The success or effectiveness of psychotherapy relies on your willingness to be open to the process and be honest about what you’re feeling. It also depends on the dynamics of the patient-therapist relationship.

Talk therapy, also known as psychotherapy, is what mental health professionals use to communicate with their patients. The purpose of talk therapy is to help identify issues causing emotional distress.

Therapy speak can prevent the person from clearly and correctly understanding their situation or relationship.[12] Labeling a person or situation with psychology jargon may stop people from exploring any of the nuances or complexities.[4][12][17] For example, someone may say that a person is toxic, when it would be more productive to understand how they have been hurt by this person, or even whether they have been hurt.[12] Additionally, it may disempower people and reduce their psychological resilience by causing them to believe that minor or ordinary unpleasant feelings are symptoms of psychological disorders.[8][24] This can make managing the situation seem more difficult and can produce an identity around being mentally ill.[8]

Like other forms of pop psychology,[15] therapy speak can result in miscommunication.[18][16] When people use the same word to mean different things, they may have difficulty understanding each other.[3] For example, someone might talk about trauma bonding, thinking that it's the emotional bond between survivors of a shared experience; the actual meaning is the emotional attachment of abuse victims to their abusers.[12][19] Using the word to refer to a relationship between abuse survivors will confuse people who believe it refers to an abuser–victim relationship, and vice versa. Therapists may deal with this by asking the speaker to define the word or explain it in more detail.[3][12][14] It also impairs communication by substituting a superficial judgement for clear communication.[19]

Among people who are dating, using therapy speak may be an attempt to signal that the speaker is emotionally mature or financially stable.[19] Talking about psychotherapy during a first date may increase the likelihood of a second date.[21]

Therapy speak is sometimes used by "deeply insecure" people to mask their discomfort, avoid conflict, or to create distance in a relationship.[3][16][8] Instead of saying something clear, like "I don't want to be friends any longer", they may use therapy speak and instead say something vague like "I don't have the emotional capacity for a relationship".[3][6] It may be used as a defence mechanism to put emotional distance between them, their feelings, and the situation.[5] They may be hoping that using therapy speak will elicit more sympathy, or at least tamp down overt criticism of themselves.[6] Because it can distance the speaker from culpability for what they say and do, it has been compared to the jargon used in businesses in human resource policies and similarly formal corporate communications to employees.[2][15]

People use therapy speak because it makes themselves or their emotions sound more important or superior.[3][17] In this sense, the use of therapy speak may be no different from academese, which is jargon needlessly used by university professors and other academics to make themselves sound educated.[18] This can come across as the speaker being condescending and unkind.[15] Therapy speak may be used in other ways to claim social status, e.g., by engaging in conspicuous consumption under the guise of self-care.[16]

Therapy speak is the incorrect use of jargon from psychology, especially jargon related to psychotherapy and mental health.[1] It tends to be linguistically prescriptive and formal in tone.[2] Therapy speak is related to psychobabble and buzzwords.[3][4][5] It is vulnerable to miscommunication and relationship damage as a result of the speaker not fully understanding the terms they are using, as well as using the words in a weaponized or abusive manner.[4][6] Therapy speak is not generally used by therapists during psychotherapy sessions.

According to psychotherapist Esther Perel, "[in therapy speech], there is such an emphasis on the ‘self-care’ aspect of it that is actually making us more isolated and more alone, because the focus is just on the self".[21] Therapists find that using therapy speak can prevent people from being open and vulnerable with each other.[7] It may be used in an attempt to define the other person's lived experiences.[3] It is frequently used in ways that elevate a one-sided view of a relationship or situation.[9]