POLITICS: White guilt has become a mental-health problem

A patient paused mid-thought in my Manhattan office the other day and apologized: “I know I’m saying this as a white guy.”

The comment felt out of place, so I asked him what he meant.

When his explanation still didn’t fit, I asked what being a white guy had to do with the situation at all.

He admitted it had nothing to do with it. He was describing a routine scheduling issue at work.

There was no racial dimension and no colleague’s identity involved.

He said he felt compelled to add the qualifier because he works in a “diverse office” and worried even an ordinary comment might be taken the wrong way.

I’m seeing this more and more. Patients preface everyday thoughts with identity disclaimers about work stress, conflicts at home, even something as simple as choosing where to eat.

The content barely matters. The qualifier comes first.

Some might call this introspection or awareness. I call it anxiety.

The patient wasn’t offering a controversial opinion or venting about politics. He was describing a scheduling conflict.

Still, he felt compelled to preface his remark, as if ordinary speech now requires advance clearance.

In clinical terms, this resembles anticipatory guilt.

Patients apologize not for what they’ve said but for who they are before they say it. The apology becomes a protective ritual.

Speech turns into something to manage rather than a tool for connection.

This pattern appears most often among white patients, many of them high-functioning professionals and not especially political.

They’re not activists or ideologues.

Most come to therapy to talk about work, relationships and ordinary stress.

Yet many arrive already convinced their perspective is suspect.

Business Insider even shared a story last week on the White House’s “war on woke” on Instagram with the sarcastic caption “The plight of white men in the workplace is finally getting some government attention.”

We have taught an entire generation of professionals that being white is something you must apologize for before you open your mouth.

Clinically, the pattern is hard to miss.

Patients describe compulsive self-monitoring, intrusive worries about phrasing and a growing tendency toward silence.

One professional told me he rehearses for routine meetings: “It’s easier than risking saying something the wrong way.”

A creative director said she often reviews conversations afterward “like I’m checking for errors,” replaying her wording to make sure nothing could be misinterpreted.

A teacher told me she speaks less at social events because “it feels safer not to say too much.”

These are not fragile people.

They are capable, conscientious adults exhibiting symptoms that resemble obsessive thinking: constant scanning, mental rehearsal and catastrophic interpretation of minor missteps.

The mind becomes less focused on meaning and more focused on risk.

When vigilance becomes chronic, it stops functioning as ethical sensitivity and begins becoming pathology.

This anxiety doesn’t arise organically from ordinary conflict.

Patients consistently trace it to norms absorbed in professional and educational settings, where constant self-monitoring is framed as moral progress rather than psychological strain.

Corporate trainings, graduate programs and professional environments increasingly reward caution and penalize missteps, however minor or unintended.

The lesson is learned quickly: Speak carefully, apologize early, and never assume the benefit of the doubt.

Over time, these norms become internalized.

What begins as external compliance turns into internal surveillance.

Patients no longer need correction; they correct themselves.

They pre-edit not only what they say but what they think.

The result isn’t greater empathy; it’s growing self-distrust and a narrowing of acceptable expression.

Some defenders argue discomfort is a necessary stage of racial awareness.

But discomfort that’s continuously reinforced doesn’t resolve into insight. It hardens into avoidance.

Patients respond not by engaging more thoughtfully but by withdrawing or choosing silence as the safest option.

In practice, it looks less like moral development and more like a socially sanctioned anxiety disorder.

The result is a quieter, more tentative version of the self.

Patients report offering fewer ideas at work, declining leadership opportunities and pulling back socially, even among friends they trust.

From the outside, this restraint can look like thoughtfulness.

From the inside, it feels like walking on eggshells, accompanied by the fear that one wrong word could carry lasting consequences.

There is also a broader cultural cost.

A society that trains one group to pre-edit itself while allowing others to critique freely doesn’t produce understanding.

Dialogue lessens and resentment builds.

We remain locked in categories rather than meeting one another as individuals capable of error, repair and growth.

This is not an argument against reflection or acknowledging the realities of race in American life.

Honest self-examination can be clarifying. But reflexive guilt is something else entirely.

Therapy should help people speak more freely, not teach them to distrust their own voice before they open their mouths.

A culture that claims to value mental health should recognize the contradiction.

We cannot reduce anxiety by institutionalizing fear or build trust by treating speech itself as a liability.

Conversation is not dangerous. Silence is.

And when silence becomes the safest option, both mental health and public life suffer.

Jonathan Alpert is a psychotherapist in New York City and Washington, DC, and author of the forthcoming book “Therapy Nation.”

X: @JonathanAlpert