Cognitive Trivialism

The belief that all human problems, emotions, and experiences can be reduced to needing therapy, needing medication, or fitting into a psychiatric diagnosis. Cognitive trivialism flattens the complexity of human existence into clinical categories: grief is depression, political anger is delusion, existential confusion is anxiety, different thinking is schizophrenia. It's the intellectual equivalent of a hammer seeing everything as nails—every human difficulty becomes a disorder requiring professional intervention. This worldview is comforting to those who hold it (complexity is reduced to simple labels) and devastating to those subjected to it (their genuine experiences are pathologized, their valid concerns dismissed as symptoms).

Example: "When she expressed anger about social injustice, he responded with cognitive trivialism: 'You're clearly projecting your childhood trauma. Have you considered therapy?' Her political analysis was reduced to personal pathology; her valid anger became a symptom. Cognitive trivialism had done its work: dismissing substance by pathologizing emotion."

by Abzugal February 19, 2026