The spectator of one's own life

Contemporary clinical practice presents us with an increasingly common phenomenon: the individual who has ceased to be the protagonist of their own life narrative and has become a mere spectator. As if seated in the audience of their own play, they observe their life unfold through the digital screen, measuring their worth based on the response it generates in others. Direct experience has been replaced by its representation, and authenticity has dissolved in the constant pursuit of virtual approval.

This displacement of the existential center of gravity, from the internal to the external, has generated a new form of emptiness. The contemporary subject finds themselves trapped in a cycle of emotional dependency where each action, each moment, each experience needs to be validated by the gaze of others to feel real. The absence of "likes" or comments translates into a sensation of nonexistence, as if reality itself depended on its confirmation in the digital mirror of social networks.

The deepest consequence of this dynamic is the progressive loss of personal agency. The individual has surrendered the helm of their existence to an invisible but omnipresent audience, whose approval has become more important than lived experience itself. Moments of joy, sadness, or reflection don't feel complete until they are shared and validated, creating a form of existential paralysis where life is always experienced in delay, always through the filter of the other's gaze.