“'By virtue of being human beings, we’re masters at distancing ourselves from difficult aspects of emotional life,' says Dr Jonathan Shedler, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco. 'One way we distance ourselves is through words. What we’ve got now is this kind of pop-psychology language of clichés, abstract concepts and turns of phrase that are so different from speaking from the heart.'
For Shedler, modern therapy-speak is 'not actually a product of reflection and examination'. In psychotherapy, he says, 'we always move from the general to the specific. People will say something general or abstract and a good therapist is always asking for examples. If a person says that they felt stressed, we might say, ‘OK, tell me more about that. How did you experience the stress?’ If a patient is using therapy-speak, the goal of the work has to be to move away from this to something more immediate and emotionally alive.'” - Eleanor Morgan
Article: ‘That’s Triggering!’ Is Therapy-Speak Changing The Way We Talk About Ourselves?
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