Should I follow José Saramago and write about daily current affairs or should I keep it personal? It should be an easy choice because I don’t know much about current affairs. I only know that the Rupee is weakening against the dollar every day and that translates to high prices of everything. I think I should just stick to my experiences and after all, who wants to read another idiotic take on FTX disaster or the woke agenda? Ah..so I do care about the reader. I do care that I write to please those who read. Now that goes against the current popular advice. Writing is therapeutic. Write to heal. But I don’t need therapy. And I am not sick. Also, one thing I hate to do is to incorporate therapy-speak into daily conversations.
Now that is an interesting topic. Therapy-speak in normal conversation is hurting relationships. If one partner is in therapy and the other is not, you can be quite certain that the other will be seeking a counselor just to understand what the hell all the jargon means. Some very unnatural-sounding comments that I have heard:
- “You are not self-aware and you have no goals!”
- “What you say is triggering. I need this to be a safe space.”
- “My anxiety goes through the roof when you are around.”
- “I can’t think right now, I think I am having a panic attack. I need to process what you just said”.
- “I can’t help it, It’s my BPD.”
- “Could you please get yourself some psychoeducation, so that you can understand what it’s like to be me?”
- “You need therapy.”
This may sound unnatural to some, but normal to others. ‘Normal’ is another word I might want to look into. Therapists wield enormous power. We don’t like to say it and not that we demand it. It is simply the character of psychotherapy – to have power over the client. We have been wielding this power so well, that the outside world has started learning our language. Something is building to a crescendo.
Varuni Fernando 