Over the last week, professional surfer and model Sarah Brady posted a series of alleged text exchanges between her and her ex-boyfriend Jonah Hill, the actor. The slew of texts, which Brady labeled as indicative of “emotionally abusive” behavior, appear to show Hill demanding that Brady remove Instagram photos of herself in swimsuits, turn down modeling jobs, avoid casual and professional contact with male surfers and forgo friendships with women he deems “unstable.” She says he invoked their couples therapist to convey the weight of his demands.
“If you need surfing with men, boundaryless inappropriate friendships with men, to model, to post photos of yourself in a bathing suit, to post sexual pictures, friendships with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past beyond getting a lunch or coffee or something respectful, I am not the right partner for you,” reads one of these texts, which MSNBC has not independently verified in terms of both accuracy and context. “These are my boundaries for romantic partnership.”
There’s a lot to unpack in these screenshots, but perhaps the most glaring issue is Hill’s apparent use of so-called therapy speak — language like “boundaries,” “violation” and “accountability” — and the potential consequences of that sort of rhetoric invoked in a casual setting.
Over the last few years — hastened by the mass isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic — once-clinical language has gone mainstream. It shows up in casual jokes about being “triggered.” It shows up on dating apps like Hinge, where users can fill in prompts like “A boundary of mine is___” and “My therapist would say I___.” It shows up on TikTok, where thousands of talking heads are ready to teach fans the signs of “love bombing.” It’s even on reality TV shows like “The Bachelorette,” on which Monday night a male contestant discussed the “trauma” of being cheated on and the ways the structure of the show has forced him to face his past.
Clinical-sounding terms like “gaslighting,” “trauma,” “narcissist” and “boundary-setting” have entered the lexicon at a rapid clip because of social media and a heightened understanding that mental health care is both essential and often inaccessible in this country.
This might seem like a good thing. And in some ways, it is. Language gives us the ability to name real experiences and point to their importance.
This might seem like a good thing. And in some ways, it is. Language gives us the ability to name real experiences and point to their importance. Instead of being taboo, seeking therapy has become a badge of honor in many circles, especially among young people. But this linguistic proliferation has also left a lot of room for weighty, complex terms to be misused, appropriated and even weaponized.
Therapy, like so many things under late capitalism, has become a tool for personal branding. And thus, it is ripe for manipulation. People can use their knowledge of therapeutic language as a way to signal their inherent goodness, even if it is unearned. In a New York Times piece from February, comedian and podcast host Jared Fried described therapy speak as a “cheat code [straight] men are using” because “it gets them more women.” My initial reaction to reading that quote was “gross!” But it also sounds about right.
According to Amanda Montell, author of “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism” and “Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language,” therapy speak can allow people who are not experts or clinicians to “blunt the nuances” of these terms and “hide power abuse or unhealthy behaviors underneath legitimate-sounding therapy language.” Using it can imply authority and objective truth, even if neither exists.
If a friend or romantic partner “sets a boundary,” for example, it can leave little room for further discussion, even if that “boundary” feels unreasonable or controlling. This creates a linguistic trap: You can either respect the boundary (i.e., give in to the other person’s demands, no matter how harmful they are) or push back, with the latter risking being branded a boundary-violator.
You can see this dynamic in Hill and Brady's alleged text exchanges. According to those screen grabs, one of Hill’s boundaries is that Brady can’t “surf with men,” a behavior that he has already defined as inappropriate and unnecessary. Never mind that Brady is a professional surfer or that surfing is an overwhelmingly male field or that such a boundary would inevitably hinder her ability to thrive professionally or that he knew all of these things before they began dating. She is left to try to navigate her needs within the cloistered terms he has already set. His boundary arguably trumps her autonomy.
“A boundary is something that you are free to express. It’s not something that the other person necessarily has to follow,” said Joanna Hurwitz, a therapist and licensed clinical social worker. So when a boundary is expressed as more of an “order” or “an ultimatum” attached to the threat of punishment, “it becomes unhealthy and manipulative.”
Boundary-setting, like all therapeutic tools, is most useful when deployed by a professional who can tailor advice and care to a particular patient’s needs .
Boundary-setting, like all therapeutic tools, is most useful when deployed by a professional who can tailor advice and care to a particular patient’s needs and help them put that advice into practice. And even therapists are human beings, Hurwitz stressed, which means they are “just as prone to influence” from the larger culture as anyone else might be. There is no exact science to human relationships.
Healthy relationships require people to view each other as teammates rather than adversaries. This means approaching conflict from a place of mutuality, a concept that Rebecca Fishbein defined as “thinking about the other person’s needs and your needs at the same time, and deciding which are more urgent to prioritize at the moment,” in an investigation into therapy speak for Bustle.
The inconvenient truth is that human relationships are complicated as hell. They’re full of contradictions and nuances and structural inequalities — which really matter in these discussions! — and no catch-all term is going to be able to capture them all. Real, long-lasting, healthy connection requires ongoing work from both parties, trust and good faith.
Therapy speak is most likely here to stay. We need to keep talking about how it is used and how to identify when it is being used incorrectly. Montell recommends being mindful of our own language — when we deploy it, how we deploy it and why.
“If you’re invoking the buzzword because it makes you feel good and it makes you feel powerful and makes you feel superior, that’s a sign to question and probe and figure out what it is you really mean,” said Montell. “It says something about where we’re at as a society that we’re tossing around ‘boundaries’ and ‘dysregulated’ and ‘narcissists’ willy-nilly. We are unwell, we are in pain, we are isolated, we are not connecting very well. And what is this terminology for? It’s to help us connect with others better.”
