#7 Is it anxiety or just a bad day? - COMPAS with Rasmus Meyer

How do we actually talk about having a hard time? And what does it do to a generation of children and young people when 'stress', 'anxiety' and 'ADHD' have become everyday language?

In this live edition of KOMPAS, we open the doors to INVI's Gule Gård and invite you to a conversation between Sigge Winther and Rasmus Meyer, principal at Krogerup Højskole and former chairman of the Wellbeing Commission. Together, they will shake up the way we talk about unhappiness - and how language can reinforce the problem. 

Maybe the problem isn't just that more children and young people are unhappy. Maybe it's also that we adults - with the best of intentions - have helped create a language where ordinary life pain becomes illness, and a practice day requires intervention.

"We shouldn't pathologize the human condition. Not everything needs to be diagnosed - some things just need to be held in hand," says Rasmus Meyer. 

When diagnoses provide access to support - or social capital on TikTok - we risk diluting the seriousness. And those who actually need help end up at the back of the queue. That's why we need a new language. A language that makes the difficult not dangerous, but human.

Rasmus points to Jens Rosendal's love song in the best high school style:

"Life is worth living - despite doubts and great difficulty" 

It's not about ignoring pain. It's about understanding it properly.

So when assessing a child who won't sit still in the chair, we shouldn't shout "ADHD" on autopilot. Maybe the chair is just bad. Maybe the child needs to pee. Maybe the class is boring. Or maybe soccer is just a little more fun that day. 

There are other ways to navigate life's downs.
And you can hear just that in this live recording of KOMPAS.

Psst... Listen to the last beat - because the episode ends with a rap beat. And no, it's not Sigge laying down the rhymes. It's the Flame from Rapolitics.