The Pathology of Pathologizing

Maybe it isn’t trauma, maybe it doesn’t need processing.

Pop Psychology Vernacular

The point of therapy, as a clinical supervisor once told me, is to eventually get out of therapy. I was working a residential therapeutic treatment job at the time, and the wisdom has circulated my awareness since.

Therapy is popular and common now, if you can afford it. It doesn’t really need to be said, but I’ll say it — therapy can be amazing and very supportive. I’m not here to make a case for *if* or *why* there is an increase in mental illness and therapeutic treatment in certain groups. I am rather interested, though, in how the popularization of therapy and psychology has been impacting language and behavior, particularly in the younger generation.

As Joshua Schrei said recently on The Emerald podcast, “pathologizing is at an all-time high…perceived pathologies are celebrated, used as currency in one instance, and then vilified in another…my own trauma story can become a way of [making myself unassailable]…yet calling out someone else’s trauma can be a way of putting them down.”¹

The language of psychology and pathology are dominating many areas of discourse. Turn left or right and you’ll hear pop psychology terms used to explain or justify oneself, or to condemn someone else. For example: “I’m like this because of my childhood trauma or my anxious attachment style.” Or, “he’s a toxic narcissist with a dysregulated nervous system.” (What a burn!) We hear people say “I’ve been processing this old story…” and don’t bat an eye. Because yes, of course you’ve been processing. It is our humble duty to process everything that has happened / is happening / might happen next.²

But what are we getting out of constantly talking about our mental ills, our anxieties, our trauma or our boundaries? What are we missing out on when we are excessively processing our individual experiences? Life itself, perhaps?

Psych-speech is everywhere.

Our society is largely characterized by consumerism, the internet, and individualism. This has made it easy for psychology and pathology-speech to become mainstream in a very typical way. Mentioning the word ‘trauma’ becomes a marketing tool in the wellness industry. Companies will incorporate select pieces of Eastern spirituality, which are often conflated with Western psychology, in order to increase credibility or appeal to the masses. A meditation break to soothe your inner child might enhance your neural network and boost productivity, after all. Or it may be that you need a hormone healing program to reverse your chronic burnout. Perhaps spending more money and time rewiring your limiting beliefs would also help.

It makes sense that the language of psychology has infiltrated self-care, wellness, and beyond. Many of these practices can be interesting and quite useful. But maybe, you don’t have to keep processing what happened. You could try just moving on. Instead of talking endlessly about your feelings, you could just feel them. We may not ever understand why or how that thing happened, so perhaps we can just accept that it did.

To be clear, I definitely participate in aspects of what I’m biting at. I think there’s a lot of truth and goodness in the veins of therapy and psychology. This topic does deserve, however, a balanced and nuanced investigation.

Normalizing pathology, or pathologizing normalcy?

What’s therapy and psychology for, anyways? Originally, much of psychological treatment sought to make people more “normal” — to get rid of maladaptive behaviors and integrate into society. In many ways, this is still true, although the language would more likely say that it’s to rewrite old patterns, learn constructive coping skills, and discover the fullness of our authentic selves. Broadly, the point of therapy should still be to eventually be okay enough to leave therapy.

The zeitgeist carries the incorrect idea that any deviation from “normalcy” or feelings of relative neutrality means that something is “wrong” with you. Herein lies the desire for a diagnosis, or a term, to justify and explain our experience. Maybe this is because we all just want to feel understood, and believe that in order for our pain or suffering to be valid, it must be severe enough to be labeled as trauma or a diagnosis from the DSM-V. Honestly, I don’t know, it probably varies widely.

This tendency to reach for a diagnosis or psychological explanation, when combined with the trend to “normalize” things, can result in what appears to be an obsessive sort of attachment to our brokenness. The “I am not ok and I will continue to be not ok” narrative, which is then normalized.

A slightly different (but similar) line of thinking says, “don’t pathologize my brokenness, my brokenness is what makes me who I am.” This often involves a kind of disdain for the establishment of modern Western medicine and its emphasis on prescriptions rather than root causes. While embracing the messiness of being human is indeed a great message, it’s important to note that this resistance to mainstream pathology can be taken to the extreme, such as when it seeks to make all types of dysfunction simply an expression of the “authentic self”.

So, what is it, then — is every deviation from supposed normalcy potentially diagnosable, or does nothing warrant a diagnosis? Is it normal to have a mental illness, or should we run from normalization and buck against the entire system of Western psychiatry itself? Joshua Schrei questions these reductionist options: “What if neither the quest for individual psychological normalcy and wellness, nor the perpetual celebration of individual brokenness, is a complete picture?”³

What a richly multifaceted discussion. The answers, of course, are somewhere in between. Psychiatric illness is real, but not everyone has a psychiatric illness. Mental disorders should not be interchangeable with the natural fluctuations of human emotionality, nor should they be dismissed as being mere variations of authenticity. Some things are legitimately dysfunctional and should be treated, not normalized.

Getting diagnosed with anorexia allowed me to actually get treatment and was essential to my recovery. I’d probably still be brittle and in denial, or buried in the ground, if not for the diagnosis. Finding the name for something that you’ve known is wrong can be profoundly relieving. Acknowledging specifically what is going on is vitally important for securing the appropriate help.

A diagnosis should serve to help you figure out how to best live with it, and, if it’s ever possible, how to move past it. This is not because you’re any less of a person if you have a disorder — that’s literally what psychology going mainstream has been working to do. You’re no less valuable to society, you are no less inherently deserving and worthy of a beautiful life if you have a mental illness. Of course that’s true. Normalizing mental illness doesn’t mean mental illness should be normal — it just means that it’s ok to have a mental illness if you do.

Remembering what it’s all for —

How about we focus on normalizing the wide range of human emotions and experiences? We will feel all kinds of ways, for varying periods of time, and will inevitably experience things that are very hard, very sad, and that sometimes make us very angry. No amount of therapy or processing will make this untrue.

Maybe there is trauma you need to deal with, and maybe a therapist would really help. Maybe you should seek a diagnosis, and if so, may that bring you peace and healing. Also, maybe nothing is wrong with you. Maybe you’re just ok.

Psychology and mental health discourse should only take up as much space as proves to be valuable in our wild and beautiful lives. Let us remember, and discover, what else we are here for.

Maggie

1. This is a fantastic podcast. The episode I’m quoting here is The Revolution will not be Psychologized.

2. My tongue is in my cheek, but it’s ringing true, isn’t it?

3. Again, this episode of The Emerald.