Therapy speak is the new "It's not you, it's me"

New clichés, same shitty behaviours

Apr 17, 2023

If I didn’t know better, I might think the whole world had joined me in gobbling up new self-help books, from the way the vocabulary of self help has made its way into the everyday. But of course that’s not the case. Social media has been highly effective at spreading what some are calling “therapy speak” into the language of our romantic relationships, families, friendships, parenting, and even workplaces.

In her recent piece for Bustle, Rebecca Fishbein shared several stories of friendships that were ended via opaque messages filled with therapy-like buzzwords. These ultimately left the receivers feeling almost as bad as if they’d been ghosted:

Anna was hurt, and frustrated. “It felt like she was ending the friendship with an HR memo,” she said. “Like, I would have hoped that you’d respect me enough to give me something more straightforward, or at the very least more kind.”
Even if the friendship couldn’t be saved, Anna says, she would have at least liked to have had the opportunity to respond.

Back in my day (indulge me, will you) we were limited in our shitty breakup scripts by a much-hated but nonetheless regularly-used repertoire of stock phrases:

It’s not you, it’s me.
I love you, but I’m not in love with you.
I just need some space.
If the timing was different, this could have worked out.
We’ve grown apart.
I think we want different things.

I’d be lying if I claimed I’ve never said some of these, and I know they’ve been said to me. They’re so worn, so tired, that maybe us old timers should be thankful there’s some new language out there? Then again, maybe not.

One of the hurt friends in Fishbein’s article shared the message she got from a friend who had pulled away unexpectedly:

“I’m in a place where I’m trying to honor my needs and act in alignment with what feels right within the scope of my life, and I’m afraid our friendship doesn’t seem to fit in that framework,” the friend wrote. “I can no longer hold the emotional space you’ve wanted me to, and think the support you need is beyond the scope of what I can offer.”

Suddenly we’re working with frameworks and scopes and alignments, oh my! “It’s not you, it’s me” is now “honor my needs.” “I think we want different things” becomes “I can no longer hold the emotional space you’ve wanted me to.”

This is almost enough to make me yearn for the empty simplicity of “I just need some space.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad that some of the language you might hear in therapy (but just as likely in a self help book or TikTok) is out there. I love boundaries. Gaslighting is a great word for describing a real problem. Alignment can be a powerful way of thinking about how we’re acting in accordance with our values, or not.

But as the shocked recipients of messages like the one above, as well as the experts Fishbein speaks to, express, the uni-directional, completely self-focused nature of the scripts people are using leaves former friends and partners feeling as though their own thoughts and experiences don’t matter at all.

What’s more, no one likes feeling like they’ve received an “HR memo.” Or, even worse, a nearly-verbatim speech lifted from a TikTok. It might be understandable to brush off someone this way after a single date or brief acquaintanceship, but when it’s family, an old friend, or someone you’ve been seeing for a while, the message is as hurtful as the outcome.

I’m reminded of Carrie Bradshaw’s rage over the infamous Berger post-it (“I’m sorry, I can’t, don’t hate me”).

As Samantha puts it, at least “the motherfucker’s concise.” If that scene was remade today, Berger would need a lot more than a single post-it note to tell Carrie that he “needs to honor his emotional vulnerability” and that her success as an author “makes him feel unsafe.”

The problem with all of this isn’t that the language has changed. It’s that we’re meant to think it’s an improvement, when it’s really just as vacuous and clichéd as the old lines. These scripts are somehow supposed to make the sender seem more mature, in touch with themselves, and wise. For the one on the receiving end, there’s the pain of being cut off compounded bu the implicit message that they’re just not evolved enough to understand.

Like the clichés of old, this language is also meant to hide something. Instead of being specific, truthful, and authentic, these phrases work with smoke and mirrors to camouflage what’s really going on. It may well be the case that the person using these scripts has legitimate grievances and good reasons for ending a relationship. But we’ll never know because they’ve chosen to throw a very distracting word salad in your face rather than be honest.

I know that kind of honestly is hard. All of this raises bigger questions about what our mutual responsibilities are when we need to communicate difficult things or even make the choice to move on. Assuming we’re not talking about an abusive relationship (in which case, you owe them nothing), how can we learn to find the words and tolerate the discomfort of a truthful conversation?

Most of us are afraid of hurting someone with our words. However, if you’re ending a relationship or setting a very limiting boundary, the other person will be hurt anyways. The truth might also hurt, but being lied to or served a cliché is just as bad. Anyone who has ever heard “It’s not you, it’s me” knows this is the case.

The empty use of therapy-speak to do the dirty work of terminating friendships and romances makes me wonder about one of the perils of self improvement work. That is, the possibility that when attempted or used superficially, it creates an illusion of maturity and insight that tries to cover up bad behaviour and unchanged attitudes.

In the worst case scenario, abusive people may use the language they’ve learned in therapy or self help work to further gaslight the people in their lives into believing that their actions aren’t abuse, or that their friends/partners/family members just haven’t done the work on themselves to be able to see the reality of the situation. This is an age-old tactic rooted in victim-blaming. The popularity of therapy-speak may be giving some people new tools to use in manipulation.

Assuming you have good intentions for the self help work and therapy you do, what should you do with the new vocabulary it provides? It doesn’t make sense to leave useful concepts at the therapist’s door or tucked away on your bookshelf. I think the trick is to make sure there’s some substance and specificity behind your words. We don’t always owe people detailed explanations of our choices, however, being clear, even if it’s brief, can help everyone move on.

I think it’s also important to remember that no one can read your mind. It might be very obvious to you that a particular dynamic has become “toxic,” for example, but others might be completely clueless. Again, I don’t think one has to provide a log book of toxicity or the like, but some clue as to the problem might offer the other person a chance to change, even if that doesn’t necessarily mean you continue or reestablish the relationship.

Whatever we choose to do with the new language out there, we should probably remember that swapping one cliché for another isn’t going to improve the quality of our communication or our ability to deal with conflict and change. Any phrase can be meaningless if it’s empty of context or true honesty. We can do better than “we’ve grown apart,” but let’s not pretend that dressing it up in popular pseudo-therapy speak is an improvement.

Perfectly Cromulent

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