Love bombing, gaslighting, and the problem with pathologising dating talk

The biggest problem with victimhood chic is that it sucks attention away from actual victims. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The more people there are who proclaim themselves victims over tiny infractions, the harder it becomes to see who the real victims actually are.

We have expanded our definitions of many clinical terms to include almost all normal human behavior, terms like intrusive thoughts and mania and dissociation (often misspoken as disassociation). We have confused “normalization” for “universalization” when it comes to clinical terminology, taking diagnostic criteria and symptoms and morphing their m

So many of the words we introduce have killjoy histories. When we use them, we are heard as making a point, a sore point, although in time some of them become less pointed, more habitual.

The transformation of “gatekeeping” is, altogether, relatively benign, if not a little frustrating. But many of these linguistic changes create actual harm, especially as many of our watered-down words relate to identifying and challenging power.

“I think the word ‘grief’ is sort of like the word ‘diversity.’ It just flattens out the problem.