On the pathologizing of everyday behaviors.
I noticed it sporadically at first. I found myself proclaiming to "process" every interaction, even when I had no intention of actually processing. Or maybe I was "setting boundaries" in order to get out of social engagements or accusing my partner of burdening me with the "emotional labor" of cleaning up after dinner — which isn't actually emotional labor at all. |
The terms of psychotherapy had seeped into my everyday speech — and everyone else's, too. "Anxiety," which we are indeed experiencing at record heights, is no longer just a feeling of dread, but a term you can buy printed on a T-shirt to be worn like a badge of honor. Being a perfectionist, or indecisive, or seemingly unable to stop scrolling through Instagram, are not just bad habits, or personality flaws, or something I need to work on in therapy, but "trauma responses" — and, well, daring to question my trauma would make me feel "emotionally unsafe" (or at least uncomfortable). |
Meanwhile, the actor Channing Tatum is "traumatized" by his X-Men spinoff being called off, so much so that he can no longer watch "The Avengers." Demi Lovato is a victim of diet culture's "harmful messaging" — because there were sugar-free products at a frozen yogurt shop the singer went to. And the dad on Twitter who documented his refusal to help his young daughter open a can of beans (he became known as "bean dad") is not just a jerk, but an "abuser" — leading to an actual visit from Child Protective Services. |
And then, of course, there is the guy who sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place: West Elm Caleb (sorry to bring him up again). Caleb, a 25-year-old furniture designer, sparked viral mania last month after two-timing a bunch of women on Tinder — or, in the language of today, "love bombing," "gaslighting," then ghosting them. (For the record, he appears to be doing just fine.) |
These are the meme-ified examples, but trauma as the lens through which we view our problems, as I wrote in a recent piece, is all around us: In the form of instructional Instagram videos teaching us how to spot "narcissistic" behavior; on #traumatok, a TikTok hashtag with some 600 million views (not to be confused with #narctok, for narcissism, which has 1.8 billion); in the fact that the sharing of one's trauma is so ubiquitous that it now has a name: "trauma dumping." |
Seriously, what is going on? |
I am not the first person notice this phenomenon; and indeed, psychologists have been lamenting it for longer. But it was fascinating to connect the dots between the popularity of such language — much of it playing out online — and algorithms that reward it. Are we all being subconsciously incentivized to overstate our own harm? |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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