"Psychobabble" by Joe Nucci is out now.
Psychotherapist Joe Nucci is the author of "Psychobabble" and posts about psychology and culture on social media as @joenuccietherapy.
"Psychobabble" by Joe Nucci is out now.

“Gaslighting.” “Love-bombing.” “Narcissism.”

Therapy speak is all around us, for better or for worse. In recent decades, conversations about therapy and mental health have gone mainstream. The wider understanding has given many people answers to their long-standing mental health struggles, with diagnoses and language that help us accommodate and care for one another. There’s increasing access to necessary mental health services.

But psychotherapist Joe Nucci thinks we're talking about it wrong. We're "psychobabbling," he says, a word that refers to misconstrued jargon. He thinks we use words like "trauma" too lightly and are pathologizing “everyday life.” There could be long-term consequences, he says, so he's setting the record straight in his new book "Psychobabble" (out now from HarperCollins) in the same style he does on social media.

“The confusion of the terms, or the misuse of the terms actually leads to a fundamental misunderstanding about therapy, about mental health, even about life in a way that is actually antithetical to positive mental health outcomes,” Nucci tells USA TODAY. “Which is certainly not what people are signing up for when they go to therapy or when they absorb self-help content.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Question: Is therapy speak in everyday life doing more harm than good?

Nucci: I would say that it's good that these terms no longer carry the stigma that they once did, but something fascinating that's accompanied the popularization of these terms is the misapplication and the misuse and I don't think it's leaving us more mentally healthy.

It feels like we've never invested more in mental health. We've never made more content about it. We've never talked about it more. Are we collectively feeling just super well-adjusted? No.

What’s the benefit there?

The more words you have for your emotions, the more resilient you're going to be. It seems like what social media has done is made it so every bad feeling, every bad event that happens to us is trauma. Every bad person is a narcissist. And we actually are using less words, and that's not the promise of psychology or mental health. Most psychology-related professionals, we love labels, we have so many granular labels and definitions for everything, but it seems like what gets trending on social media is the opposite of that. It becomes these broad strokes of words.

How are we using those words wrong? Tell me about "narcissism."

If they're a narcissist, they're grandiose. But if they're grandiose, that doesn't necessarily make them narcissists. I think that's one of the reasons why that's plaguing the culture. It's very developmentally appropriate for a teenager to be self-centered and emotionally immature and all these things that we associate with narcissism. And some people, if they're behind a little bit developmentally, maybe you were dating someone narcissistic, but maybe it's not because they had a personality disorder. Maybe it's because they're in their 20s, they're still growing up.

How about “love-bombing”?

Moving too fast is not the same thing as love bombing, because there are lots of reasons why people move too fast. Immaturity is one. But also, I think that in moments of passion or desire, people say things, do things in the heat of the moment. That doesn't make them impulsive or manipulative. I think that makes them people.

What about “empath”? You write that that’s not necessarily the aspirational quality we think of it as.

If there's some abuse or trauma in their past, they may be emotionally vigilant, they're kind of constantly emotionally monitoring everyone, but that's not necessarily an adaptive way to live. That's often exhausting. What you often see with many people who identify as empaths is they're actually not interpreting the emotions correctly.

If that's what you're dealing with, I think therapy can absolutely help. But to make it an identity and not get help, I've seen people stay in that identity for years, and then they burn out. It's too much on their nervous systems.

You argue that we’re identifying too heavily with our mental health diagnoses. What do you mean by that?

I think it could be harmful on a few counts.

When I am using diagnosis, what am I using it for? I'm using it to formulate a treatment plan. So sometimes people go to therapy and they get a diagnosis that's – let’s assume an accurate one for the sake of the conversation – that can feel very validating. It can even be a relief to people, because there's this name, this thing that I've been struggling with. But then when people make it part of their identity and then they stop there – that's actually the beginning of therapy in a lot of ways. It's not the end.

The point of it is to have self-awareness so you can actually self-transform. It's not to lock you into anything. It's to give you a road map so that you can become anything, and you're not actually held back by it. Oftentimes people, when they embrace it a little too much as an identity, it's a little bit like a self-fulfilling prophecy thing, and it actually holds them back. That's not the promise of mental health. Mental health isn't about identity and constraining you. It's about agency and freeing you.

Some people find community around their identity. What about in that case?

I think that's one of the great things about social media. A lot of the studies have also shown that it's something between like, it's like 50 and 80% of the information you're seeing about these diagnostic clusters are very misleading or false. That it's tricky, right? I think sometimes people are a little bit more ahead of the curve than where the research is at. Research takes time for a good reason, because they want to make sure it's accurate.

You also disagree largely with self-diagnosis. What harms do you perceive there?

It's not something I'm a huge fan of, and it's interesting being in, like, the social media discourse of it, because you'll see things like, “self-diagnosis is valid,” “self-diagnosis is cool,” “this therapist is coming from a place of privilege.”

Just prior to grad school, I got my ADHD diagnosis, and I remember going into grad school and noticing the similarities of the symptoms that someone with ADHD has and someone with like bipolar has and I remember actually learning in grad school that even by professional diagnosticians, they are mixed up all the time, particularly in youth.

If you've arrived at a self-diagnosis that you're very confident in, regardless of what your financial situation is, get on that waiting list. Go talk to someone, because if it's true, if you have it, you probably want to be accommodated for it, whether that's you want your insurance to cover the medication for it, or you want the disability accommodations at work. I think what I see a lot of in these circles is it's like, well, “self-diagnosis is cool, and I'm not going to do anything about it.” That's antithetical to the promise in the field, the purpose of these categories.

Some are turning to chatbots and artificial intelligence for therapy. How do you envision it changing the field?

I think that it is going to replace probably about half, maybe 60% of what clinicians do, and that's because some of the work we do can get automated, like certain types of treatment, skill building, even just the more reflective styles of therapy.

I'm not as critical of it as other practitioners ... If every single therapist saw 40 patients a week – and most don't see that many, by the way – we would still have tens of millions of people who are diagnosable who can't get care.

What pitfalls are there with AI therapy?

I do think that these AI companies, I think it'd be great if they just included some basic safety features. When I had a patient come in, I have them fill out a questionnaire, like, “Have you ever been hospitalized” or “Are you on any medication?” “Do you have a history of abuse?” All the basic intake questions.

I know some platforms are designed for therapy. Whenever I play with them, they never bring me through intake. They always just dive into the conversation. I think that's super irresponsible and unethical, and so we're in early days. I'm hopeful it's going to get better, but I think that I'm cautiously optimistic with it, because we need support. We need scalable support, and nothing can replace the attunement of another person.

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: We’re talking about mental health wrong. Why ‘psychobabble’ is harmful.

Reporting by Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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