Esther Perel Thinks All This Amateur Therapy-Speak Is Just Making Us Lonelier

The so-called ‘HR-ification’ of interpersonal relations – an appropriate term, given the particularly capitalist bent of its aetiology – involves Insta-therapists encouraging the use of social scripts full of meaningless jargon, such as the much maligned template above, to ‘protect your peace’ and ‘assert your boundaries’ against those aforemention... See more

Of course, therapy and its vernacular are not solely to blame for our era of isolation. Rather, therapy and other tools of introspection have become ways to justify our lack of access to external stimulation. Instead of using therapy to untangle our desires and fears so that we may effectively act on them, therapy becomes the goal in itself—to crea... See more

Operating under an illness model of care doesn’t just carry powerful implications for the way we conceptualize perfectionism, it impacts the way we conceptualize every aspect of mental health. The slightest pang of sadness, a drizzle of frustration—we register any decline in positive emotion with an assumption of pathology. It’s a cultural tic. The

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