What Really Went Dark?
Monday, April 28. The day everything stopped — except the anxiety.
It wasn’t just the internet that crashed.
It was the illusion of control. The fragile myth of “always available.”
It was the ground under managers, the breath of technicians, the margin of error for mothers, the patience of children, the pulse of businesses.
It was our tolerance for uncertainty.
The system failed — and with it, the part of us that still believes being always connected means we’re doing well.
But what really went dark?
Yes, a server collapsed. Systems went offline. A country froze for hours.
But the deepest collapse was invisible — emotional, mental, relational.
I received messages filled with panic.
People crying because they “couldn’t work” and were “afraid of being fired.”
Leaders disoriented, unable to function without a dashboard.
Companies suspending meetings, decisions, plans.
People feeling guilty for not producing during a systemic collapse.
That’s what we need to talk about.
The total dependency on infrastructures we don’t control.
The progressive erosion of inner autonomy.
And how the professional world — even the most “human-centred” in rhetoric — still evaluates worth by continuous output.
Even in the dark.
Disconnecting should be a right, not a breakdown.
What Monday’s blackout truly revealed wasn’t just a technical vulnerability.
It exposed the emotional fragility we live in.
Nobody knew what to do with the silence.
With the absence of notifications.
With the space that opens when there’s no system to fill the void.
Instead of relief, there was anguish.
Instead of rest, urgency.
Instead of reflection, panic.
Because our relationship with work is no longer a relationship.
It’s a fusion. A pathological symbiosis.
In companies, what surfaced was what’s usually hidden.
The blackout made the invisible visible:
— poorly defined processes
— teams untrained in dealing with unpredictability
— leaders dependent on control and micromanagement
— a lack of emotional protocols for navigating the unknown
How many companies used that time to care?
To ask “how are you?” instead of “when will the system be back?”
How many took the chance to pause and rethink — rather than pressure and resume?
Very few.
Because we don’t have emotional literacy.
We have KPIs.
We have dashboards.
We have urgency — but no presence.
As a psychotherapist, I hear the system’s cracks through the bodies of those who live inside it.
The body doesn’t lie.
Burnout doesn’t wait for a blackout to announce itself.
The anxiety that exploded on Monday was already there — latent, denied, silenced.
People are exhausted.
Leaders are lost.
The system is sick, and insists on calling “resilience” the capacity to endure the unbearable.
The blackout was only a mirror.
Brief, raw, ruthless.
So now what? Restart? Repeat? Reform?
Reset&Restart can’t just be the name of a newsletter.
It must be an ethic.
A choice.
A new contract between work and mental health.
On Monday, we had an opportunity.
Some tried to seize it. Others waited for “normal” to return.
But normal is no longer viable.
The real question now is:
Are you truly going to reconnect to everything,
without first reconnecting to yourself?