"Her ex is a narcissist. Their girlfriend has borderline personality disorder. That last relationship was so toxic, riddled with red flags. You lose your keys so often, you must have ADHD. Everyone is violating boundaries, love bombing, gaslighting, sociopathic, neurodivergent, bipolar, delusional, clinically depressed, insecurely attached, and anxious. We have a false sense of competence when using these labels, which has led to an epidemic of therapy speak, where we lean on clinical terms to define our every experience."
"I call this pop pathology: our cultural habit of using clinical language to explain every emotion or conflict, often ignoring context and contrary evidence. Pop pathology is the modern desire to use clinical terms to explain every painful or frustrating experience, and it's a big problem. We've learned just enough about these diagnoses to feel like experts. We are inundated with short, captivating videos on social media that make it seem like it's not that hard to have a grasp on disorders such as narcissism."
Pop pathology refers to the cultural tendency to apply clinical diagnoses and psychiatric language to everyday emotions, conflicts, and relationships. Overusing psychiatric labels creates a false sense of competence, fuels therapy speak, and promotes quick pathologizing that overlooks context and contradictory evidence. Social media amplifies misunderstandings by circulating simplified, misleading portrayals of complex disorders, encouraging self-diagnosis and inflated prevalence perceptions. The phenomenon increases risk of misdiagnosis, disconnection, and poor interpersonal understanding. Therapists should redirect clients from labels toward curiosity, contextual assessment, and careful differential diagnosis that considers criteria, evidence, and individual circumstance.
Read at Psychology Today
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