The term “psychobabble” became popular around 1980, following the publication of a book with the same name written by R.D. Rosen. Nowadays, a more common term for the same phenomenon would be “therapy speak” — the kind of vocabulary you need for when you need to trauma dump about your narcissistic ex gaslighting you into trauma bonding during your emotionally laborious situationship. 

Except, this isn’t just a vocabulary or a method of speaking, but an extension and cementing of ableism in the common lexicon. In a day and age of “#neurospicy #mentalhealthmatters,” it can be all too easy for someone to wash their hands of any concerns of being an ableist before skipping into the sunset to tell their bestie how “delulu” they were for thinking they could get their crush to like them.

Merriam Webster defines semantic bleaching as “the reduction of a word’s intensity.” We have seen this in the words “literally,” “very” and even “awesome.” Now, though, it’s also happening at a rapid pace to words used commonly in psychiatry and diagnosis. 

Psychiatry as a system is built largely on racism, eugenics and sexism, but that doesn’t make the language associated with it useless. For many, these routes are their best path to treatment, identification and recognition for various conditions – options that become harder and harder to reach as the language needed to pinpoint concepts is put through a social media blender and turned into goo. 

People have become far too comfortable diagnosing their ex-partners and ex-friends from the comfort of their armchairs, all while holding up the facade of advocating for mental health. I feel like I’m in some elaborate prank where I’m being gaslit into believing that “gaslit” is just a fancy word for lying. Every confrontation is overstepping a boundary, every upsetting situation is traumatic, self-care is embodied entirely by taking long baths and wearing face masks. Every interest is a hyper-fixation, spacing out for a minute is dissociation, on and on and on and on and on and on and on. 

Using mental health conditions to label and demonize anyone who slights you is, at a bare minimum, an excellent way to tell the people with mental conditions in your life that you are not a safe person to be around. Changing the definition of a specific abuse tactic to just mean “lying” leaves victims without the vocabulary they need. Sometimes, self-care means doing that laundry you don’t want to do, making a phone call or doing taxes.

Language will always shift and grow over time, but the laser focus of the definition shifting of words most commonly needed by victims of abuse and disabled populations is indicative of disregard by the common population in favor of themselves — And, really, at this point, I shouldn’t be shocked. 

At this rate, in a year or so, nothing will mean anything anymore, and we will all yed euwng oweub anduqp. Naowqu, qodugnh ndusu wjdgue #closure.

Share