To think therapy-speak has ruined how people talk to each other?

The one that drives me mad is ‘the way my brain works is…’

If I hear one more person say this to explain everything from why they bought a new top in Zara to why they drink 8 cans of Thatchers Haze I swear I’m going to scream.

Please never get the two mixed up 😬🤣

I'm a therapist and I agree with this to a point!
There is a lot more to therapy than therapy-speak.

I have no idea what a holding space is. :)

It's "navigate" that really winds me up
We had a long missive from my child's primary school recently that was all about navigating an issue. If there's not a boat or mapreading involved, I don't want to hear it.

I have been a therapist and have never used the term holding space. There are a lot of people who are not well trained offering therapy and that needs to be clamped down on. But for many people therapy can be life changing in a positive way - even life saving.

I’d say that’s a very shallow understanding.

How very, very sensible.

I don’t know about ‘egodystonic’ - to me that sounds like a first-rate mixer - but I strongly suspect you’re a worthwhile therapist and not a charlatan.

It's pretty evident on here - much more so than in daily life in my experience.

Same! Triggered is my worst one. I also cringe when people call this, "therapy speak," because none of the good therapists I know (I know a few!) talk like this. The language comes from influencers who tell you to 'go no contact' with your family 'because everyone who disagrees with you is a narcissist' and you need to show self-love by avoiding all emotional dissonance or 'triggers.' It is why most people have a poor experience of therapy. This isn't therapy. A good therapist will rarely talk in jargon.

God yes. I flippin hate it. A hundred years ago, people read great literature for guidance. If you need help navigating your way through life, read Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Henry James, etc, etc. They will teach you all you need to know about love, relationships, work, marriage, loneliness, etc. And they'll teach you to speak eloquently and beautifully instead of like a dimwit from California.

I'm a therapist and I agree with you.

I have 2 issues. One is that we often mean something very specific with therapy speak and when every Tom Dick and Harry starts using it, they often mean something slightly different so everyone gets confused. (Eg the latest one is everyone using 'intrusive thought' when they mean negative thought. We mean those uncomfortable, usually visual thoughts like jumping off when you're high up, swerving into oncoming traffic, we call them egodystonic because they're the opposite of what you want to do and your values. Previously everyone who has had very painful experiences but wouldn't meet the diagnostic criteria for PTSD said they had PTSD, prior to that everyone who liked cleaning said they had OCD. Everyone has diagnosed each other with narcissistic personality disorder)

Secondly, it's not so much therapy speak but I don't like the move towards being so accommodating towards mental health problems that you collude with them and discourage the person from overcoming it. It's a really delicate balance - of course everyone should be as kind and respectful as possible but in my field we often push people to do things that make them anxious or uncomfortable to improve their lives in the long term and would like the person's loved ones on side with this.

But there's a difference between benign monarchs and autocratic murdering despots. Surely individual personality, traits, psychopathologies, and, dare I say it, lived experience count for something.

This is part of the reason I can't stand Ms Markle/Sussex! Every time I listen to her, this is the kind of speak that rolls out! If she could at least speak like a normal person, I might not dislike her quite so much!! (not that she cares whether I like her or not!!)

I had a go, fairly recently, of getting H to analyse his "love language"
"a bit of all of them at different times" look of "yeah and" on his face, it's one of my hobbies making H answer questionnaires that will change absolutely zip!

"what am I doing wrong this week then?"
"well it says here that a couple should engage in a gratitude journal together in the mornings to stay together and remain happy"
"but my only thought would be I'll be late for work if you insist on making me do this"

ARIANA Grande was on graham Norton a while back, talking about holding the holding space comment. She said WTF is that 😂

Had to Google that one; I think it’s ‘I’m here for you’?

Holding space is hilarious though surely nobody takes it seriously?

I feel you have crossed a very firm boundary there or at least pushed back on it. You have offered an unsolicited view which quite frankly has triggered a trauma response in me. Now whether that is a big T response or a little T response is entirely my own concern because I don’t like to share all of my views online. Apart from all of my social media channels, Peg’s Mental Elf.
Now I could sit here and have a pity party, or I could do some EFT tapping, I am not sure which as yet because even though my therapist is on speed dial she appears to have an avoidant personality issue.
I often feel in sessions far more congruent than her anyway. In fact, I sometimes feel
she should pay me for my time.
Anyway, must dash. Just off to Oversharers Anonymous, where holding space is sacrosanct.
*Just to be open, before anyone comes for me, I have CPTSD, had EMDR and have attended a 12-step programme.

I gathered a couple of bits of therapy speak in 4 years of it, which were helpful (co-creation. A useful idea.)

It would be quite interesting to redo historical writing/ accounts of speech replacing all the religious and Biblical terms with therapy ones. Try it with Anne of Green Gables.

I think it’s important to be able to look at your own behaviour through that same lens, though.

I see an awful lot of very indignant people on social media talking about the evils of ‘avoidant’ partners, without examining the ways in which their own behaviour and expectations might be suffocating and controlling.

So often the psychobabble only goes one way, so every relationship that doesn’t work out is blamed 100% on the other person’s (assumed) pathology.

I'm not disagreeing with you on his job description. But two people with different personalities/mental health issues would do the same very high stakes/high stress job in different ways. Isn't it interesting to speculate on how an individual's frailties/vulnerabilities/pathology affect their behaviour?

How are you 'showing up' in your life -- aaaaargh! Almost as bad as 'holding space'.

Surely you just don’t have experience of domestic abuse?

Hearing about domestic abuse from others isn’t experience of it.

I think the pp is right.

I also presume Jayden is on free school meals. If he weren't, maybe there'd have been more containment around his attempt to cross the class divide with the language the he's had access to on TikTok.

Cool beans. Glad you've got it all worked out.