Consider an ordinary day.

You wake to an alarm, perhaps before the sun has risen.

You eat because it is time to eat, not necessarily because you are hungry. You sit through a commute, arrive at work and sit some more.

For the next several hours, your body barely moves while your brain processes an extraordinary amount of information.

Emails. Messages. Headlines. Notifications. Meetings. Videos. Advertisements. More notifications.

You may communicate with dozens of people while spending remarkably little time physically present with another human being.

You get little sunlight. Rarely experience silence. Drink caffeine because you're tired. Push through signals telling you to rest.

Then nighttime arrives, and despite being exhausted, your body won't settle.

Eventually, you may find yourself saying:

I can't sleep.

I can't focus.

I have no energy.

I'm anxious more than the moment calls for.

I don't feel motivated.

I feel disconnected.

And somewhere underneath those complaints is often another thought:

Why do I feel this way?

But what if that isn't the only question worth asking?

What if we also asked:

What is my body responding to?

The world changed faster than we did

Human beings have transformed our environment at an astonishing pace.

We developed technologies that freed us from limitations previous generations simply had to accept.

We no longer need the sun to determine when our day begins. Darkness doesn't determine when it ends.

We don't have to walk very far to get somewhere.

We don't have to grow food to eat.

We don't need to remember information when we can search for it. 

We don't need to know where we are when GPS can tell us. 

We don't even have to tolerate boredom. Within seconds, a device can provide more stimulation than we could consume in a lifetime.

These are extraordinary accomplishments.

But our bodies haven't changed nearly as quickly as the world surrounding them. Researchers call this gap evolutionary mismatch: bodies shaped for one kind of environment, living in a very different one.

And that mismatch is worth considering when we talk about mental health.

The forgetting

There is a concept I've been thinking about that I call the forgetting.

Human history is usually described according to everything we've learned to do.

But there is another side to that story.

As our environment became more sophisticated, many abilities that once had to exist within the individual became unnecessary.

We externalized them.

Memory went into writing and eventually databases.

Navigation went into maps and GPS.

Knowledge of seasons, plants and food production became increasingly specialized.

Clocks began telling us when to wake, eat, work and sleep.

Devices now tell us whether we moved enough, slept enough and sometimes even whether we're stressed.

None of this is inherently harmful.

But when human capacity becomes unnecessary, we practice it less.

And abilities that aren't exercised can grow rusty.

Perhaps that rust leaves behind something we don't talk about enough: 

a pull toward something we’ve stopped using. 

When convenience removes more than inconvenience

Modern life is exceptionally good at removing friction.

Most of us would not willingly give back modern medicine, sanitation, transportation or technology simply to live a more "natural" existence.

Nor should we.

But not every form of friction was meaningless.

Getting lost exercised navigation.

Waiting exercised patience.

Boredom left room for imagination.

Darkness encouraged rest.

Physical work required movement.

Depending on other people required relationships.

Silence left us alone with our thoughts.

Removing unnecessary suffering is progress.

But perhaps somewhere along the way, we also removed some of the conditions that regularly exercised important human capacities.

That distinction matters.

What comes with a diagnosis

Psychiatric symptoms are real.

Depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma-related disorders and other mental health conditions cannot simply be explained away by telling someone to go outside, exercise or put down a phone.

Genetics matter. Neurobiology matters. Trauma matters. Medical conditions matter. Social circumstances matter. And for many people, psychotherapy and medication are important parts of treatment.

But environment matters too.

A person struggling with sleep may also be getting inadequate daylight, little physical activity, significant evening light exposure and constant stimulation.

A person experiencing loneliness may communicate electronically throughout the day while having very little meaningful face-to-face connection. 

A person struggling with attention may spend hours moving between environments deliberately engineered to capture and redirect attention.

A person feeling chronically anxious may rarely experience a period in which the nervous system isn't receiving another demand, notification or piece of information.

None of this means the environment causes the diagnosis on its own.

But ignoring it doesn't make sense either.

Instead of asking only:

"Why do I feel this way?"

We can also ask:

"What does my nervous system experience every day?"

That small change in perspective can open very different conversations about mental health.

Reconnecting. Relearning. Remembering.

This is where lifestyle psychiatry becomes useful.

Treatment doesn't have to mean choosing between modern psychiatric care and a more human way of living.

We can use both.

Reconnecting means restoring contact with conditions our bodies still respond to: daylight, darkness, movement, nourishing food, nature, meaningful relationships, rest and purpose.

Relearning means practicing capacities that modern convenience can make optional: sustained attention, tolerance of boredom, awareness of hunger and fatigue, patience, movement, creativity and the ability to experience discomfort without immediately escaping it.

And then there is remembering.

Remembering how to recognize ourselves.

Knowing you're exhausted before reaching burnout.

Recognizing loneliness before it becomes isolation.

Feeling overstimulation before it becomes overwhelming.

Learning what hunger, rest, movement and connection actually feel like in your own body.

Becoming fluent in yourself again.

Maybe the pull is information

Perhaps we're pulled toward participating more fully in being human.

That doesn't require abandoning technology.

It doesn't require rejecting medication.

It means recognizing that mental health doesn't exist exclusively inside the brain.

We are organisms living within environments.

And sometimes, understanding how we feel requires looking at both.

Psychiatric care is more than symptom management. Medication can be an important tool, but so can understanding sleep, nutrition, movement, relationships, stress, environment and the rhythms of everyday life.

The pull might just be your nervous system asking you to listen.

Reconnecting is one way to start. 

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Marianna Garibaldi, DNP, PMHNP-BC, is a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Serenity Telemental Health, a telehealth psychiatric group practice serving New York and Florida. She holds a doctorate in lifestyle medicine.