Joe Nucci, like many brand-new therapists, loved showing off his fancy new psychology vocabulary during grad school. All these diagnoses and concepts were exciting, Nucci says, and helped explain so much. But as he continued his schooling, he realized that applying those terms in everyday life could be perilous.
Some self-help creators online could use a bit of that wisdom. As the stigma surrounding mental health has waned over the last 10 years, an influx of well-meaning influencers and consumers looking to understand more about themselves may have bought into flattened descriptions of popular terms — like boundaries or narcissism — or have internalized simplistic ideas about their emotions. “I was noticing that not only was some of it just technically incorrect, but it was being explained or applied in a way that ultimately was harmful,” Nucci says. “If people were taking that advice too literally or without the important missing nuance, it could lead to decisions that would actually hurt mental health and not help it.”
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So Nucci, a licensed psychotherapist in private practice with over 250,000 followers on Instagram, set out to dispel some of those myths — to correct the therapy-speak that has come to dominate mental health. In Psychobabble: Viral Mental Health Myths and the Truths to Set You Free, Nucci outlines over three dozen misconceptions that have rampantly circulated online. Here, he discusses seven of the most pervasive, how we got here, and how to fight back.
Myth: Your diagnosis explains who you are
Over the last decade or so, Nucci has noticed discussions around diagnoses morph from “You have X disorder” and “You are so much more than a label” to “almost a personality feature,” he says. Diagnoses are best utilized to inform a treatment plan to promote better functioning, Nucci says. But when people wear their diagnoses like a label, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Those with ADHD, for example, may run late because they are distracted, he explains. “With the right medication, with the right mindset shifts, with the right coaching and executive functioning training, you can actually minimize how often you run late and to the point where you’re not running late any more than the typical person,” he says. But if you believe running late is an unchangeable facet of your personality, you may make the symptoms worse and close yourself off to improvement.
Instead of relying on one term to define yourself, Nucci suggests highlighting many of your qualities using a variety of words: creative, outgoing, scatterbrained at times. “We need to be using more language,” he says, “not less.”
Myth: You’re a people pleaser
Nucci takes issue with the term “people pleaser” because it isn’t specific and could refer to any number of behaviors. “Are you going along with things and then elevating your sense of moral superiority?” he says. “Are you self-sacrificing for one reason or another?” Some people may just be more agreeable than others and take pleasure when deferring to loved ones.
So-called people pleasing becomes problematic when it’s motivated by conflict aversion — you’re afraid of upsetting a friend so you don’t voice your opinion even when you want to. In his own life, Nucci has been working on standing his ground and trying not to assume others are mad at him — he’s been open with friends and family about it. “People, overall, were really supportive,” he says.
Like many pop psychology-related concepts, the widely accepted definition of “love bombing” has shifted. Originally intended to refer to a manipulation tactic where love and affection are used to control another person, the understanding of love bombing tends to point to any relationship that’s progressing quickly. “There are so many reasons why people move fast in dating,” Nucci says: lust, infatuation, falling for an idea of a person, confused expectations.
Just because someone has intense feelings early in a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean they’re attempting to manipulate their romantic partner.
Other popular mental health-related terms have also followed a similar trajectory: think about the social media posts you’ve seen referring to people as “toxic” or “narcissists.”
As for love bombing, just because someone has intense feelings early in a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean they’re attempting to manipulate their romantic partner. Nor does taking a pause to slow things down if you’re considering whether to continue dating after the initial infatuation has worn off.
Myth: You’re powerless to solve your problems
Inspired by a metaphor he often saw online — “A flower isn’t doing well. Do you blame the flower, or do you blame the quality of the soil, the air, the sunlight?” — Nucci believes both systemic societal issues and personal autonomy play a role in mental health. Racism, sexism, discrimination, and any number of systemic issues have certainly impacted his patients, Nucci says, but it’s important for mental health practitioners to remember their patients have agency, too.
Sometimes, repeatedly reminding people of all the ways the world is unfair may prevent them from seeing a way forward. “If you’re on the really extreme end of prioritizing systemic justice,” Nucci says, “there’s going to be situations in which you could actually do something as an individual. You don’t want to be so rigid in that stance that you miss the easy wins of stuff you can do and stuff that you can work on.”
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge external forces you can’t control. Being wholly committed to the idea that you can change your circumstances if you just work hard enough might only lead to burnout, exhaustion, and frustration. “You’re not actually advancing towards the goals that you value,” Nucci says. “Is it adaptive of you to take a step back, to take a deep breath and look at your context, look at the system that you’re in? Maybe that’s your family, maybe that’s your culture or country … That can also be really, really healing.”
Myth: You should learn as much about mental health as you can
Becoming an amateur expert in mental health concepts doesn’t equate with healing, Nucci says. In therapy, counselors typically begin by helping patients name their experiences, process them, and analyze them, he explains. “Sometimes, when people are able to articulate a cogent analysis, their symptoms go away — not always, but sometimes,” Nucci says. “At that point you want to stop analyzing, because if you continue, it quickly becomes obsessing, ruminating.”
In which case, learning more or digging deeper emotionally might not help. Instead, therapists could turn their approach to other forms of treatment, like cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on shifting thought patterns, or behavioral therapy, where you work on changing your actions. Suffice to say, endlessly trying to learn about mental health concepts and terminology online can also become counterproductive outside of a therapeutic environment.
Myth: You can never have enough emotional intimacy
Most people differ in how open and vulnerable they expect their romantic relationships to be. Some want their significant other to be extremely expressive and raw; others might not be comfortable divulging everything to their spouse. You shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t want to tell your partner what you’d tell your therapist. “The type of intimacy that you would give your therapist, the types of details, the types of stuff you would talk about, I would not necessarily recommend speaking to your partner that way,” Nucci says.
The same goes for your children. Just because you’d confide in a friend about trauma from your past doesn’t mean it’s necessarily appropriate to disclose that to your kids.
Vulnerability is important in close relationships, but it doesn’t mean you have to be totally vulnerable with every person you meet. “Maybe only one person gets that vulnerability with you,” Nucci says. “Maybe it’s your partner, maybe it’s your therapist, maybe it’s a friend.”
Myth: You need therapy if you want a relationship
While therapists are certainly qualified to treat patients on their mental health journeys, they are not “wise sages” on all topics, Nucci says, especially love. Therapy can help you identify unhelpful patterns in relationships and give you skills to help fix them, but it won’t replace the experience of actually dating.
“You’ve got to learn to put yourself back out there, and that’s all any of us can do,” Nucci says. “If that’s something you’re struggling with, therapy can be a great intermediate support for you, but I think it’s inaccurate to say that it will make you completely ready.”