Why That Viral Explanation Isn’t the Full Story
By Max Soltmann. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington.
There's rarely a simple explanation for human behaviour. Yet we live in a time when psychological ideas are offered up as neatly packaged truths and tidy answers to layered experiences. Theories, frameworks, and insights are everywhere, promising to unlock the "real" reason behind how we think, feel, and act. And we're hungry for it, because certainty, even—and especially—when it's oversimplified, feels like relief.
Online, influencers serve up poetic truths dressed in psychological language. We're told we're not burned out from overwork but from a lack of purpose. And it resonates. “That's me,” we think, “That explains it.” So we begin searching for our purpose, hoping it'll fix the fatigue. Then an expert tells us our anger is actually unprocessed grief, so we start "grief work." We learn about attachment styles and treat them like horoscopes: suddenly, every problem in our relationship can be traced back to a single category. The fix is some "attachment healing work."
These narratives don't just offer insight; they offer identity. They give language to what once felt inarticulate. They locate us inside a storyline. Narrative identity theorysuggests that we make sense of ourselves by constructing internalised, evolving life stories. These stories link our past, present, and imagined future into a coherent whole. A self we can understand. In this process, labels and categories serve a vital function: they become plot points. They simplify complexity and offer emotional economy, helping us impose order on inner chaos. A diagnosis, a theory, a quote—it can all become part of the arc that makes us legible to ourselves.
And that's not inherently bad. I value a well-constructed framework. I appreciate the elegance of a model that helps illuminate a pattern or guide meaningful change. But when we hold too tightly to any one explanation—when a single idea becomes the filter through which all experience is interpreted—something gets lost. The label that once brought clarity begins to restrict. What started as a lens becomes a container.
At the same time, the cultural appetite for psychological explanations carries risks. The growing interest in mental health and psychological language is a positive shift, but when left unchecked, it can blur boundaries. It can trivialise serious conditions, encourage over-identification with labels that oversimplify human complexity, and create pressure to overanalyse natural behaviours. It can also set up unrealistic expectations for ourselves and the people around us.
Unfortunately, some of the loudest voices shaping how we talk about mental health today are people who should know better. Self-proclaimed experts—and sometimes even trained professionals—end up reinforcing the very oversimplifications they should be challenging. In the rush to go viral or appear authoritative, nuanced ideas get flattened into catchy one-liners. As a result, people are left with a skewed lens for understanding themselves and others.
To be fair, many of the explanations we read and hear, either from an expert or popular voices, do make sense. Some are backed by decades of research. Others come from years of clinical experience. And some simply resonate deeply, even if they don't have academic citations behind them. But resonance is not the same as accuracy, and coherence doesn't guarantee completeness. Explanations are partial by nature. They illuminate one angle, not the whole picture.
If your fatigue feels like it’s about a lack of purpose, and that helps you make sense of things—great. Go with it. But if we hold on too tightly to one explanation, we can get stuck. That doesn’t mean we have to overanalyse everything or second-guess every insight. It just means it’s worth leaving space for other possibilities. Human behaviour is rarely about one thing. Insecurity might come from early relationship dynamics, but it could also be shaped by your temperament or cultural pressures. Most of the time, it’s a mix of things, not one clear root. There’s rarely a single, complete answer.
As both a researcher and practitioner, I engage with theories, frameworks, and psychological constructs all the time. I value what they offer—language, structure, and tools for intervention. They can clarify what feels chaotic, guide therapeutic work, and help us name what once felt inarticulate. But I try not to use them rigidly. I avoid treating any one model as a final answer. That doesn't mean I don't have a theoretical orientation or ontological leaning. It means I leave room for multiplicity, because most psychological questions don't have just one answer. And each answer, even if partial, can be worth considering.
Still, we crave those singular explanations, because our minds are wired to seek closure, to resolve tension. Holding multiple, seemingly conflicting ideas at once is cognitively and emotionally taxing. So we grasp at the story that feels most coherent in the moment, and we stop asking deeper questions like, "What else might be going on here?" Instead, we ask, "What's the one thing I need to fix?"
We want life to follow a clean formula—"If X, then Y." But more often, it's "If X, Y, Z, and something unnameable… then maybe." Even in areas where we have robust scientific evidence—say, the links between abuse and later distress—there's always a "but." Because context matters. Identity, culture, biology, individual differences, social environment, timing—all of these shape how a person interprets and responds to experience. What helps one person heal might not even touch another's pain. What resonates for some may feel alienating to others. That doesn't make the theory wrong. It makes it incomplete—but not in a way that diminishes its value.
Similarly, in academic and clinical circles, entire schools of thought can harden into dogma. What begins as a helpful framework can become a rigid identity. Interventions become over-manualised, draining them of responsiveness. Competing approaches stop being seen as complementary and start being treated like rival factions. "My modality is better than yours" becomes the subtext of professional discourse. But when that happens, we lose something essential: the ability to stay responsive to complexity, to context, and to the individual.
Mental health doesn't lend itself to reduction. Human experience is multi-determined, layered, and often paradoxical. The impulse to collapse pain into one diagnosis, or to trace behaviour back to a single origin, rarely works. When we try to fit a person into one framework, we risk erasing what makes them distinct.
A pluralistic view—the belief that substantial questions can yield multiple, even conflicting, yet valid answers—is not without its challenges. Left unchecked, it can drift into relativism or indecision. But when held with care, discipline, and humility, pluralism becomes a powerful reminder that no single framework holds a monopoly on truth.
Philosopher Nicholas Rescher, in Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus, argues that many meaningful questions—ethical, scientific, personal—can have more than one legitimate answer. Knowledge, he says, is always partial and provisional. That idea resonates strongly with the work of psychotherapy, where different theories can shed light on different aspects of the same experience. It’s a reminder to be cautious about treating dominant frameworks or broad generalisations as if they’re the final word.
In this light, pluralism isn’t a sign of confusion or lack of clarity; it’s a recognition of the complexity and richness that human beings bring. We’re not puzzles to be solved with a single method. This kind of thinking is also being applied in psychiatry, where researchers and clinicians are moving away from one-size-fits-all models and instead embracing a plurality of diagnostic and explanatory frameworks to deepen both understanding and care.
The field of psychology and mental health are made stronger by its competing ideas, but also more fragile when those ideas become fixed identities. When theories turn into dogma, they stop evolving. And when practitioners become overly attached to their modality, they may stop seeing the human being in front of them. Which theory prevails is less important than what helps for this person, in this moment, in this context.
So when we talk about mental health—when we ask how to live more meaningful, honest, and resilient lives—we need to be mindful of our urge to simplify. The deeper task is to keep asking generous questions. To stay open even when the answers are contradictory. To make space for complexity, uniqueness, and change.
Because understanding ourselves is not about cramming our lives into a single framework or chasing a perfect narrative. It’s not about finding someone to blame or proving that we’re broken. The deeper work is to see ourselves more clearly. And that begins by remembering that psychological questions rarely have just one answer. Human actions rarely have one reason. And there is no single path to growth or a good life.
It’s tempting to think otherwise. When we hear a phrase that clicks—“You’re not burned out, you’re purposeless,” or “Your anger is really grief”—we feel seen. But the urge to categorise, attach, and cling to one explanation comes with a cost.
That doesn’t mean we have to toss out the frameworks that help us, or live in a constant state of doubt. Data, theories, and insights are useful—they help us make sense of life, of ourselves, of our relationships. But just because something feels true doesn’t mean it’s the only truth. We can hold our insights with a lighter grip. We can stay open to an understanding of ourselves that shifts, expands, and evolves.