Column: Use the right word

Take for example, the term depression. Depression describes a consistent, serious mood disorder that disrupts daily life, yet this word is tossed around in casual conversation.

I’d never invalidate someone’s depression, but the term has become interchangeable with sadness in general; they aren’t the same thing and implying such is misguided.

A result of equating depression to sadness is the tendency for people to write off depression as just another bad day. If everybody, everywhere is constantly walking around casually saying that they’re depressed because they’ve had a few down days, then there’s no actual significance to depression itself.

It’s not a serious mood disorder, just another emotion you mention when someone asks how you’re doing.

I don’t mean any of this to discourage people from speaking about their mental health, or seeking help from others, but it's important that people understand the full implications of a word before they use it.

In a situation where you are engaged in a genuine fight with a partner, immediately resorting to the conclusion that gaslighting has occurred, as my friend did, can shut down an actual productive discussion. In any relationship there are difficult discussions to be had, and broadly describing instances of lying as a general form of gaslighting completely prevents that.

There’s nothing one can do to stop other people from using a specific word, and if you are confident enough in a situation to label it with a term like love bombing or gaslighting, then feel free to do so.

That being said, we need to be more mindful about the phrases we employ. Taking your entire terminology from social media creates an extreme mindset where people are running around using words they don’t fully understand. Just because you see a word used everyday on the internet, it doesn’t mean you should pick it up yourself.

As I said to my friend, not everything needs to be labeled. Sometimes your boyfriend does something shitty and it's not gaslighting, it's just shitty. 

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