You Can’t Hack Your Way to Being Human
When Fixing Yourself Becomes the Problem
There’s a kind of tired we don’t talk about. Not just physical tired. But the kind that comes from carrying everything, all the remembering, anticipating, fixing, performing. The kind that turns daily life into a never-ending mental checklist.
You feel it before your eyes even open. It spills into everything, making you desperate for a solution, any solution. So you scroll. You search. You try to optimize the overwhelm. But nothing touches it.
Because it’s not just burnout.
It’s something deeper.
A grief for the self that’s getting buried beneath the managing.
You wake up already behind.
Already bracing.
Your day begins with notifications, responsibilities, fear.
And somewhere between the matcha and the red light therapy,
you lose yourself again.
We call it wellness.
But it feels like work.
The truth is, we’ve been sold a version of mental health that looks more like performance than peace.
We don’t heal, we hustle.
We don’t rest, we earn it.
We don’t feel, we track, optimize, schedule, and silence.
It’s not that the tools don’t help.
It’s that we’ve turned them into proof.
Proof that we’re doing it right.
Proof that we’re still in control.
And still, we are exhausted. Fractured.
Grieving things we don’t know how to name.
No routine will save you if you don’t feel safe in your own skin. No breath-work can land if you’re too numb to feel your body. No checklist matters if you don’t know why you’re checking it.
This isn’t about laziness. It’s about loss. Of clarity. Of connection. Of basic human rhythms.
We weren’t built for this much input.
This much comparison.
This much pretending.
You’re not failing at healing. You’re surviving a system that doesn’t make room for humanity, a culture that demands composure while you crumble, a world that confuses calm with compliance.
And what gets lost in the noise?
Your sense of self. Your ability to tell the difference between peace and performance. Your capacity to just be, without fixing, without proving, without guilt.
We think we need more. More hacks. More tools. More plans. But what we actually need is space. To stop. To sit in the wreckage without rushing to rebuild. To ask: What am I actually chasing? And what is it costing me?
Because here’s the truth:
You can’t hack your way back to your humanity.
You have to remember it.
That quiet voice inside that says:
I’m tired.
I don’t want to keep pushing.
I just want to feel like myself again.
That voice deserves more than another protocol.
It deserves to be heard.
So let’s call this what it is:
Not a plan.
Not a post.
A pause.
To grieve the clarity you lost.
To name the ache beneath your ambition.
To stop sprinting on fumes toward a finish line that keeps moving.
You are not weak for needing rest.
You are not broken for splintering.
You are a human in a culture that forgot what that means.
So this summer-
Let slowness be sacred.
Let softness be radical.
Let your enoughness be inherent, not earned.
Because the most rebellious thing you can do in a world that demands performance, is to simply exist. Fully. Quietly. Without explanation.
You don’t need more things to do.
You need space to be.
To become.
Let this be the exhale.
Let this be the return.
With love,
Dr. Zelana