this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Humanities & Cultures

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'Therapy speak' is everywhere, but it may make us less empathetic. (www.npr.org)
submitted 1 year ago by Griseowulfin@beehaw.org to c/humanities@beehaw.org
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The article gives a short discussion about the use of traditional therapy terms in everyday parlance. They describe it like someone is acting like human resources when communication about relationships, or is making semi-diagnostic statements about someone's behavior.

I worry that this follows the trend of medicalization of normal(rather, non-pathological) behavior, feelings, and thoughts. It replaces the interaction and introspection of a relationship via communication with diagnosis and management of some "problem". I feel it can make a relationship feel transactional by attempting to avoid investigating the feelings and emotions of both parties. Emotion and feeling are an important and expected part of a friendship (even to a minor extent in less "deep" relationships), or at least can be discussed and explored without a clinical mindset.

Therapy speak, as it appears in non-therapeutic enviroments like Tik-Tok, support groups/forums, and other online forums can lead to misunderstandings about mental health and therapy, maladaptive coping, and misinformation about mental and emotional health.

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[–] Gaywallet@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

While I understand the concern, generally speaking I think people are becoming more aware of how to be mentally healthy and to have appropriate frameworks on how to talk about issues rather than just yelling at each other or acting shitty. There's obviously downsides in that some people learn the language but don't grow and weaponize this language in order to continue to be shitty but avoid some level of consequences. I think it's important to call out what's good about this increasing awareness as well as to call out the bad actors and how to deal with them.

I've seen firsthand this nomenclature in addition with basic concepts from poly relationships get weaponized by tech bros in the burner culture and I've had to help a good deal of people recognize just how they were being taken advantage of. I have a lot of scorn for people who are doing this, but also I recognize that they would find other ways to manipulate and that the language is just one of many tools at their disposal. Ultimately I think being more educated as a populace on mental health concepts outweighs the issue of some people using the language inappropriately.