Therapy Speak: What it Means to Use and/or Abuse Them!
I don’t really care about Celebrity gossip, but lately I noticed Jonah Hill’s name going around and also the words therapy words and then the words abuse. Out of my curiosity I looked it up to see what the commotion was. To my disappointment it was about how he used ‘therapy words’ to try to disguise boundaries as control. After that I also saw another article about how some girl got sent a whole paragraph on how a close friend out of the blue cut her out of her life using therapy speak.
The pattern I’m seeing here is how some people can weaponize words they used in therapy to hurt others and situations where people use what they learned in therapy poorly where they are lacking contexts and understanding of others in forms of communication.
Therapy talk or in other words therapy speak are words you’ll probably hear a lot in therapy or in therapy spaces for mental health such as boundaries, trauma, holding space, emotional capacity, codependency, etc. In the case of Jonah Hill he was using boundaries to conceal his controlling demands. Boundaries are something you set for yourself in terms of what you can handle and are flexible, respectable, inclusive and reasonable. What people don’t understand is you have to ask yourself if your boundary is reasonable and fair to yourself and others and how you present it.
When you use therapy speak and lingo it’s supposed to help guide you to ask and set things in an effective manner to help you and the other person understand what’s going on and how to effectively communicate. When you use words such as boundary, and holding space and other things you have to understand the nuances of those words and provide contexts and understanding and thinking about your relationship and being fair to yourself and others.
My worry is people misusing and misunderstanding and throwing around these words that can be used to help individuals help communicate, understand, and put into words certain things. When people misuse speak meant for healing and communication it becomes seen as something aversive and negative.
How do we distinguish therapy speak terms into something that is reasonable versus something misused? Well, first is understanding what these words mean. For example as stated before a boundary isn’t just something you set for as an ultimatum or even a demand, a boundary is a limit you set that is flexible, fair, reasonable in the situation. Trigger isn’t something that we don’t like, it's related to trauma we experience and how certain things activate those trauma responses. These are just a few examples of how without understanding what they mean people can throw around words or misuse them to fit a narrative.
If we have wants or needs of course communication is key but remember that it’s more than communication it’s how you present communication. Stating wants and needs and understanding your emotions and what you feel is important but remember it's more complex than that. How you feel will always be valid to an extent but is your intensity or actions paired with it valid? Communication or saying your wants and needs are of course important but are you presenting it in a nonjudgmental understanding way? Are you being fair and honest to yourself and the other person and being neutral and sticking to facts rather than framing it as blame, shame and criticism
Remember to be mindful of what you say to others and how you present things but also being able to try to process and seek support in places where you feel something isn’t right. A therapist can be very helpful in aiding in the understanding of these terms and how it can be applied to our lives.
