Therapy language gains space in relationships – 02/15/2023 – Equilíbrio

When Lauren Scott was bored, she distracted herself by looking for someone to date. The process was at times tiring and repetitive. At bars, picnics, miniature golf courses and ice cream parlors, she answered questions about her cybersecurity classes and her tastes in music. Still, it was something to do. A 23-year-old graduate student from Tampa, Florida, Lauren has had around 34 first dates in the past year, sometimes amassing three in a week.

One of those first encounters in particular seemed like it might lead to something more. The guy sent constant text messages. He said he missed her. He claimed to have told his family about her. But after a night spent making pizza together and watching a movie on the couch at Lauren’s house, he stopped responding to her texts.

Lauren vented about it in a phone call with her mother, who made the diagnosis: according to her, the boy had practiced “love bombing” with her daughter.

Lauren laughed. “I said ‘where do you know this term from?’.” Her mother had heard the term, which describes a form of narcissistic abuse, on the radio.

Relationship Search comes with its own dictionary, a collection of buzzwords that include “breadcrumbing” [jogar migalhas de atenção]”zombie-ing” [agir como zumbi, como reaparecendo dos mortos] and of course “ghosting” [desaparecer por completo, sem explicações].

In recent years, however, terms used in psychology such as “love bombing”, “gaslighting” [levar alguém a duvidar da realidade e de si mesmo] and “trauma bonding” [um processo em que a pessoa se apega a uma relação abusiva]have also carved their way into the dating lexicon.

Hinge, a popular US dating app, still lets its users post selfies wearing sunglasses and declare how much they like martinis. But now they can also complete sentences like “therapy has recently taught me to……”, “one of my limits is…..” and “my therapist would say that I…..”.

Becca Love, 40, is a stylist and dance teacher in Montreal and uses the pronouns elx and delx. People who pique her interest on dating apps, she often asks “how is the connection between two people, for you?”. Around the third date, Love and the other person begin to discuss the potential match’s “attachment style,” a practical summary of childhood trauma.

This terminology is not uncommon. Therapy-related terms and phrases mobilize people online and have found their way into schools and workplaces. But the proliferation of this jargon among relationship seekers signals a marked shift.

“In the 1950s or even the 1980s, it would have been hard to imagine that telling someone you were in therapy regularly would give you status,” says psychology professor Eli Finkel of Northwestern University and author of “The All-or- Nothing Marriage” (The marriage all or nothing, in Portuguese). Today, however, according to him, the fact that a person takes care of their mental health values ​​them socially in some circles.

“Promote yourself by talking about your mental health”

Helen Fisher, a bioanthropologist, senior fellow at the Kinsey Institute and chief scientific advisor to Match.com, has led a 12-year study of the behaviors and attitudes of single people in the US.

Conducted by Match, the study “Singles in America” ​​(Singles in America, in Portuguese), surveys about 5,000 Americans a year not affiliated with Match. In 2022, Fisher was stunned by a discovery. She asked participants to list in order of importance the attributes they were looking for in a potential partner. She expected to get the usual responses: sexual attractiveness, reliability, sense of humor, and similar interests. This time, however, another feature made the top five list. Respondents wanted people with emotional maturity, the ability to process and deal with their own feelings.

“I’m from the baby boomer generation,” says Fisher. “In the 1960s and 1970s, that’s not what we were trying to show people. We were trying to show that we were smart, fun, creative and professionally ambitious. Today people are trying to show that they have good mental health.”

Promoting yourself has always been a part of dating. People publicize their positive qualities — looks, sense of humor, charm — in “de facto” competition, a process that has been intensified, or at least clearly evidenced, by the arrival of dating apps.

In the 2010s, when apps began to be used widely, users were looking to generalize their interests to attract the attention of as many people as possible, says Jess Carbino, a sociologist who has worked for Tinder and Bumble. Many people chose to pass on generic and harmless information, she said, describing these types of profiles as “the ‘I like SouCycle, I like brunch and my aunt’s dog’ profiles.”

But that has been changing in recent years. Today, more and more people are disclosing intimate and specific details about themselves, including information about their mental health, points out Carbino. It’s a technique used both to indicate what your values ​​are and to exclude people who won’t interest you. If therapy is essential to you, for example, you might not want to date someone who has never been in therapy.

Actress and content creator Capri Campeau, 23, of Los Angeles, says talking about therapy can also convey status more literally. It can be seen as proof that you can afford therapy at a time when therapists are in high demand, and that you have the space and time to do so, explains Campeau.

Being transparent about therapy also confers a certain cultural status on the person, according to Carolina Bandinelli, a professor at the University of Warwick, in England, and a scholar of romanticism and digital culture. It implies that you have already “worked yourself”. In other words, that you are an enlightened person, the best version of yourself. “It’s part of this self-optimization discourse”, says Bandinelli.

The jargon of psychoanalysis has an additional benefit, especially for heterosexual men: It can help challenge stereotypes about men who run away from their emotions, according to Bandinelli.

“It seems to be a code that men are using to cheat,” says New York humorist and podcast host Jared Freid, 37, who has sifted through thousands of questions and reports from listeners in his ten years of hosting dating podcasts. “Men write ‘I go to therapy’ on dating apps just because it gets more women, not because they love going to therapy.”

Non-professionals can be wrong

Kailah Chavis’s TikTok and Instagram feeds are full of dating videos and infographics: advice on how to avoid a love bomb, how to spot a narcissist or how to set boundaries with your romantic partners.

“I keep hearing about ‘your inner child,’ ‘healing your inner child,'” says Chavis, who is 24 and lives in Los Angeles.

For her, people repeat the jargon they learn on social networks, where people, especially women, exchange tips on how to recognize the signs of potential manipulation. Sometimes the tips come from actual therapists, but more often the advice comes from anyone with a camera on them.

Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis and a member of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Communications, is not surprised to hear that psychological jargon is making its way into everyday language.

“In some respects, people have always used the terms in a way that a professional wouldn’t,” he points out. Talking about mental illness in general can help dispel the stigma attached to conditions like anxiety and depression, she says. And letting yourself be vulnerable with a new partner can have positive effects.

But there are obvious downsides to learning a psychotherapy term from a TikTok video or a meme: non-professionals can misuse the term. “Trauma bonding” in particular is a term that is often misused to indicate a connection formed with another person with whom you share difficulties. The clinical definition of the term refers to a specific pattern of abuse.

Campeau, the 23-year-old actress, has seen the language of therapy take on increasing importance while she has been using dating apps and is looking to control the urge to overuse that language in her relationship. For example, when she leaves a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, a behavior that she reminds her girlfriend of an ex who was especially messy, she avoids using terms like “triggering.” Instead, she discusses why dirty dishes make your girlfriend think of her ex.

“For both of us, it’s been really helpful to try to use language for our dialogue rather than just using terms to judge.”

Translated by Clara Allain