Relationships, Moral Superiority and Therapy Speak
A missive on virtue signaling wrt relationships.
I believe my thoughts espoused on this post are somewhat related to Communication is a Battlefield one.
Definitions;
Moral superiority is the belief or attitude that one's position and actions are justified by having higher moral values than others.
and
Therapy speak, also referred to as therapy dialogue, is a term used for the language previously reserved for the therapy room, that’s seeped into our everyday lives.
At any one point, most of us are trying to understand ourselves, our place here *points around* and in some ways social media gives us words with which to explain who we are, what we want and our sense of being. On the other hand, it is that much easier to adopt personalities from those we follow, internalise people’s opinions on who we should be, try to mould ourselves into versions of people we see online . We also have come to assign who we are to the media we consume.
On the offset, I personally feel we generally misuse “Narcissist”and “Trauma.”
I recently told my mother that we incorrectly assign “narcissism” to people because we don’t want to believe that those we care about would willingly be bad/mean/terrible to us. But the truth is that they are people who make decisions to do bad things/be terrible to you.
Not everything is a trauma response.
There is a way people who have internalised therapy/psychological language that is quite problematic. That is why I mention moral superiority. Having the knowledge without the empathy and compassion is ……. something. Not something good mind you - I just don’t have the word for it as yet.
Many messages peddled on social media push for hyper individualism, very navel gazey, “me-me”, messages. This includes the way people use therapy speak as they navigate relationships. I understand that we want to know ourselves, what matters to us, motivates us, our desires etc. And in the same vein, therapy isn’t available for a lot of us and therefore consuming what is given online provides a sort of alternative. However, 1. It becomes easy to adopt general messages as if they are relevant to you individually - meanwhile they aren’t. 2. Knowing these words does not make you inherently better. 3. The likelihood that you are misdiagnosing yourself and/or using terminology wrongly is very high and 4. It is unnatural to talk to someone you have caramaderie with using therapy speak.
Generally, we are lonelier, sadder because we have internalised individualistic thinking, building community precludes us, we struggle to communicate etc. Adding these terminologies and putting them in practice in ways they aren’t intended continues to do more harm, we are pathologising every day behaviour. Even when people talk about healing - most often it involves isolating themselves, cutting people off. How can we think/believe that this is the way? The adoption of these words as practice has made people come off as though everyone else around them is the villain and they are the victim.
We have only recently seen an example of weaponizing therapy speak surrounding boundaries to control the relationship. And let me talk about boundaries by the way - when you have a boundary, it is not intended to change the other person - the boundary is about you and what you can and cannot deal with. People seem to use boundaries as ways to manipulate people to change, to control people. As someone who believes that boundaries can bring peace, I also know that rigidity on them can be detrimental to fostering intimate, reciprocal relationships.
Are you triggered or did something make uncomfortable? Are you disocciating or just focused on a task? Are you using therapy language to shield yourself? Are you aware of the role you played in the end of a relationship or is everyone else the prolem? Are you living the practices you speak about or are you virtue signalling?
Further reading
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rise-of-therapy-speak
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2023/06/esther-perel-amateur-therapy-speak