What Do We Gain and Lose When Therapy Language Becomes Everyday Language?
ANALYSIS @jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia [Image: Thriveworks] P sychology has escaped the consulting room. A difficult ex is “narcissistic”. A disagreement becomes “gaslighting”. Needing time alone is “setting a boundary”. A painful experience is “trauma”, and discomfort can be “triggering”. None of these words is automatically wrong outside therapy. Their migration into everyday speech tells us something encouraging: people have more language for experiences that were once difficult to name. But language rarely travels unchanged. When psychological concepts move through TikTok clips, podcasts, dating advice and workplace conversations, technical meanings can stretch, flatten or acquire meanings clinicians never intended. We gain a vocabulary for understanding ourselves. We may also lose some of the precision that made the vocabulary useful. What we gain Mental-health literacy includes recognising psychological difficulties, knowing where to find re...
