Aug 26 2025.
views 14By Rihaab Mowlana
You don’t need to scroll far to see it. Toxic, triggered, gaslighting, boundaries; the vocabulary of psychology is everywhere, from captions to conversations. We’re fluent in therapy-speak without ever stepping into therapy. The words are meant to signal growth and self-awareness, but more often than not, they sound borrowed, flattened, and overused.
And nowhere did this hit me harder than when a student recently explained why she hadn’t submitted her assignment. She didn’t talk about stress, deadlines, or even forgetting. Instead, she spoke about “protecting her peace”, “managing her nervous system”, and not having “the emotional capacity to engage”. She hadn’t done the work, but she’d fully processed not doing it. It wasn’t evasive; it was polished self-awareness. But the phrasing felt lifted straight out of an Instagram post.
When I shared that moment on social media, the response surprised me. The comments were full of recognition, discomfort, even defensiveness. Clearly, this wasn’t just about one student; it was about how all of us have started talking. And that conversation online made one thing clear: this deserved a closer look.
This isn’t the first time psychology has seeped into popular culture. In the 1960s, terms like complex and repression filtered into everyday speech, even among those who had never read Freud. In the 1990s, talk shows and self-help books mainstreamed therapy culture. Oprah championed the language of healing long before Instagram existed.
But social media has accelerated the process. Where once these terms trickled in through books or television, today they flood through Reels, TikToks, and carousel posts. Vocabulary that once belonged in therapy rooms now circulates in bite-sized, aesthetic chunks designed for sharing.
Here in Sri Lanka, the shift feels doubly striking. Only a generation ago, mental health barely entered public conversation. Depression was seen as laziness, anxiety as weakness, and therapy as indulgence. The idea of speaking openly about emotions was foreign in most households.
Now, young people are fluent in psychological vocabulary. WhatsApp groups label behaviour as “toxic.” Offices talk about “boundaries” in HR policies. Couples accuse each other of “gaslighting” after arguments. Parents hear their teenagers diagnose themselves with “trauma responses” after a bad exam.
In some ways, this is progress; we’ve broken silences that kept mental health invisible. But it also reveals a contradiction. We’re quick to use the words while still slow to seek professional help. We borrow the language of therapy without committing to the work therapy requires.
Pop psychology is what happens when therapy sneaks out of the clinic and lands on your feed. It’s psychology’s influencer cousin; the concepts are real, but they’ve been filtered, cropped, and captioned until they’re easy to like and even easier to share. Think Reels that explain “attachment styles” in under 30 seconds, carousels that flatten trauma into three bullet points, or self-help books that promise to “fix your life” in a weekend.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with this. Pop psychology can make people feel seen, introduce useful terms, and open doors to conversations we never had before. But by simplifying everything into digestible soundbites, it strips away the nuance that makes psychology effective in the first place. And nuance is exactly where the real work happens.
Pop psychology works because it’s flattering. Real psychology is messy and uncomfortable. It asks you to examine your contradictions, to acknowledge your role in conflict, to sit with feelings you’d rather avoid. A therapist won’t simply validate your anger; they’ll ask what lies beneath it, and whether you’re willing to change.
Social media does the opposite. It affirms your feelings in a neatly packaged square. It tells you that your pain makes sense and that the problem is external. It gives you a label for your experience and, often, a villain to blame. It feels like insight but requires little reflection. And in a culture addicted to validation, that’s powerful.
The overuse of therapy-speak doesn’t just flatten meaning; it risks distorting reality.
When every uncomfortable moment becomes a red flag, we dilute the urgency of real warning signs. When every ex is a narcissist, we trivialise those who’ve experienced true narcissistic abuse. And when every challenge is called trauma, we risk erasing the gravity of actual traumatic events.
This isn’t only a semantic issue. It shapes how we relate to others. If I call my colleague toxic for giving feedback, I avoid asking whether the feedback was valid. If I label my sibling’s bluntness as emotional abuse, I lose the chance for honesty. And if I say I’m “protecting my peace” by cutting someone off, I might never confront my own avoidance.
In Sri Lanka, where therapy remains expensive and limited to urban centres, the stakes are higher. For many, Instagram posts and TikTok clips may be their first exposure to psychological language. If those terms are already watered down, what people internalise is imitation, not insight.
This creates a dangerous illusion that naming the problem is the same as solving it. Someone may proudly announce their attachment style without ever addressing their relationship patterns. A group of friends may discuss “honouring their triggers” while using it as an excuse to avoid accountability. A person might declare themselves “healed” because they reposted a quote.
Awareness matters, yes. But when awareness becomes performative, we reduce healing to something that looks good on a grid rather than something that reshapes our lives.
The irony is that many of us have learned to sound self-aware without learning to be self-aware. We can declare boundaries but struggle to hold space for conflict. We can talk about triggers, but use them to shut conversations down. We can claim we are healing while clinging to patterns that keep us stuck. We’re not speaking the language of growth. We’re speaking the language of avoidance, packaged as growth.
Real healing rarely looks good online. It looks like attending therapy when you’d rather stay home. It looks like sitting in an uncomfortable silence instead of storming out. It looks like apologising when you’d rather justify.
It’s rarely aesthetic. Sometimes it’s messy and raw: crying in therapy without knowing why, confronting grief that refuses resolution, admitting fault when it bruises your ego. These moments don’t translate into Reels. They don’t rack up likes. But they create change.
This doesn’t mean social media is useless. For many, a single post about anxiety can be the spark that leads to learning more, seeking help, or finding language to describe their struggles. Words matter. Representation matters. Awareness is the first step.
But awareness without depth risks becoming dangerous. Pop psychology can open the door, but it cannot replace walking through it.
So yes, follow accounts that inspire you. Read the books. Set the boundaries you need. But also remember: not every argument is gaslighting, not every relationship is toxic, and not every ex is a narcissist. Sometimes your sister isn’t emotionally abusive for asking why you’re still texting your ex; she’s just being a sister.
When I wrote about this online, the overwhelming reaction proved just how much we needed this conversation. People recognised themselves, but also admitted they hadn’t thought about the consequences of misusing this language. That paradox, awareness without depth, is exactly what makes pop psychology so tricky.
And that’s why we need to be careful. If we call everything trauma, we risk losing the ability to recognise real trauma. If we label every conflict toxic, we lose the tools to work through disagreement. If we equate knowing the words with doing the work, we cheat ourselves out of genuine growth.
Because if everything is trauma, nothing is.
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