Is Therapy-Speak Making Us Selfish?

There's some merit to what they're saying here. Arguing that this isn't a two-person problem is where I have to suspend my disbelief, though.

> “She says, ‘I need to address this. You made me feel unsafe and unloved tonight,’” Hakala says. “I went, ‘Excuse me?’”

Like, this is an extremely straightforward and honest way of addressing your feelings. It sounds like that person was fed-up with their behavior and the host didn't understand. After that, if you still go on the defensive, maybe you should feel bad about the way you treated them. These articles always conspicuously leave-out details to these situations, but I doubt it extends beyond the slice-of-life sitcom script in your head.

The rest of their anecdotes are similar, ham-fisted interpersonal problems that seem less one-sided than they're made out to be. The article is clearly trying to loop this back onto an anti-woke sentiment, but it's just not there. It mostly sounds like the author is trying to make a universal theory of friendships gone sour.

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Therapy-speak is exhausting and patronizing and so are the people that use it, no thanks.

The examples in the article are not what therapists recommend (or should be recommending, at least).

First, not every relationship has to work. Sometimes people are just incompatible. Even family and long time friends.

A boundary doesn't mean you get what you want. The boundary-hearer would have been good off setting their own boundary. Boundaries are of the form 'if x then y'. If your boundaries include the word boundary you are probably doing it wrong.

In the relative ghosting situation, it isn't up to them. They can open a dialog, but that's it.

"You made me feel ..." can be a problem because it doesn't take responsibility for the feeling. It can result in a defensive response. The other person could also have tried harder to understand what they were told - neither person seemed sympathetic. Nothing wrong with it, but not what a therapist ought to be recommending to someone having communication trouble.

Diagnosing others on second-hand accounts is definitely not something therapists (should) do. Diagnosis is a last resort thing, and patients shouldn't be encouraged to diagnosis others (especially to their face). An important lesson that many people need is that it is okay to assert boundaries even if the other person isn't a narcissist or doing something wrong. A boundary should not involve telling the other person they have done something wrong.

Really the biggest thing most people need to learn is a safe and non-inflammatory way of communicating to fall back on that won't get them in trouble when their emotions are running high. The formulaic ways of speaking are crutches until you get the intuition for it.

If you do a good job with this stuff, you won't have to push other people to speak or act differently. They will come to you and ask what your secret is for handling the 'difficult' person they are having trouble with.

That's even more of a therapy-ized response than the first one! You can accuse someone else of hurting your feelings, it just arguably doesn't matter. The host should honestly reply that it was a mistake or that they don't care, because both are better than arguing over whether it happened or not. The guest didn't present their concern perfectly, but the Ben Shapiro-esque response from the host doesn't exactly show much concern for what their friend is expressing. "Excuse me," is an erudite interjection best suited for when a kid at the country club accuses you of breaking their iPhone. If your first instinct is to question your friend's judgement call instead of showing humility, you probably don't respect them much at all.

Just my two cents, though. Nothing about the exchange these people had was unsalvageable or friendship-ruining, which is why I find it so funny that it's story is being used as an anti-woke polemic. Nothing bad happened here, they just ruffled some feathers and instead of telling us why, they accuse their friend of being the "therapy-speak" problem. It's practically paraphrased from an episode of Glee or something.