“My therapist told me that I need to surround myself with positive people and step away from the people who don’t serve me. I need time away from our friendship”. With these two sentences sent via Instagram direct message, my friendship of over a decade, was over.
I was offended by just how clinical the dumping was. It was written in response to a very heartfelt message I’d sent – one that had been incredibly difficult to send and had left me feeling quite exposed. That was in 2019, and our friendship has never recovered. Now, if we bump into each other, we’re essentially strangers and I trace it all back to that “therapy speak” message.
I’m not against therapy and I respect psychology as a discipline that helps us to understand ourselves, and others around us. But it is unfortunate that what comes with the territory, is the modern cultural rise in “therapy speak” that sometimes allows people to couch bad behaviour in lofty or academic language. Or as a way to justify mistreating people.
My ex-friend and I met as teens, through another friend. We established our own relationship and spent three summers travelling during university – from Morocco to Montenegro, Paris to Prague. Our early adulthood holidays are some of my most cherished memories.
I’ll admit that in the lead up to the friendship breakup message, I had been a handful. I’d moved back to England from over 14 years in America on a bit of whim, and found myself lost. I was 30, newly single, unemployed, back living in my father’s house, and with all of that – unhinged.
I’d been fired from a dream job (that I had ended up hating), and used that as an opportunity to run away to Thailand, dump my boyfriend, and eventually, with nothing remaining for me stateside, move back to England.
I’d underestimated the toll it would take to lose everything and start over, and thought that the universe would somehow make it all work out. Instead, when I arrived in London, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. After a decade working in fashion, I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. I was listless and aimless, moping about like a depressed poltergeist.
I had nothing but time and, perhaps selfishly, I assumed that my friends would help me fill these empty days and nights. But while I had been away, my friends had entered a different phase of life. As I was learning about dating apps, they were getting ready to settle down. They all had jobs and serious boyfriends – some even had houses and babies – and they couldn’t drop everything on a random Tuesday to get drunk while I blathered on about terrible dates.
I pretended that everything was fine, but was imploding from within. I was drinking too much, smoking too much, completely lost, but telling myself and others that I was empowered. I’d left a job I hated! A boyfriend I didn’t like! I’d shunned the path of comfort and chose to take the road less travelled- of course I was happy! I was invigorated!
But it was plain to see that everything was definitely not OK. I looked sad and bloated from the unhealthy lifestyle choices I was making, and I’m sure it was obvious to everyone that I was unravelling. And it was in this state that I found myself scrolling through Instagram one night, and I saw one of my best friends had spent a weekend away at her country house with five or so friends. My invitation must have gotten lost in the post.
I’m not usually petty about being included. On any other day, any other year, I wouldn’t have noticed. But in my broken state, it made me sad; and like many people who are very sad while drunk, it also made me angry. And so, I took a regrettable, immature course of action. I sent her a message saying something snarky and short about being invited, and then I blocked her.
After a few weeks, I unblocked her and sent a message. I apologised and explained myself, opening up about everything. How depressed I’d been, how vulnerable I felt, how ridiculous my behaviour was, and how it all stemmed back to feeling insecure and overwhelmed about getting my life back on track and in step with everyone else, who seemed to have it all sorted.
I confessed things I’d been in denial about for months, uncovering the full depths of my despair. And the response I received, after a day or so, was so robotic it could have been written by AI.
My friend’s breakup message to me that day was as impersonal a rejection as an HR manager’s dismissal of an employee. While “therapy speak” tries to remain neutral and avoid inflammatory language, in my experience it can be more upsetting due to its complete lack of humanity.
My friend has never addressed that message, and to some degree I think she’s forgotten. The pandemic came swiftly after and then life moved on – we each got married, and neither attended each other’s wedding. We had children, who have met once, and I think she’d say that we simply drifted.
Perhaps if we talked about it, we could patch things up – but to me it marked such a shift in our relationship that I’ve never particularly wanted to try and salvage it. The person I knew and loved who got a dodgy ear piercing with me in Budapest would never have rejected anyone so coldly using therapy speak – and her ability to do so has irreversibly changed the way I see her.
But who knows? Maybe we’ll drift back together again. If that happens – I’ll have to be clear that there is one thing that will never “serve me” in any friendship: therapy speak.
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