Language matters
Has pop psychology and trauma language left us stuck?
We have become fluent in the language of the self, but increasingly illiterate in the language of relationships. In recent years, I have found myself wondering about the power of suggestion and how the therapeutic language being used in everyday parlance is affecting our daily behaviours.
When I started my clinical training, terms like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were reserved for severe, life-altering events, such as surviving a terrible accident, coming home from war, or enduring serious sexual abuse. Today, that same word is used for basic family dynamics over and over again. This shift reflects how linguistic habits can shape a culture where psychological work centres on the individual. In the process, the relationship, the space between two people, almost disappears.
The power of suggestion in everyday speech
I recorded a podcast recently, and when I looked at my script, I noticed the production team had amended my words to include terms like shame, anxiety, and trauma. When I asked the editor why those additions had been made, I was told it made the script feel more relatable and chatty.
The exchange stayed with me, and I asked the editing team for some broader feedback. I explained that I was thinking deeply about language and the potential damage it may be doing to the conversations we have with one another. When they asked what I meant, I shared my core concern: I wonder if constantly being told that something is traumatising, anxiety-provoking, shaming, or toxic actually makes us more aware of those feelings, causing us to feel them far more acutely.
The current social narrative actively encourages us to view everyday challenges through this heightened lens. The use of pop psychology and its language is greater than ever, reinforced by social media and quick digital conversations with tools like Claude, both of which encourage this vocabulary. We have to ask whether this choice of language is becoming disabling. Are we convincing ourselves that we are far more vulnerable than we actually are?
How language can embed difficulty rather than build resilience
Historically, we grew our self-esteem by meeting personal challenges, managing them, and integrating them into the broader landscape of our own personal experience. Meeting difficult situations was simply part of the development of the self. Today, however, I see more and more clients who are completely stuck in their past experiences. The constant digging into history using the heavy language of trauma may not be helping.
This shift is particularly noticeable in my work within the neurodivergent community, where attitudes and language have transformed enormously over the past five years. Many neurodivergent individuals describe real trauma from their youth shaped by their environment and development. Living life as an outlier is never easy, yet many people who have lived outside societal norms do not report those experiences as trauma.
If we repeatedly describe ourselves using the language of trauma, shame, toxicity, or damage, we may unintentionally strengthen those very frameworks. These experiences carry weight and deserve care. They also invite us, as clinicians, to be thoughtful about when a narrative is supporting recovery and when it is beginning to constrain the client’s development.
Rethinking therapeutic models for neurodivergent clients
Therapy as a broad field is not doing this uniformly. Frameworks such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), somatic body-based work, and neurodivergent-affirming models are specifically built around not getting stuck re-narrating trauma. Approaches like ACT are explicitly present-focused, helping individuals engage with their lives as they are happening right now.
Generic, one-size-fits-all psychodynamic therapy that is not tailored to neurodivergent processing can inadvertently reinforce rumination, rigidity, and an inability to use information in an integrative way. Some traditional forms of therapy operate on the assumption that insight automatically leads to freedom. They encourage clients to revisit childhood repeatedly, label experiences, and construct detailed, coherent narratives.
While that process can be enormously helpful for some, it can have unintended consequences for neurodivergent clients, particularly those who naturally hyperfocus and ruminate. Repeatedly analysing the same memories can alter the narrative. Instead of arriving at “I understand what happened,” the internal story can gradually become “This is who I am.” The story becomes increasingly rehearsed and turns into a bit of a comfy chair.
