Are You Ruining Your Relationships With ‘Therapy Speak’?

While it’s helpful to be able to identify and address abuse or toxicity within relationships, it’s also become common to mislabel or misdiagnose another individual using “therapy speak.”

Therapy speak involves casually using clinical terms in relationships without fully understanding or accurately applying them. Oftentimes, people do this to take advantage of a situation or appear more enlightened than their counterparts.

According to a recent survey by LifeStance Health, 40 percent of respondents report regularly seeing terms like “trauma,” “narcissist,” and “toxic.” Additionally, 28 percent of respondents said they regularly use “therapy speak” in both online and in-person conversations. 

‘Therapy Speak’ Can Damage Individuals and Their Relationships

Such content can make individuals overly question their relationships and partners, often even mislabeling them as “psychopaths” or deeming the person’s behavior as “toxic.” While it’s great to be more aware of concerning patterns in relationships, social media and the abuse of therapy speak can wrongly flag normal, healthy relational conflict as “toxic” or even “abusive.” 

“There are several buzzwords I’m constantly seeing on social media and hearing reports of individuals bringing into their romantic relationships,” said MK Clarkin, LCSW, Executive Clinical Director at LifeStance Health. “The most common terms we’re hearing are: ‘narcissist,’ ‘toxic,’ ‘gaslighting,’ and ‘boundaries.’ While the mention of any of these phrases does not automatically mean you are abusing the terms, it is fair to treat the use of them with a sense of curiosity.”

For example, many individuals will claim someone is “gaslighting” them when they simply disagree or see the situation from a different angle. Others will say someone “lovebombed” them just because they got a little excited early on in a relationship. Some might even use baseless accusations of “manipulation” or “narcissism,” which can harm the other person and the relationship. 

In fact, oftentimes, it’s actual abusers who use these terms against their victims. Not to mention, overusing or wrongly using such terms can discredit actual instances of abuse. 

“While it’s easy to want to throw some clinically significant terms into your argument to make a point, gain the upper hand, or even gain a sense of control over the conversation happening, it is imperative we use these terms responsibly, accurately, and kindly,” said Clarkin. “Using ‘therapy speak’ [without] both accuracy and good intention can lead to the weaponization of clinical vernacular and create more of a divide in the relationship.”

Not to mention, “it also risks perpetuating wide misunderstanding of various buzzwords,” Clarkin said.