Jonah Hill and the rise of therapy speak

The language of therapy has entered our everyday lexicon – but does it harm more than it helps when used outside a therapist’s office?

Psychotherapy was subjected to a “rare bit of scrutiny” last week after texts sent by the Hollywood actor-producer Jonah Hill to a former girlfriend circulated online, said Martha Gill in The Observer. In the texts, Hill asked Sarah Brady – a surfing instructor – to remove swimsuit pictures from her social media accounts, stop “surfing with men” and refrain from spending time with female friends “in unstable places”.

Hill has spoken openly about his experiences in therapy and even made a Netflix documentary called “Stutz” about his long-time therapist and their relationship. What made his texts to Brady catch the attention of many was the language he used to frame his demands. “His supposed list of unreasonable demands were rebranded, in the texts, as ‘boundaries’,” said Gill, “a word typical of therapy-speak.”

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‘Avoid pathologising normal’

The incident seems to reflect the way that terms “ordinarily confined to psychological settings have increasingly made their way into the mainstream”, said Vox. As more people seek out mental health treatment and more therapists share their work and psychological concepts on social media, a greater portion of society has been “introduced to therapy vernacular” – or so-called “therapy speak”.

But while society has been equipped with a new vocabulary to describe these experiences, “many definitions have become muddled in the process. While these terms can prove validating for people who can now put a name to an experience, therapy-speak can eliminate all nuance from a conversation,” warned Vox.

Mental health professionals are now urging us to “embrace nuance and avoid pathologising normal – albeit annoying or painful – behavior”, said the website.

Asserting boundaries seems to have become “shorthand for putting yourself first”, said Ellie Muir in The Independent.

But the focus on the “self-care” element of therapy and the use of therapy speech might be making us lonelier, suggested the renowned relationship therapist Esther Perel, speaking to Vanity Fair. That is because the focus moves from being about “the mutuality of relationships” to the self. It can leave people trying to “elevate your personal comments and personal experience by invoking the higher authority of psychobabble”, said Perel.

“What you you call therapy-speak, we used to call psychobabble – it’s a new word for an old concept,” she added.

‘Therapy can do harm too’

We also “seldom hear” about therapy that leaves patients and those around them “worse off than where they started”, said Gill in The Observer. “Some 5-7% of clients deteriorate after treatment: old symptoms get worse, new ones appear and people become dependent on their therapists,” said Gill. Unregulated therapists in the UK and a “profusion” of new therapy apps may well have added to the problem.

Greater statutory regulation could be one solution. “But the idea that therapy can do harm in the first place could do with greater currency,” writes Gill. “Therapy deserves to be taken seriously as a medical treatment. And any medicine worth the name can be dangerous too.”