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

[ThisLimeMoose]

“Holding space” doesn’t excuse being a passive-aggressive flake.

But this isn't about the actual language used, it's about people using phrases they imperfectly understand, or understand only through the translation device of Tik Tok and other SM to describe and diagnose their own behaviour and that of others.
Watching an Influencer on Tik Tok talking about how 'triggered' she is that she's being told by a 'narcissist' parent to get a proper job and earn some money leads other youngsters to have an even more overinflated idea of their own importance and ability to doss around the house all day than they already have. And they'll yell 'narcissist!' at any parent who tries to make them go outside.

That’s EXACTLY how language evolves. It’s a warping and adaptation through generational differences, migration, technological advancements, cultural exchange … to name a few. Words and phrases take on new meaning – they are adopted, discarded, shortened, mispronounced.

There are myriad examples of this through the history of language.

Regardless, OP’s post was about the new phrase ‘holding space’, not understanding it or finding it insubstantial.

True about the evolution of language. But I still maintain that this thread isn't about the language used, it's more about the current misuse of improperly understood terms.

If I call a stool a chair the meaning might well migrate so that stools become known as chairs in the future - but that doesn't negate the fact that my calling a stool something that it is currently not known as will irritate everyone in the present.

Therapy speak does my nut in.

I had a friend who termed a lot of people a 'narcissist' - even his own 6 year old son ffs!! I looked up the definition of the term and saw hundreds of articles telling you to cut off every narc in your life. That advice would leave me with 50% less of my own family and friends iny life - and I'd probably have to cut myself off too!

I hate it. Oh and 'learnt behaviour' can do one too. Oh I've learnt 'xyz behaviour' from my awful parents and it's ruining my life.

I think therapy speak just gives you clever sounding jargon to excuse your poor behaviour or bitch about others.

But there will always be a point in language evolution where the misuse irritated those who were around for and adopt the original or most-recent meaning.

’Narcissist’ was not the psychiatric term it is today when it first entered into that terminology. It was first used in the late 1800s to describe sexual perversion or an obsession with yourself as a sexual object. Then into 20th century it was coined as a ‘god complex’

A very classic example of this sort of thing is ‘blood is thicker than water’ – the actual origins means the complete opposite, not just a mangling but a complete reversal.

I think some “therapy speak” has been so helpful in pinpointing difficult concepts, and some of its a bit naff. I suspect that the anti woke brigade are very anti therapy and its language, and are likely to include it in its many targets.

Me too.

IMO we are overdue for a ‘Plain English’ campaign, to counteract not just therapy-speak, but also corporate-speak, psycho-babble and all varieties of jargon where there’s a perfectly good PE alternative.

I blame gastro pubs.

Hear me out - when pubs started getting “gastro-ed” in the early noughties and rewrote their menus to have more adjectives than nouns.

I’d grown up with pub menus that read “Chicken and chips” or whatever, only for it to become “Succulent, oven-roasted, free-range, tender chicken cooked to perfection accompanied by hand cut home grown perfect potato chunky chips and emerald green, fresh, sweet, and rotund peas’

And so on and so forth. Now we’re drowning in superfluous, vague and increasingly meaningless words. It’s like the Tower of Babel again.

I don’t know. This one is really useful at work when trying to get someone realise by themselves that their idea is crap.

No-one I speak to personally does this (so far!), but I hear it a lot online, and it's off-putting. I take an instant mild dislike of people who use terms like 'holding space' and 'unpacking' (unless used literally).

‘Best’ example I ever saw of restaurant purple-prose was in Australia, when the cheese I ordered came from the milk of cows that grazed on meadows watered by mountain dew, that were milked by vestal virgins at rosy-fingered dawn, and the cheese was then rind- washed in spring water..etc. etc.

Ok, an exaggeration, but not by much - and when the cheese arrived it was - I swear - a one inch square just plonked on a plate, no garnish, nothing. After that intro, I burst out laughing!

No you can be your ‘authentic self’ 😂 in the holding space.

That sounds far more like it would help you - understanding attachments and patterns of behaviour / than what we can understand by “tosser” which just closes any understanding down

You're obviously not in queer media

How would it help me?

In a yoga context, it’s surely that space of time when you’re trying very hard to hold in a resounding smelly fart.