Will the duties never end?

I am still so bothered by how some people almost seem too addicted to acting like the external is more important than what's going on internally.

I think there are many people who must have felt very neglected in their formative years, and so they trained themselves to act like external markers of success were more important than the internal state of health.

This is supposed to bring them what they were taught to value most, which could be a sense of importance or social acceptance or access to materialistic things, or a feeling of control. 

But the neglect has been painful; the fear and disengagement and need to manipulate and alter the narrative is not a good coping mechanism.