Is An Overuse Of ‘Therapy Speak’ Doing More Harm Than Good?

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“You’re gaslighting me.” “I feel so triggered right now.” “Don’t overstep my boundaries!”

We’ve all heard the above, either in real life or on social media, as a person attempts to explain why they’re not happy with a situation. These days, therapy speak outside of the therapist’s office is common, but over-applying therapeutic language to our daily conversations and interactions can in fact hurt our relationships and skew our understanding of what therapy is.

Social media trends, especially those on TikTok, have a way of taking something that is complex and different for everyone, and giving it a basic, blanket-meaning. Therapy, more specifically therapy language, is not immune to this. Terms such as ‘toxic’, ‘boundaries’ and ‘gaslighting’ have serious meanings in the psychology field, and experts can use them to help individuals understand the problems within their friendships and relationships. 

However, when people start to apply these words to their own real lives without really understanding what they mean, this sort of language can sometimes harm their relationships, and misrepresent the experiences of those around them. To get a better understanding of this issue, we spoke to Bethan O’Riordan, IACP accredited psychotherapist and co-host of The Mum Mind Podcast.

“When you’re in real trauma, it’s not a word or a social media trend that you’re looking for; it’s a feeling. And feelings can’t be conceptualised in a word, a feeling is so much more complicated than that,” she says. 

Therapy itself is pretty much always a good idea, and nobody is saying that you shouldn’t apply what you learn in therapy to how you interact with yourself and the people around you. The problem arises when your knowledge of therapy and the language that surrounds it comes from social media. Over there ideas such as setting boundaries and ending friendships can be taken a bit too far.

One video that really embodies this is one where the TikToker explains to viewers how to go about a ‘friend break up’. She recommends saying things like “I’ve treasured our season of friendship, but we’re moving in different directions in life”, and “I no longer have the capacity to invest in our friendship.” Language like this will not only probably sound very condescending to the friend being ‘broken up’ with, but is also extremely vague and makes the speaker sound like they think they are superior.

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The woman who made this video dubs herself a licensed clinical psychologist. Although some psychologists think that this kind of therapy-talk is empowering and helpful, in a normal, real-life situation it’s only going to hurt or infuriate someone. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to end a friendship that you feel is hurting you, but you owe it to yourself and the friend in question to give a solid reason, if it’s not already obvious. The whole idea of not being able to ‘invest’ in a friendship is a fallacy if you don’t have a reason. Friendships, especially good ones, require energy and effort from both sides, through support and communication in particular.

The word ‘boundaries’ is also used a lot online. Having boundaries is important, they are crucial to building confidence and self respect. You have every right to express to a friend, family member, or partner that you’re not comfortable with something they’re doing, or that you want something to change. However, refusing to listen to your friend when they want to open up about something they’ve been worrying about, because you don’t need that ‘baggage’ at that moment, is not setting a boundary, it’s avoiding a responsibility that comes with friendship.

Likewise, accusing someone of ‘gaslighting’ you during a disagreement, when you don’t fully understand the weight of that word, will intensify the argument and is actually quite a serious accusation. Real gaslighting happens to people, and it is a form of emotional abuse, but a simple disagreement with someone does not mean you are being gaslighted. 

“We don’t need fancy language, what we all need to be able to say to ourselves, and sometimes those around us, is ‘this is how I am feeling, and this is what I need,'” says Bethan. “An important thing to remember about ‘boundaries,’ is that it’s just letting people know how you want to be treated. So we can do that without using words like ‘boundaries’ and simply, but profoundly say something like “I’d rather you didn’t do or say that”. Let’s not over complicate relationships; they’re tricky enough as they are!”

Overuse or misuse of language like this creates conversations that are ineffective and frankly lifeless. Therapy speak might make you feel more protected and immune to real life problems, but it can cause more problems… especially for the person you’re chatting with. 

“Something I’ve experienced is people being unsure if their problems are ‘bad enough’ to come to therapy,” says Bethan, “because they’ve seen other people talking about their lives and through the over use of technical (often misused) therapy language. There’s then a disconnect happening.”

She also points out that social media therapy posts might not always have your best interest at heart. “We are all so emotionally vulnerable and therapy chat in the online world has only exacerbated this,” she says. “Being human means that something called rank is important to us – this is the idea of finding out where we fit in and creating an identity around that. The most popular therapy talk on social media has been designed to be emotionally provocative and stimulating, so the motivation behind the posts aren’t to inform, the motivation is to get clicks, likes, shares and keep people on the account.

“This only happens when something is stirred inside a person. These posts are cleverly designed to flick something inside to make people think that these words and phrases apply to them too. And of course, they may not; it’s just that a fear or worry has been stirred and then the brain has the hook it needs to believe it needs to believe this information.”

So the next time you come across a word that you think applies to you or a relationship, learn what it means firs. And then see if that therapy speak is worth bringing into your own life.

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