In the United States, basic mental-health care remains a luxury item; there’s a reason that the most fluent speakers of the trending argot tend to be wealthy and white. This may explain some of the irritation that therapy-speak occasionally provokes: the words suggest a sort of woke posturing, a theatrical deference to norms of kindness, and they... See more

Therapy-speak, with its first-person narratives of pain, assumes a similar link between vulnerability and identity. Its confessional aspect doubles as an affirmation of humanness, which is always both empowered and frail.

Consider “holding space,” a standout in the new vernacular. The words often appear as a verb phrase, which the

Gender and Sexuality Therapy Center

defines as “putting your focus on someone to support them as they feel their feelings.”