Modern life can simultaneously be full of subtle stresses not inflicted on an inhabitant of a previous era and free of many of the worst traumas possible in that era.

Catastrophizing is unhealthy, yes, and is amenable to therapy. It's also true that social control in a modern world functions through a thousand channels all woven into an apparently gentler but no less effective apparatus than old fashioned methods.

The apparent conflict of narratives here serves to divide. These points of view can in truth be reconciled. What is needed is to try to illuminate the issue from whichever perspective is most appropriate for a given context. It is wise to council resilience and fortitude to someone who is leaning into a self indulgent tendency, in one situation. Equally important in another situation is to refuse the malevolent or careless the freedom to blame the victims of their schemes for inadequate capacity to acclimate to an environment engineered against them.