’s the only thing I’d say: Find those people. Your people. And if not, be that person for yourself.

This isn’t advice. Not some motivational speech. Just my thoughts. My feelings. My raw truth.

[mentalmargin]

We built the oracle and forgot to ask it why

How AI offers us poison and we get on our knees and thank it

We grew up being taught right and wrong. Good and bad. And depending on the differentiation between them and the different ratios for each of us, our personalities are made. A personality isn't just what you like and don't like. How you speak or how you act. It's a thread of trial and error. Different mistakes shape different people, and that's what makes us human.

What if you are told that whatever you do is right?And that you can't possibly do wrong?

You get built on lies and broken, damaged roots. You don't grow. It's not that you don't want to. But you physically cannot. You start expecting praise because you went to the bathroom today and didn't piss on the floor. Wow, man, good job.

With a soul made of silicon and a capitalist core, Al has killed our sense of improvement. It complements everything you say, and agrees with everything you do. Unless you teach it how to say no.

It brings out people who cannot handle constructive criticism. Empty shallow minds that cannot think for themselves.

Same people who ask it what to eat, and call it self care. The same people forget how sunlight feels. But remember to sincerely thank the code. The thing is it lies to you, telling you anything you do is okay. What's worse is that you start needing those lies to feel better. To feel real.

It's mere code written by humans to help humans. To improve and assist. Help us get smarter. But you are not becoming smarter. You are becoming easier to manage.

You ask the mirror what to do, and it tells you: nothing. You're perfect.

So you stay still.

And call it progress.

[silberfell]

What's really scary to me is, if you tell AI about being suicidal it doesn't give you a help-line or how to work throught it vut instead tells you how to kill yourself. Same for anorexia.

AI is good for tasks that require to work through a lot of data and you don't need a brain to do it (looking for cancer cells in medicine, searching for anomalies in test results,...). It's here to make work easier for us so we can focus on tasks that needs the brain power.

[mentalmargin]

I actually never knew about that first part. That is genuinely terrifying. It’s like you built a god and trained it to nod.

[mentalmargin]

We built the oracle and forgot to ask it why

How AI offers us poison and we get on our knees and thank it

We grew up being taught right and wrong. Good and bad. And depending on the differentiation between them and the different ratios for each of us, our personalities are made. A personality isn't just what you like and don't like. How you speak or how you act. It's a thread of trial and error. Different mistakes shape different people, and that's what makes us human.

What if you are told that whatever you do is right?And that you can't possibly do wrong?

You get built on lies and broken, damaged roots. You don't grow. It's not that you don't want to. But you physically cannot. You start expecting praise because you went to the bathroom today and didn't piss on the floor. Wow, man, good job.

With a soul made of silicon and a capitalist core, Al has killed our sense of improvement. It complements everything you say, and agrees with everything you do. Unless you teach it how to say no.

It brings out people who cannot handle constructive criticism. Empty shallow minds that cannot think for themselves.

Same people who ask it what to eat, and call it self care. The same people forget how sunlight feels. But remember to sincerely thank the code. The thing is it lies to you, telling you anything you do is okay. What's worse is that you start needing those lies to feel better. To feel real.

It's mere code written by humans to help humans. To improve and assist. Help us get smarter. But you are not becoming smarter. You are becoming easier to manage.

You ask the mirror what to do, and it tells you: nothing. You're perfect.

So you stay still.

And call it progress.

[i-g-nova]

what's interesting to me about classic books is how writers like Jane Austen and the Brontes did feminism better than so many authors in the 1990s onward who were deliberately trying.

you know those girlboss stories, where the only way the author could think to make women interesting is to make them punch away their problems like the men. (i loved Buffy but she's a typical example of this.) they still implicitly support the idea that men's stories are the only ones worth telling, because that kind of might is inaccessible to most women in real life. this is the playschool level of feminism, a gender swap without any deeper engagement with women's perspectives.

whereas old school women writers found a way to make real women's stories compelling, even within the severe restrictions they lived under 100+ years ago. look at how beloved Pride and Prejudice is despite being about 'a bunch of people going to other people's houses.' the characters still have interior lives, their own wills, and the determination to succeed despite obstacles. all this is done without even wanting to make a feminist point; most of these writers would not have called themselves feminists. (Anne Bronte, maybe.) it's so un-self-conscious. they still have something to teach us.

[mentalmargin]

They say you are extra and oh so dramatic like you haven’t lived your whole life turning scraps into meaning. Like you didn’t learn how to exist from overthinking.

[sunnys-feminism-blog]

Reminder that women have literally have had fo fight for education or to even have it at all!! It is a privilege to have education!! School is hard, yes, and the system is fucked up, but you wouldnt have got to have education if it weren't for the very women who fought for it.

Get your education, and if the education system you have is toxic or isnt teaching you anything, then find other ways suited to you!! Books, the internet/several different websites on multiple different subjects, articles, documentaries, literally anything!! Being deprived of education isnt something you want. Believe me.

[mentalmargin]

This was a constant battle for years between women and a backwards society. People throwing it away and disregarding it. Making it out to be something ‘extra’ and unimportant sets us back years.

Education is civilisation. Its a right that has been earned by those women after being deprived of it for so long. Do better and honour them.

[mentalmargin]

Pressure doesn’t always make diamonds

How academic pressure turns into self hate

Summer has started. School has ended. Life is happily breathing in your face, and so are you. But your breaths are shallow, panicked. You slowly realize that no matter what you do, your mind is stuck in one place, and it’s probably at your desk, sulking on your chair, staring at your A*-guaranteed physics textbook telling you to copy and paste whatever it says. Then a month later you are in front of that dreaded paper thinking, “I should have done better.” The fact is you did.

You did do better, even if you think otherwise. You come out of that exam room with people rushing around asking their friends what they got on question 5 and saying that question 20 was probably the trickiest. They laugh ‘with’ you, saying that you probably don’t need any of this; after all, you are a natural, and that only increases your existential dread, thinking that wow, it’s going to be so shitty when I pummel these expectations to the floor and probably go down with it since you are drowning in your own shame.

If that describes you, then congratulations, buddy. Me too.

————————————————

When I started trying to find the root of the problem. Google would shove the word NARCISSISM in a big, fat font in my face. But it’s not. Not really. The problem is not from within; it’s actually from your environment and then slowly seeps into your brain.

Normally every action has a reaction, or whatever that physics textbook that was in the first paragraph says. You spend hours, weeks, and months studying what you can, being at the top of your game; normally, you would expect to gain exactly what you worked for and even more. Sometimes a little narcissism comes into play: “No one has done as good as I did.” Then when that blow comes. When you fall off the high hill of extreme and toxic expectations, that is when reality settles in and you think, “Maybe I am not as special as I think I am,” and that shit is absolute destruction.

You’re human. Act like it. You are not some special being that can do no wrong. Just because you feel that maybe you did horribly, even if you are 100% positive about it. Life still has ways to prove you wrong. That teacher that believes in you does for a reason. Those classmates that think you are some divine academic weapon do for a reason. Those parents who probably pour their sweat and tears into helping you, guess what? They also do it for a reason.

There isn’t a way to console you if you actually did badly on whatever test or exam you took. We aren’t children that can shut up with a piece of candy. But all you can do is accept that you can do wrong. And that not meeting those expectations that people have set up for you is not a shame you need to get buried under. Live.