To think we should put a stop to terms like 'toxic', 'narcissistic', 'gaslighting'...

[justalittlethought]

..'safe space', 'boundaries'.

These words were not widely used before 2014/15 (in the way we use them so liberally now), peaking - I'm guessing - around 2020/2022?

Guess what - basically mirroring the Tik Tok, Social Media / Influencer boom.

I'm thoroughly fed up with people using these terms.

Also, people using sociopath and psychopath willy-nilly. These used to be terms used by psychologists/psychiatrists about individual who had some level of formal diagnosis using the DSM-IV.

... and new words or usages come along to fill the gap. 'Terrible', 'awful', 'wonderful', 'fantastic'... They all had much stronger meanings at one time (inspiring terror, awe etc). Are you saying that the evolving of language is not a good thing?

While there is certainly misuse and overuse of some of the terms the OP objects to, much of the increase is due to people recognising certain behaviours and naming them appropriately.
I’d love to live in world where there was no legitimate use for these words but until then, YABU.

I think that these examples are completely different to medical conditions (which a narcissist is). It's not helpful when we're diagnosing people with things that they don't have.

Giving people language to help them understand their life experiences is so important to healing and processing traumatic experiences. I would still be a shell of myself after my previous relationship if I hadn’t got to know the words narcissist and gaslighting and read the book ‘it’s not you’ by dr ramani

Correlation is not causation. It has nothing to do with TikTok or influencers and everything to do with issues which affect (largely) women, are more talked about.

The more people know about the DSM and it's arbitory designations and classifications, the more they realise what it actually is.

But unless you’re a psychiatric professional, your armchair diagnosis of someone you don’t like as a ‘narcissist’ means precisely nothing anyway.

It’s not devaluing actual medical diagnoses any more than people saying they have the flu when they just have a bad cold is.

@Shakeoffyourchains @YourTruthorMine

Ha ha - if you met me you would find that I'm not - and I don't like to use the word - 'toxic' or a 'narcissist'.

I would much rather we use less labels and focus on the behaviour i.e.:

'my husband was cruel, selfish and abused me' (rather than he was a narcissist/sociopath)
'my husband was cruel, lied to me and manipulative and made me feel that I had lost my mind' (rather than 'gas lighting').

Using clinical terms for everyday behaviour is problematic when these terms came from clinical psychology where they describe specific, rare and severe patterns of personality functioning. It dilutes the meaning.

A bit like people saying 'I'm depressed' when they are having a bad period with some low moods. This absolutely diminishes the word for those who are clinically depressed and truly suffering (and before anyone jumps at me, yes, of course people are abused and of course they have suffered).

It just becomes very weak as a descriptor (even if the word itself becomes emotionally powerful). It flattens human behaviour because, actually, people can absolutely behave narcissistically without being a narcissist and manipulate without having a fixed personality.

Btw, gas lighting does have an origin in the famous film but DID NOT become common parlance until the mid 2010s.

I find that with labelling we are becoming so rigid and it's all 'black-and-white' thinking which is not helpful and is partly, I think, the reason so many people have issues with critically evaluating circumstances, changing their mind or living as I say 'in the grey zone' rather than being highly polarised on subjects.

Social Phobia

If someone is saying they are depressed who are you to make a judgement that they are not

it does not stop people being treated for depression and it has encouraged more people to seek support as the notion that being depressed means you can not get out of bed and function or have to tick a number of sections on a diagnoses scale to be depressed

the same with narcissistic, it has not stopped professionals diagnosing (very few people are) but it has allowed people to name traits that a partner/parent etc may have that is damaging to others and have a better understanding

this so called hijacking words has not changed how people are diagnosed but it has allowed people to understand complex and often damaging situations that they are in or have been in

I can't help but laugh at the number of people who seem to think OP means a literal ban, rather than just using them when actually appropriate. Kind of makes her point for her. People are way to eager to over interpret and over use terms that are actually useful to describe genuine phenomena.

If OP wants others to use words precisely and accurately- yet managed to miscommunicate her message perhaps there is a broader problem

You don’t have to be a professional psychiatrist to recognise, through widely-discussed and agreed aspects of behaviour, that a person is displaying one or more of the specific types of behaviour that lead you to use the correct and specific adjectives associated with these, to describe their behaviour towards you.

YABU. And clearly don’t understand correct use of adjectives!

If somebody tells lies they’re a liar, dishonest. If somebody disagrees with you, they just disagree with you.

In neither case does ‘gaslighting’ say anything useful or even make sense.

If somebody’s a cheat they’re unfaithful. If somebody uses violence they’re a criminal guilty of assault or worse. If somebody disregards you they’re selfish.

In none of these cases does ‘toxic’ or ‘narcissist’ say anything useful or even make sense.

Those vogue words are just means of following fashion and cover up being too lazy to find proper words to say clearly what someone’s done.

Actually, I think it has the opposite effect. It is valid in your case, but hear all the time where it is clearly exaggerated, and people just end up rolling their eyes, dismissing it and moving on.

yes, the terms are overused. But if even a small percentage of the population genuinely has narcissistic traits, then statistically there are plenty of them on any large forum. It makes you think about the ones who get especially defensive or try to police how the word is used

Sounds like a boundary to me, OP.

Hard disagree. My brother sexually abused my sister and me. Her for decades it turns out. His parents carpet sweep for him to maintain the family image. Actually that was the first thing my mother said when she found out about the abuse I experienced, what would the family think if they ever found out. She then went on to explain how I’d ruin his life and every one else life if I spoke out. Her complete lack of concern for what I had experienced as a young child and her ability to centre herself and her ego as the victim in what had happened was so unbelievably hard to deal with. It turned out she need not have worried because plenty of people were willing to turn a blind eye and stay silent to keep up appearances which is what so many victims of abuse experience.

My husband’s father in law physically assaulted my mother in law many times in front of his children, used a tonne of coercive control on her for decades, abused her mentally and psychologically.

None of these people have ever been diagnosed with anything and as is typical of those with personality disorders it is their victims who end up in therapy not them.

Just because you have not been exposed to abuse or abusers why do you feel you should be allowed to “gatekeep” the language that those of us who have been abused use to speak about the abuse we have experienced. I honestly find people who deny and minimise and enable abusers by attempting to shut down language because of their own discomfort at putting patterns of behaviour together really upsetting.

Their willful ignorance shouldn’t still amaze me after what I have experienced but it really does sometimes and willful ignorance is not a charming trait.

I am rather more concerned about that percentage of humanity whose vocabulary seems mostly to consist of vulgar four letter words and little else.
Fortunately, that is more prevalent on facebook than mums net.

Of those you mention, I believe narcissistic/narcissism is useful and doesn't have relevant synonym.

YABVU
A couple of these terms were appropriated from the ancient Greeks by professionals to describe patterns of behaviour people kept encountering. The language isn’t the problem. it's the behaviour that made the language necessary in the first place.

I use and will continue to use gaslighting in respect of Labour because it is an apt descriptor:

You think Labour is trying to make everyone in the country doubt their own sanity? Don’t be ridiculous.

I agree, I'm so stuck of therapy speak and pop psychology, self indulgent and meaningless. But people think it's more impressive to call their mother in law narcissitic, than just say she's a selfish cow and I don't like her.

They are shorthand for a specific pattern of behaviours, not just being selfish. Most people who use them recognise they aren't a diagnosis.
Ban them by all means, but you need to propose what to replace them with, otherwise you just make it harder for people to recognise abusive behaviours, discuss them, or work out how to deal with them.

Not everyone, but many ordinary taxpayers and people who own one home did exactly what successive governments encouraged them to do: work and/or go to uni, pay tax, buy a home, and save for retirement. Liebour is repeatedly trying to make them believe that they are the broad-shouldered wealthy, and that the results of their productivity, their home, pension, or savings, represents greed, luck, unearned wealth, asset hoarding, or under utilisation of assets. This is then framed as behaviour in need of correcting so they can 'pay their fair share'. As if income tax, higher-rate income tax, National Insurance, VAT, tax on interest, tax on private pensions, stamp duty, VAT on building work, and council tax do not already count.

We are where we are because of decades of policy and regulatory failure, spiraling welfare costs, and genuinely wealthy individuals and large corporations that do not pay their fair share. Shifting the burden onto the same group of ordinary workers and homeowners, and trying to make them believe that they are the problem is gaslighting.

Yes, but you must acknowledge that there has been an avalanche of people now constantly talking about 'mental health' and self-diagnosing to the extent that there are huge numbers now retreating from the world, which is not healthy, and focusing too much on how they 'feel'.

I agree it is good to be more open about mental health illnesses but it's become rather flippant, that's the issue I have with it.

Plus I'm not convinced it has actually made things better. Suicides still as high (or higher?), record number of NEETs claiming for mental health disability. A balance is best.