You’re gaslighting me.
That’s something only a narcissist would say.
I need you to clean up this mess; my OCD is acting up right now.
These are three incendiary statements anchored by therapy terms that are gaining wider visibility online and entering the common parlance. For Emily Hemendinger, MPH, LCSW, clinical director of the OCD Program and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, they point to a gap in effective communication.
“While more popular exposure to therapy is a net good,” said Hemendinger, “in some cases we’ve overreacted to that avoidance of talking about mental health by labeling everything as a mental health issue.”
In the following Q&A, Hemendinger breaks down “therapy speak,” offering thoughts on how it relates to a broader issue of psychoeducation and learning to accept the messier parts of the human experience.