The rise of HR speak

For the last several years, it has been almost impossible to be online and not regularly encounter therapy speak. Thanks to a broader destigmatisation of mental health issues (and getting counselling becoming, on some level, trendy), language that was previously exclusive to a therapist’s office has since become common social media parlance. Challenging relationships and situations are no longer described as bad, they are now “toxic”; require “boundaries”; are a result of “gaslighting”, “narcissism”, maybe an “avoidant attachment style”. As people began to search for better ways to express their feelings, therapy speak presented a means to gain otherwise inaccessible validation for their emotions, dressing them up in this formalised language which could veer towards exaggeration, where something annoying or simply harmful was often labelled “abusive” or “traumatic”. 

Content explaining therapy speak terminology, and suggesting how best to use it, is now largely unavoidable online. So when a video went viral on TikTok and Twitter in January entitled “Here’s How To Break Up With A Friend” from Dr. Arianna Brandolini (@answeranxiety), a clinical psychologist in New York, it looked like it’d be yet another example of this saturated genre. The video gave viewers a structure of a conversation they could follow in order to end a friendship appropriately, recommending how a dump-er should best speak to a dump-ee. 

“I’ve treasured our season of friendship, but we’re moving in different directions in life,” the video began, Brandolini speaking in a robotic, authoritative tone. “I don’t have the capacity to invest in our friendship any longer… I’ve been re-evaluating many areas of my life recently including my ability to be a good friend to you. I just want to be honest and upfront, so I don’t disappoint your expectations”.

“I’m sorry if this feels painful and confusing,” she concludes. “I wish you all love and success”.

While still laden with some classics of the therapy speak genre (calling their relationship a “season of friendship”, saying that the breakup might be “painful and confusing”), this video felt different to what we typically see from this content. Rather than being rife with therapy lingo, it was distinct for its heavy use of corporate buzzwords: investment, re-evaluation, disappointed expectations, moving in different directions, success, ability. Brandolini’s tone, too, felt particularly jarring – speaking not with heightened emotion, be it the compassion or anger synonymous with therapy speak, but instead with deep condescension. She was cold and divorced from any form of care. Her language and demeanour came off as almost managerial. 

This video was an example of how therapy speak has begun to shift, being phased out for its newer form: HR speak. While therapy speak has been fundamentally defined by emotion, sensitivity, and some melodramatic pearl-clutching, HR speak uses similarly formal language but instead with a corporate air of emotional detachment. HR speak doesn’t approach hard conversations with therapist-esque empathy, but like they are a company informing someone that their role in a relationship has been terminated. Rather than rejecting a friend’s invite or ending a relationship in a human way, they say they aren’t “able to connect” or that they are available to “support your efforts and career goals through social media” rather than face-to-face. And while Brandolini’s video did get a fair amount of backlash, the method of communicating it was promoting has become increasingly prevalent and popular. 

The rise (and issues with) this kind of content has its roots in the problems with therapy speak. While the desire for validation and self-expression was its initial appeal, therapy speak quickly developed another function as it became more popular: it could be used as a “get out of jail free” card for treating other people poorly. When ignoring your friend’s texts or dumping a clingy partner out of the blue, you could simply justify your behaviour by saying you were “prioritising your own wellbeing” or that the other person’s issues were “toxic” to your own life. Following a therapy speak script while adopting an empathetic tone absolved you from any suggestion that you might have acted badly. What only added to this was that therapy speak – to many people – became seen as evidence of emotional maturity. Speaking in these terms signalled superior social intelligence; using therapy speak meant you had “done the right thing”.

The problems that then arise with HR speak are much sharper. We get the same opportunity to evade responsibility for our actions as we did with therapy speak, but without any of the emotion — or feigned empathy — that was fundamental to it, which should always be at the heart of any interaction with someone we love. The last shreds of empathy that therapy speak fall away for a new narrative telling you that treating people in this callous manner isn’t just okay, but actually the mature way to behave. Even in a follow-up video to her viral TikTok, Brandolini said there is “no right or wrong way to end a friendship”. This is patently untrue — but admitting so means you can’t be spared the guilt or consequences of your actions.

Why therapy speak is now morphing into HR speak appears linked to another accelerating social media trend: content that nods towards a growing anxiety amongst young people about in-person social interactions. Memes about hiding from food delivery workers and wanting to avoid harmless conversations with Uber drivers go viral on a regular basis; people joke about their hostility towards friendly gestures from their neighbours, peering at them through peepholes. A recent focus group of American teenagers aged 14 and under in The New York Times found that many young people feel ill-equipped to participate in normal social settings, feeling far more comfortable — and more themselves — interacting with their peers solely through the internet. 

All of this points to the increasingly apparent impact social media is making on our ability to relate to one another — where our natural instincts for social cues (or even just for empathy) are being blunted by socialising predominantly online. While it’s not impossible to spend a significant amount of time on social media and have your social life go completely unaffected, for many of us — if not most — screen time breeds at least some form of detachment from the people on the other side of our feed. So when we are experiencing a distinct spike in social anxiety, and have simultaneously spent years practising the confected language of therapy speak, it seems only natural, inevitable, that it would mutate into something more self-involved and devoid of empathy. The internet is encouraging us to neglect the real human impact of speaking to someone without an ounce of care; the relevant content creators are building a new script to show you exactly how to do it.   

HR speak may eventually prove itself to be like therapy speak, dissolving away in a few years to make way for the next social media-driven language philosophy. But whether or not it does, the direction of this trend appears to be moving in a single, fixed direction. What happens to our capacity for empathy when this way of speaking becomes normal? And what new way of treating each other comes next?

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