Luke Row is a BACP registered psychodynamic therapist in Croydon, South London, with advanced training at Tavistock Relationships. He works with individuals who've tried managing their symptoms and couples tired of managing each other, people ready to understand what's underneath. Book a session →
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Photo by Piotr Makowski on Unsplash
You know all the words now.
Gaslighting. Narcissist. Triggered. Boundaries. Attachment styles. Trauma responses. You can explain exactly why you react the way you do, map your patterns back to childhood, identify everyone else's dysfunctions with clinical precision.
And somehow your relationships still aren't working.
Here's what nobody tells you about learning therapy language: it's supposed to help you understand yourself so you can be more honest about what you're actually feeling. But somewhere along the way, it became a way to avoid feeling anything at all.
The vocabulary that was meant to create clarity has become the thing you hide behind.
It made sense at the time. You were tired of not being able to name what was wrong. Tired of people dismissing your experience, telling you you were overreacting, making you feel crazy for noticing patterns.
Then you found the language. Finally, words for what you'd been feeling. Validation that your experience was real. A framework that explained why relationships kept going wrong in the same ways.
It felt like power. For the first time, you had language that made people listen. Say "that's gaslighting" and suddenly you're not just complaining - you're identifying abuse. Say "I'm triggered" and your distress becomes legitimate rather than dramatic. Say "I'm setting boundaries" and your decisions become self-care rather than selfishness.
The words worked. They gave you authority. They made your feelings sound reasonable.
And then, gradually, they became the only way you knew how to talk about what hurt.
"You're gaslighting me."
Do you mean: someone is systematically manipulating you to doubt your sanity? Or do you mean: you and your partner remember yesterday's argument differently and it's making you feel like your version doesn't matter?
Those are very different things. The first is abuse. The second is two people having two different experiences of the same event, which is just what humans do.
But calling it gaslighting means you don't have to sit with the more uncomfortable possibility - that maybe you're both right about different parts of it, maybe neither of you is lying, maybe relationships are just hard and memory is unreliable and sometimes you feel dismissed without being gaslit.
"They're a narcissist."
Do you mean: this person has a personality disorder characterised by grandiosity, lack of empathy, and a pattern of exploitative relationships? Or do you mean: they hurt you, they didn't love you the way you needed, and it's easier to diagnose them than to grieve the fact that it just didn't work?
Clinical narcissism is rare. Being a bit shit in relationships is extremely common. But one of those lets you be the victim of a disordered person. The other requires you to accept that sometimes people just don't choose you, and that's devastating but it's not a diagnosis.
"I was triggered."
Do you mean: something in the present activated an old trauma response and your nervous system genuinely couldn't tell the difference between now and then? Or do you mean: you felt something uncomfortable and you need it to be taken seriously?
Because if everything that upsets you is a trigger, then nothing is. You're just having normal human reactions to things and calling them trauma responses because that makes them sound more legitimate.
Here's what's actually happening: you've learned to translate your feelings into clinical language before you've even felt them.
Something hurts. Before you can even register what the hurt feels like - where it sits in your body, what it reminds you of, what it makes you want to do - you've already labelled it. Categorised it. Turned it into a diagnosis or a syndrome or a violation.
Your partner cancels plans. You feel something sharp and panicky. But before you can sit with that feeling long enough to understand it, you've already decided: "This triggered my abandonment wound."
Maybe it did. Or maybe you're just disappointed and scared they don't want to see you as much as you want to see them. Maybe it's simpler than trauma. Maybe it's just the very human fear of not mattering to someone you care about.
But "I'm scared you don't want me" makes you vulnerable. "This triggered my abandonment wound" makes you right.
The therapy language protects you from the actual feeling underneath. It lets you explain your reaction without having to risk being wrong about it. It turns messy, uncertain human emotion into something technical and therefore inarguable.
And it works. Until it doesn't.
The cruelest irony is that the very vocabulary meant to help you take responsibility has become the most sophisticated way to avoid it.
"I can't help my reaction - it's my attachment style."
"I'm not apologising - I was having an amygdala hijack."
"I need to prioritise my mental health" (translation: I'm ending this but I'm going to make it sound like wellness rather than choice).
You're not using therapy language to understand yourself better. You're using it to explain why you don't need to change.
Every difficult piece of feedback becomes a boundary violation. Every reasonable expectation becomes a trigger. Every consequence of your behaviour becomes someone else's failure to hold space for your healing.
Your partner asks you to do something you agreed to do. You don't want to. But "I don't want to" sounds childish, so instead: "That request feels like a boundary violation and I'm going to need some time to regulate before we can discuss this."
See what just happened? You turned a normal relationship negotiation into a therapeutic crisis. Your partner can't just be annoyed you didn't do the thing - now they're traumatising you by having expectations.
This isn't therapy. This is therapy vocabulary in service of never being wrong.
Let's talk about boundaries specifically, because this word has been so thoroughly mangled that it barely means anything anymore.
A boundary is about what you will do, not what other people must do.
"I'm not comfortable discussing my relationship history with you yet" is a boundary.
"You're not allowed to ask me about my past because it's invasive" is a demand.
The first is about your behaviour. The second is about controlling theirs.
But we've started calling every preference a boundary, every discomfort a violation, every limit we want to impose on someone else an act of self-care.
"I've decided we're only seeing each other twice a week now - I'm setting boundaries."
"I need you to never mention [completely normal topic] - that's my boundary."
"I'm going to make unilateral decisions about our relationship and you're toxic if you question them - boundaries."
That's not boundaries. That's just imposing your will on someone else and using therapeutic language to make it unchallengeable.
Real boundaries sound like: "I'm not available after 9pm." Not: "You're not allowed to call me after 9pm."
See the difference? One is about what you'll do. One is about what they can't do. One is a boundary. One is control dressed as self-care.
None of this is to say therapy doesn't have its own language - it does. But it's nothing like what's escaped into the wild.
Real therapy isn't about learning diagnostic categories for everyone in your life. It's not about identifying whose fault things are. It's not about collecting evidence that you're right and everyone else is disordered.
When someone comes to me saying "my ex was a narcissist," I'm not interested in whether that's diagnostically accurate. I'm interested in what happened to you in that relationship. What did it feel like? Where did you lose yourself? What are you still carrying?
The work isn't about labelling someone else's pathology. It's about understanding your actual experience underneath all the explaining.
Because here's what I notice: the more sophisticated your psychological vocabulary, the harder it often is to access what you're actually feeling. You've become so good at analysing your reactions that you've forgotten how to just have them.
The words that were supposed to create understanding have become a barrier between you and your own experience.
If you can't say what you mean without therapy vocabulary, you don't actually know what you mean yet.
Try it:
"You're gaslighting me" → "I feel like my reality isn't valid to you and that's frightening."
"This triggered my abandonment wound" → "When you cancelled I felt terrified you were pulling away."
"I need to set a boundary" → "I'm not okay with this and we need to talk about it."
Notice the difference?
The first versions are shields. They sound clinical, authoritative, unchallengeable. They protect you from being wrong. They make the other person responsible for a diagnosis rather than a feeling.
The second versions are vulnerable. They're specific. They're about you, not about what's wrong with them. They create the possibility of being met rather than the certainty of being right.
The first versions end conversations. The second versions start them.
Real intimacy requires risk. Not the performed vulnerability where you announce "I'm going to be vulnerable now" before making a carefully curated disclosure designed to elicit a specific response. Actual risk, where you don't know if the other person will understand, where you might get it wrong, where you could look foolish.
Therapy speak protects you from that risk. It keeps everything clinical. Everyone at arm's length. You can explain your patterns without actually changing them. You can demand your triggers be accommodated without doing the work to heal them. You can pathologise everyone who doesn't love you the way you want.
But you can't connect through bulletproof glass.
The people in your life aren't diagnostic categories. Your relationships aren't case studies. And sometimes two people just hurt each other in that ordinary, stupid way that humans do - not because anyone's disordered, just because intimacy is hard and people are complicated and love doesn't come with an instruction manual.
Sometimes you're not triggered, you're just upset.
Sometimes they're not a narcissist, they're just wrong for you.
Sometimes it's not a trauma response, it's just your personality.
Sometimes you're not setting boundaries, you're just being difficult.
And sometimes the most honest thing you can say is: "I'm hurt and I don't know why and I'm probably overreacting but it still feels awful."
That sentence has no clinical authority. No diagnostic weight. No therapeutic framework. It's just true.
And truth, it turns out, is what actually creates connection.
You don't need better therapeutic terminology. You need the courage to say what you actually mean.
To be angry without making it a trauma response. To be hurt without making it a syndrome. To want things from people without turning your wants into their disorders.
The work isn't about learning more psychology. It's about using less of it. It's about risking being wrong, being messy, being human rather than clinically precise.
Your partner isn't trying to gaslight you - they just don't understand why you're upset and they're defending themselves badly.
Your friend isn't violating your boundaries - you just want different things from the friendship and haven't said so directly.
You're not triggered - you're scared and angry and hurt, which is what people feel when things aren't okay.
These are harder sentences to say. They make you vulnerable. They don't come with the built-in authority of diagnostic language.
But they're also the only sentences that have any chance of actually being heard.
Because the other person can't argue with "I felt terrified when you cancelled." They can absolutely argue with "You triggered my abandonment trauma."
The first one is about you. The second one is about what's wrong with them.
Guess which one creates the possibility of connection?
The psychological sophistication you've worked so hard to develop isn't the problem. Understanding attachment theory, recognising your patterns, having language for your experience - none of that is bad.
What's bad is using that understanding to avoid the very thing it was meant to help you do: feel what you feel and say what you mean.
The therapy vocabulary was supposed to be a bridge to honesty. Somewhere along the way, it became a wall.
You're allowed to be hurt without pathologising the person who hurt you. You're allowed to be angry without calling it a trauma response. You're allowed to want things without framing them as boundaries people are violating.
You're allowed to just be a person having feelings about another person, without turning it into a clinical assessment.
That's actually what intimacy is. Not diagnostic precision. Not psychological sophistication. Just two people trying to be honest about what's happening between them, even when it's messy and uncertain and neither of them is entirely sure they're right.
The words were meant to help you get there. They've become the thing stopping you.
Maybe it's time to try saying what you mean instead.
What I do: Couples Therapy in Croydon
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