The Cart And Horse Life

One of the phenomena of modern life
that I carefully choose my distance from
is the casual inflation of the ways
that human emotions are commonly decribed
into a new highly performative language.

Oh, I know, it is part of the modern media
is to make a virtue of being so inexact, for emphasis.
As presenters seek to make their readers
and listeners work harder to undersgtand,
and then conflate their audiences failure
to understand with them having a poor work ethic.

Yes some trauma is real, but therapy speak
is a world of its own, where in the past
it was difficult to talks for the mix of shame,
stigma and silence, now it the noise is so noisy
that no disrress can be ordinary, every emotion
breeds its own pathologising adjective,
from 'My distress' up to 'My anxiety, my ADHD,
my autism', until people talk ourselves
out of being useful through the way they reverse
symptom and anaalysis, and put the cart of symptom
before the horse of analysis, so the patient
can gain the attention of whoever they are talking to.

Describing being upset as 'being triggered' is unhelpful,
unless, perhaps, there is literally a gun in the situation.

There is a way out of this: Do less, think more,
and choose your words with more care for them,
and who you want to listen to you, than you have shown before.