Humanities & Cultures

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Human society and cultural news, studies, and other things of that nature. From linguistics to philosophy to religion to anthropology, if it's an academic discipline you can most likely put it here.

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'Therapy speak' is everywhere, but it may make us less empathetic. (www.npr.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Griseowulfin to c/humanities

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The article gives a short discussion about the use of traditional therapy terms in everyday parlance. They describe it like someone is acting like human resources when communication about relationships, or is making semi-diagnostic statements about someone's behavior.

I worry that this follows the trend of medicalization of normal(rather, non-pathological) behavior, feelings, and thoughts. It replaces the interaction and introspection of a relationship via communication with diagnosis and management of some "problem". I feel it can make a relationship feel transactional by attempting to avoid investigating the feelings and emotions of both parties. Emotion and feeling are an important and expected part of a friendship (even to a minor extent in less "deep" relationships), or at least can be discussed and explored without a clinical mindset.

Therapy speak, as it appears in non-therapeutic enviroments like Tik-Tok, support groups/forums, and other online forums can lead to misunderstandings about mental health and therapy, maladaptive coping, and misinformation about mental and emotional health.

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[–] GeneralRetreat 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This reminds me a lot of a lecture the Royal Institution published last year about mental health awareness, which touches on some similar issues.

https://youtu.be/xH5IM2fnCg8

You might find it interesting. It's about 40mins long and works well enough as a background podcast given the format.

[–] Griseowulfin 2 points 1 year ago

That was a really good video. I think it brings up good idea in that we may be quicker to go to a doctor, start therapy, start medication, and overall consider our emotions disordered than we were previously. It really highlights the importance if proper access to mental health professionals, as well as training for professionals on how to address this. Thanks for sharing.