The Waiting Room System

There is a system that fascinates me.

It is not listed on any government website.

It has no logo.

No annual report.

But it is everywhere.

It is the system that teaches human beings to wait until they are broken enough.

I work in mental health. Which means I sit inside the machinery and watch it hum.

The system promises order. It promises assessment, referral pathways, funding streams, Medicare rebates, structured sessions, evidence-based modalities, stepped-care models, treatment plans, progress reviews, and discharge summaries. It promises predictability.

It does not promise relief.

The waiting room is where the system does its quiet work.

Not the physical one with the outdated magazines and laminated posters about breathing exercises. I mean the invisible one.

The Waiting Room System works like this-

You begin to feel unwell.

Not dramatically. Just… friction.

You are tired in a way sleep does not fix.

You snap at your partner.

You scroll too long.

You cry in the car and then compose yourself before walking inside.

The system says - Not yet.

You continue functioning. You work. You parent. You perform. You manage. You attend meetings about wellness while privately Googling “why do I feel flat.”

The system says - Still not enough.

Eventually something gives. A panic attack in Woolworths. A collapse at work. A doctor’s certificate. A whisper: “I can’t keep doing this.”

Now you qualify.

The system loves qualification.

It requires symptoms measurable enough to code.

Distress significant enough to bill.

Dysfunction visible enough to document.

Before that point? You were just coping poorly.

I often sit across from people who have been in the Waiting Room for years.

They apologise when they cry.

They minimise their own stories.

They say, “Other people have it worse.”

That sentence should be embroidered on the official flag of the Waiting Room System.

The system distributes power in subtle ways.

It rewards endurance.

It praises resilience.

It quietly punishes early vulnerability.

If you speak too soon, you are dramatic.

If you wait too long, you are complex.

Either way, paperwork will be required.

The system organises behaviour beautifully. It trains people to override their nervous systems. To reinterpret burnout as productivity. To call hypervigilance “being responsible.” To label trauma responses as personality flaws.

It is elegant in its misalignment.

In theory, the system exists to prevent crisis. In practice, it often requires one.

There are funding streams for “severe and persistent.”

Fewer for “I can feel myself unravelling.”

There are pathways for acute intervention.

Fewer for slow erosion.

And yet slow erosion is how most people break.

I have watched a person sit in front of me and describe coercive control with the tone of someone narrating a minor inconvenience. As if having your reality dismantled slowly is simply poor communication.

The Waiting Room System whispers - It wasn’t that bad. You survived.

Survival is a tricky metric.

The system loves survival.

It is less interested in thriving.

There is another layer to this machinery — the Professional Layer. I exist inside it.

We attend professional development sessions about burnout while checking our phones between clients. We fill out risk assessments that require numerical scales for despair. We measure human suffering in tick boxes.

On a form, suicidality becomes:

0 – Not present

1 – Passive thoughts

2 – Active thoughts

3 – Plan and intent

There is no box for - “I am exhausted in my bones but still showing up because I don’t know what else to do.”

So we approximate.

We build frameworks. We create models. We design programs. We talk about nervous system regulation and trauma-informed practice and early intervention.

Meanwhile, the Waiting Room hums.

It shapes who gets help.

It shapes when they get help.

It shapes how much they believe they deserve help.

The most obedient participants are high-functioning. They attend therapy on time. They complete worksheets. They preface every vulnerability with “I know this sounds silly.”

They are excellent at staying just functional enough to disqualify themselves from urgency.

I once had a client say to me, “I don’t think it was abuse. He didn’t hit me.”

That sentence is also embroidered on the flag.

The system promises predictability, but the failure is experienced as friction. Subtle misalignment. The feeling that something is off but you cannot justify stopping the conveyor belt.

You wake up tired.

You keep going.

You feel unseen.

You keep going.

You lose joy.

You keep going.

Until one day, you cannot.

Then suddenly the system mobilises. Referrals. Assessments. Crisis lines. Safety plans. Medication reviews.

It is remarkably efficient once collapse occurs.

I am not anti-system. I benefit from it. My business exists within it. I fill out the forms. I write the reports. I sign the treatment plans.

But I cannot ignore the quiet absurdity of a structure that requires deterioration before legitimising distress.

There is something culturally elegant about telling people to “reach out early” while designing access thresholds that require proof of unravelling.

We have created a society where the most socially rewarded nervous system is a dysregulated one that performs productivity well.

You can be anxious — as long as you are high-achieving.

You can be traumatised — as long as you are still polite.

You can be exhausted — as long as you keep showing up.

The Waiting Room System does not collapse dramatically. It erodes quietly. It teaches people to mistrust their early warning signs. It trains them to wait for external validation before honouring internal distress.

And so they sit.

Not always in a physical waiting room. Often in marriages. In workplaces. In community roles. In identities they have outgrown.

Waiting to be “bad enough.”

Waiting to qualify.

Waiting to be believed.

The friction is subtle. The collapse is not.

If the system were a building, it would not fall in one dramatic crash. It would sag slowly, beam by beam, while everyone inside insists it is structurally sound because technically, it is still standing.

I sit with people who have learned to call standing “success.”

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we redesigned qualifications around discomfort instead of disaster. If we treated early misalignment as worthy of attention.

But the challenge does not ask for solutions.

Only attention.

So here is my attention -

There exists a system that quietly trains human beings to endure more than they should before asking for help.

It promises order.

It delivers endurance.

And it keeps the waiting room very tidy.