'Therapy Speak': Is It Healthy Or Is It Being Weaponized?

I've been seeing the meme, "Jonah Hill isn't the hill you want to die on" going around, as he wielded therapy speak in order to be emotionally manipulative. In case you missed it, he packaged disapproval of his ex-girlfriend's clothing and friends as "boundaries," in order to pressure her to change her lifestyle.

As someone with a psychopathic abusive ex-partner, and as a psychologist who works with victims of abuse, I hear these stories of weaponized therapy speak too often.

And as mental health awareness becomes normalized and acceptable, therapy speak has, indeed, crept into our daily vernacular. We're increasingly cognizant of viewing life through the mental health lens—but therapy speak comes with its own dangers. 

"Therapy speak" is when people use psychological, therapeutic, or mental health language in day-to-day conversations.

Terms like "boundaries," "abuse," "psychopath," and "trauma" are thrown around, and we're more likely to share about our mental health experiences, from anxiety to depression to bipolar disorder. 

Sometimes it can feel like everyone is suddenly an expert in mental health—or trying to counsel each other.

Healthy therapy speak is open to reflection, review, and education and is thoughtfully used. Here, everyday language is more intentional, and the use of therapy speak may be done only when defined for the other party, or if there is an understanding that both parties understand the concept discussed. It can also be more tentative, instead of prescriptive. 

Therapy speak can quickly and/or easily become yet another thing that is wielded to bolster your own stance in the current cultural zeitgeist. Or worse still, it's used to manipulate and hurt someone. In those cases, therapy speak becomes weaponized.

Boundaries refer to your "hell no's," aka the things you are unwilling to accept about how people treat you. Boundaries do not refer to how you can package your dislikes and disapprovals into controlling someone's life. 

And lately, I have been seeing everything blamed on trauma. Not everything leads to trauma, and not everyone develops trauma from the same event.

By definition, trauma is an event that is deeply disturbing or unsettling to the nervous system so that your brain and body keep reexperiencing the same situation/symptoms repeatedly, as if it is still stuck back at the first event. "Big-T" trauma often happens when we have been at risk of losing our lives, witnessed someone lose their life, or have been through abuse; repeated incidents often cause c-PTSD, where c refers to "complicated."

While we should not have to ask someone to prove they've been abused or hurt, we similarly should not rush to brand everything abusive or toxic. We all have toxic behaviors, after all, and sometimes even the best and most mindful of us do hurtful things. What matters is that with awareness, we work to repair the damage and make the relationship stronger. 

When someone is abusive, it means that they are consistently acting in ways that hurt you mentally, physically, sexually, financially, emotionally, and/or spiritually. Further, there is little attempt to repair that, but rather you are told you're crazy or sensitive. Any repair is piecemeal and transient, and you will pay for it. And chances are, this person is doing it deliberately and gets sadistic kicks out of it.

Similarly, when a relationship is toxic, it means that it is consistently bad for you; this person doesn't need to check off some or all of the dark personality traits.

There are people who might use therapy speak to appear intellectually or morally superior or foist mental health diagnoses upon you in order to put you in place.

Accountability is a great thing—when the party in question is actually interested in staying accountable and has enough integrity and responsibility to live up to it. Dark personality types, however, love to wield it to their own ends. They aren't actually interested in changing, nor is it possible for them to change. 

However, by telling you that you have to help them stay accountable to be a better person (i.e., fewer questionable behaviors or abusing you less), that only hooks you in more.

There is so much buzz about being authentic and expressing everything we are, do, and feel—but we are many different selves dependent on the roles we play, our mood, and our chapter in life.

When you are enraged, for instance, those feelings of hatred are just as authentic as the adoration you feel when you're loved up. However, expressing those feelings when you're not in control of your emotions will give you more messes to clean up. Authenticity must be dispensed responsibly.

Similarly, there's pressure to be "emotionally healthy" by sharing everything that's happened to you because some people might tell you, "I know you keep your feelings to yourself, so you must process them with me," or, "We need to talk about your issues; I need to help you." Worse still, some might say, "I tell you everything that goes on; you'd better tell me here."

The last thing you should do is diagnose someone. If they suspect they have a condition, or have been officially diagnosed, that is one thing. You still should be mindful of how often you make references to that or ask too many details as if they are a zoo exhibit, much less tell others all about it so they can ask even more.

I once, saw a meme that read, "Your introversion isn't an excuse to be an asshole," and after a hearty chuckle, I thought, amen to that! (Full disclosure: I am an introvert.) And you could swap "introvert" for "empath," a mental health issue, or a Myers-Briggs personality type.

Your wiring or current state of mind might make you request certain provisions, such as, "I am easily overwhelmed by noisy places; can we go somewhere a little quieter and still with great coffee?" or, "I will pay extra for the aisle seat because the window seat makes me feel more uncomfortable," or, "Today I am feeling jumpier, so I might be distracted at times; please understand."

You either are neurodiverse, or you are not. Saying, "We are all a little autistic/ADHD" casually dismisses and undermines the experiences of those who struggle with them every day, because their wiring makes it difficult to function in the ways neurotypical people take for granted.

And yes, some neurodiverse people are better adapted to daily living, often as a result of hard work and luck, but that doesn't mean you should be asking them to prove their conditions. Beneath seemingly calm waters is a person paddling furiously and burning out regularly from that. 

I've noticed two obvious forms of comparisons when it comes to mental health conditions. One camp likes to play the "I don't experience [symptom/thought/action]," almost to pity or mock another person, even if they have the same broad condition.

But symptoms manifest differently. For instance, one person's primary panic attack experiences could be palpitations and thinking they're having a heart attack. Another's could be feeling intense heat or choking and thinking they need to escape.

The other camp is what I call "The Race To The Bottom." This is when people start invalidating others by talking about how much worse they have it as if it's a competition—or dismissing someone else's lived experiences because they have more resources. The common refrain, "What do you have to be depressed about? You have so much in life," springs to mind.

Self-care is a great thing to do because if we don't support our brains and bodies, we can't take care of our other responsibilities. However, pressuring someone to drink, shop, or stay up excessively for the sake of self-care is completely erroneous. I've seen people offer substances to recovering drug addicts under the guise of "self-care" or "rewarding yourself for your hard work." That is escapism and self-soothing. 

Toxic personality types can be so charming and great at acting that when they go for couple's counseling, they present their abused partners in a bad light. Having had their spirit broken already, and with the compounded damage from constantly retriggered trauma, the abused partner can easily look like the bad person. Moreover, mental health professionals who are trained to spot dark personality types or treat trauma may completely miss out on these dynamics. 

"How are your active listening skills?" someone once made a dig at me. We were strolling, I had listened enough, and I'd expressed that I didn't have the bandwidth to talk about this topic they were repeating. More importantly, I wasn't in the position of coach or psychologist—I was plain ol' human me. 

I knew that dig was designed to cut. And so I said, "Sure, shall I invoice you right now? And we will talk about it." They stopped. 

If you feel something is off, then it is off. Trust your gut. Victims of toxic people always tell me they felt something was wrong from the start but they rationalized it away, so don't do that.

Next, know you have permission to say no gracefully—most people who are afraid to say no tend to believe otherwise.

When people pressure me to be a free therapist, for instance, I tell them this is a privilege I reserve for my clients. To respect my energy and their investment, I do not step into therapist mode when off-duty. I sometimes give the analogy that if I were dating a dentist, I would not expect him to give me a root canal while we're having dinner at a 3-Michelin-Star restaurant. Anyone arguing with that has got to be a little over-entitled. 

If you think this person might be weaponizing therapy speak unintentionally, you could educate them. Start with, "From what I understand, [concept] refers to ___. Therefore, this does not apply here. What do you think?"

A one-off statement that someone might be acting differently due to something going on in their life is empathy and awareness based on patterns of human experience. Nonstop analysis of what someone is or isn't doing/thinking/feeling due to childhood issues or some other traumatic event is patronizing and unnecessarily intrusive.

There's a reason mental health professionals go to school for a long time and continue education throughout their careers—because we should neither be making assumptions nor force-fitting people into certain models or theories. More importantly, you are not a therapist or counselor. It is not your job to therapize or solve someone's problems.

Consider the big constellations of therapy speak that you use, if any. Are they about communication, relationships, or mental health diagnoses? Get educated correctly about them and know that a viral TikTok won't always tell you the truth.

Speak in everyday language as simply as possible. And don't assume you're on the same page when someone uses a particular term—ask what they think it means.

If you'd like to mention your diagnosis, use it in a supportive way. For instance, as someone with ADHD, I might invite someone to walk and talk with me because it helps my brain focus better. I also might tell them that if they catch me doodling, I am actually listening; the physical action keeps my brain focused, and I am not being rude.

This way, I focus on making it a win-win-win for me, them, and the relationship. I always end with, "What do you think?" so we can find the middle ground. If you're currently experiencing higher levels of anxiety, you could say, "I am feeling crappy today, so please don't take it personally. If you see me distracted, you can call me back to Earth."

As a psychologist, I'm heartened that more people are aware of mental health because psychology applies to all facets of our lives. Using therapy speak is a sign of more awareness and acceptability, as opposed to old stigma where mental health was a dirty little secret. Nowadays, we're instead seeing that mental health isn't just about ill health, it's also about thriving, and people are able to identify what's going wrong and right in their lives.

Consequently, this allows people to receive support, and this is especially helpful as victims of abuse step up and make safety plans to escape for good and heal their trauma.

However, shallow knowledge of therapy speak when wielded unreflectively and with too much conviction can be dangerous—especially so if the sources of knowledge are unvalidated or erroneous.