Therapy Culture Is Losing the Plot

Something strange is happening to how we talk about pain.

Every disappointment now needs a diagnosis.

Every breakup needs a villain.

Every uncomfortable feeling needs a label that sounds clinical enough to justify it.

A guy was intense at the start and then pulled away. That is not heartbreak anymore. That is love bombing.

Your parents shouted when you were a kid. That is not imperfect parenting. That is narcissistic abuse.

You feel anxious about life. That is not uncertainty. That is unresolved trauma.

It feels like no one is allowed to simply be sad, disappointed, confused, or hurt.

Normal human experiences are being upgraded into psychological crimes.

The language sounds sophisticated. It sounds self aware. It sounds healing. In practice, it often does the opposite.

When we use words like gaslighting and trauma casually, we inflate everyday pain into something extraordinary. Pain becomes more legitimate when it has a label. Hurt feels more important when it has a villain attached to it. The story becomes cleaner when someone else is clearly broken.

There is comfort in that.

If what happened to me was abuse, then my pain is justified.

If my ex was toxic, then I do not have to sit with rejection.

If my parents were narcissists, then I never have to grapple with their humanity.

Therapy language gives us a shortcut around discomfort.

The problem is not that abuse does not exist. Real abuse exists. Serious trauma exists. People suffer in ways that deserve protection, treatment, and deep care.

The problem is dilution.

When everything is trauma, nothing is.

When everyone is a narcissist, the word loses meaning.

When every bad relationship is abuse, we stop learning how to navigate conflict, disappointment, and loss.

Life hurts sometimes.

People disappoint us.

Relationships end badly.

Parents fail us in ways both big and small.

None of that requires a diagnosis to be real.

Growing up is uncomfortable. Becoming an adult is disorienting. Learning how to choose better partners often involves choosing the wrong ones first. Developing emotional strength means surviving moments that feel unfair.

Those experiences are not trauma by default. They are growth pains.

The danger of therapy culture gone wild is that it quietly teaches fragility. It suggests that discomfort is damage. It frames resilience as denial. It trains people to see themselves primarily as victims of other people rather than participants in their own lives.

It also makes forgiveness harder. Nuance disappears. Complexity dies. Anyone who hurts you becomes morally defective rather than human.

Pain does not need to be exceptional to matter.

You can be heartbroken without being abused.

You can be disappointed without being traumatized.

You can struggle without being broken.

Hard things are still hard even when they are ordinary.

Learning to sit with discomfort, reflect honestly, and take responsibility for your patterns is not cruelty. It is adulthood.

We are not trauma.

We are human.

Sometimes life just hurts.

Sometimes people get it wrong.

Sometimes you do too.

That does not mean you are damaged.

It means you are growing.

And that is okay.