AT the risk of sounding like my parents, I now spend much of my time wondering what the heck the world is coming to.
I accept that change is inevitable — it is the only constant in life — but there’s something that’s been grinding my gears for a while now and it’s sending me a bit doolally. It’s the way we talk.
There’s a language on the rise that we all seem to be adopting. It’s “therapy speak”.
About a year ago I heard someone tell their partner they wish they would “hold space” for them, and I felt like I was in a foreign country.
Turns out, it simply means focusing on someone by feeling their feelings. Or, in old money, supporting someone.
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There are a million of these expressions that have their roots in therapy of one kind or another, and we’ve become preoccupied with adopting these phrases as we have discovered self-care.
I’m a huge believer in therapy — psychotherapy has been hugely helpful to me.
But could it be that the pendulum is now swinging too much the other way?
We’re focusing so much on ourselves and our needs, often at the exclusion of others, and we’re adapting new terminology because we’re all relishing being armchair therapists.
I heard of one friend trying to end a friendship with another by saying they could no longer “honour” that person’s needs,.
They didn’t have the “emotional space” for their friend and they were doing this because they were “acting in alignment with what feels right within the scope of their life”.
I beg your puddin’!
It sounded more like some sort of redundancy letter from the personnel department. Or Human Resources as we now have to call it.
Similarly, we learn from an observer and devotee of psycho-babble that Meghan Markle is not coming to King Charles’s Coronation because, “Meghan is exercising the power of ‘no’ from a place of self-worth”.
And there I was thinking she was staying in LA because it was her son’s fourth birthday.
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Whatever happened to just speaking in plain, direct and empathetic language?
Why has it now become impossible to tell someone you just don’t think the friendship is really going anywhere and I wish you the best of luck with your life?
We’re all now so used to expressions such as “coping mechanisms”, “centering our-selves”, “being present”, “sitting with our discomfort”, “projecting” and “setting boundaries” that we’re seriously running the risk of losing that most basic human connection — simple communication.
Scared to be honest
I can’t be the only one who finds many of these sayings, well, triggering.
I have to admit, I’m guilty of using them from time to time because they seem to be the only expressions people now understand.
In my defence, I precede it with “I hate this word but . . . ” because it feels so pretentious, arrogant and self-absorbed.
It’s implying that you are streets ahead of someone else when it comes to knowing the situation, so you’re going to show off and use these new terms to show it.
Communication and opening up to someone have now become a weird, meticulously scripted language.
We all think of ourselves as licensed armchair psychologists and I, for one, feel that much of this therapy speak has become a selfish, one-sided observation that kind of ignores the other person: “I say this, so it must be true.”
Another triggering term is “gaslighting”. In the right circumstances it is the only definition of the terrible, abusive and coercive behaviour of one person towards another.
But nowadays, I hear it bandied around on a regular, casual basis when it could just be that someone is saying something you don’t agree with.
We use “trauma” a lot, too. And, no, of course it shouldn’t just be reserved for those who have been in a war zone and suffered physical assault.
But we need to be careful where we use the word.
In many cases, we’re all just attention-seeking. We want to be “seen” and, God help me, “validated”.
I don’t see any reason why we can’t still achieve this and use normal, straightforward, basic language.
It’s like people have become so scared to be honest and direct that they have to pussy-foot around with non-offensive, neutral expressions that cover all bases but leave many of us perplexed.
As many young people now turn to influencers on social media — in particular, TikTok — to diagnose mental health conditions rather than seek professional help AND learn all this therapy speak, we run the very real risk that people will end up not knowing how to speak in simplified language that everyone understands.
And that means that I’ll probably have to go to evening classes to learn what it all means.
To be honest that’s not the kind of conflict resolution I’m seeking because it’s making me feel unseen and unheard, and my inner child will then really struggle with that kind of coping mechanism.
Vape's no escape for adults
IN an attempt to make us a smoke-free nation by 2030, the Government is planning to offer vaping “starter kits” to one in five smokers at a cost of around £45million over a couple of years.
I’m no scientist but it sounds like madness to me.
We’re effectively asking people to swap one addiction for another, and although vaping is safer than smoking, in truth the underlying health risks are largely unknown.
Vapes still contain addictive toxins, with users inhaling nicotine in a vapour rather than smoke, and it just can’t be true that they are as innocent as marketing has led us to believe since they were launched.
I understand that quitting smoking can be incredibly difficult, especially for those who have been committed to the habit for decades.
But because of the relative “unknowns” surrounding vaping side-effects and the colourful branding and cute candy flavours, we have a massive problem with their appeal to young people.
Kids don’t see them as anything worse than chewing gum.
Despite it being illegal to sell e-cigarettes to the under-18s, nearly ten per cent of 11 to 15-year-olds used them in 2021, according to figures released by the NHS.
Little wonder then, that schools are struggling to stop students vaping in class, at break time or in the bogs.
Some have taken to putting vape detectors in the toilet blocks.
So, at the same time as the Government is going to replace cigarettes with vapes for some adults, they’re also being forced to announce a crackdown on under-age and illicit vape sales to children because the situation has become so dire.
In other words we’re normalising vaping for adults, who we know many kids look up to and emulate, at the same time as telling kids they absolutely should not vape.
Surely a more straightforward approach would be to tell everyone it’s a terrible idea?
Taylor needs a real match
TAYLOR SWIFT has split with British actor beau Joe Alwyn after six years of dating.
While the official line is that they broke up due to “personality differences”, some claim that Joe preferred to keep his private life out of the spotlight, which must have been tricky when you’re dating one of the best-selling musicians in history.
This woman has sold more than 200million records globally and picked up 500-plus awards along the way.
I would argue that Taylor is in the driving seat and certainly doesn’t need to settle.
In fact, I’m sure she’d urge all her fans not to settle for less than they deserve.
We seem to find it much easier to wonder what is wrong with the woman in a relationship if she can’t, won’t or doesn’t want to settle down.
We have some kind of subconscious preoccupation with needing to see women settle down by a certain age or after a certain number of boyfriends.
If she doesn’t follow this societal norm of finding a good man and setting up home, the problem is with her.
I think we need to flip that and question the problem men have with successful women.
Perhaps it goes back to the hunter-gatherer times, and that men feel emasculated and inferior in the presence of a woman who can do this thing herself.
Whatever the reason behind Taylor and Joe’s break-up, she’s sure to find a new man who can cope with her celebrity, independence and brains. But she doesn’t need to.
Because, just like Miley Cyrus, she can buy herself flowers.
Iconic boxes must live on
DISMAYED to hear this week that the Tupperware company is battling for survival and might go out of business.
There can’t be many people in this world who don’t have a cupboard in the kitchen that has to stay firmly closed at all times due to the risk of death by drowning in a mountain of disorganised plastic boxes?
It’s hard to imagine a life without those brilliant containers because they’ve been around now for 75 years.
The first Tupperware party took place back in 1948 and apparently sales went up during the pandemic, when people were forced to stay at home and cook for themselves, and presumably for family and neighbours.
But the last couple of years have seen sales tumble.
I use them all the time and somewhere in my mum’s house in some overpopulated cupboard in her kitchen is a piece of Tupperware from Buckingham Palace.
When I was 20 and I counted HRH Prince Edward, now the Duke of Edinburgh, as a friend I was sick at home with glandular fever for many weeks.
He sweetly came over (with his entourage of security guards) to bring me some homeopathic medicine which he hoped might help my recovery.
But most valuable of all, he brought me some summer pudding in a little Tupperware container because he knew it was my favourite.
So, please, people preserve these little plastic tubs at all costs.
