I get the point behind this Washington Post article (paywall, probably) by Robin Stern and Marc Brackett. People use words like trauma, gaslighting, narcissism, and depressed in ways that don't match what mental health professionals (MHP's) mean by them. When people do that, they're usually exaggerating the severity of whatever situation or person they are facing. That causes harm because it ignores and in some ways even trivializes the challenges faced by people who do suffer from according-to-Hoyle trauma, gaslighting, narcissism, and depression.
I have two problems with Stern and Brackett's argument.
The first problem is those are examples of what I like to call "technicians' words." Technicians' words have a technical meaning that specialists, in this case mental health professionals, use while the same also have a different meaning used by most people. (I wrote about this at Hitcoffee a while ago, using a slightly different definition and argument.)
Technicians need to understand that fact. They also need to understand that words change over time and often more slowly than they do for technicians. I'm as annoyed by anyone who uses "gaslight" to mean "they disagreed with me." (And don't get me started on "impact." When people us it as a noun, they want it to be much more....impactful....than it possibly can be. When people use it as a transitive verb to mean "affect" or "influence," I cringe. But those two uses are now facts of life.)
It's not too hard for mental health professionals to clarify that they use the words differently. Maybe it's okay for them to write an article saying, "hey, when therapists use these words, they mean something a bit different from how you use them. Keep that in mind." But maybe they shouldn't tut-tut about it.
Another problem I have with Stern and Brackett's article is its discussion of the word trauma. Stern and Brackett write: "many use the word 'trauma' too casually to describe life events that make them uncomfortable or that they perceive as negative." Citing the American Psychological Association, they say that trauma is
an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer-term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships, and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea
Now, Stern and Brackett are right, in a way. That probably is the definition. And some people do use trauma "carelessly," or at least more commonly than called for by that definition.
But at least for some other people, trauma seems to meet that definition, and it's the mental health professionals who overuse it. I have talked to a few mental health professionals who seem to define trauma as something which is "felt" as terrible, and not "objectively" terrible, like the examples from the definition. I know of many people (me being one of them) who hesitate a long time before assigning the word trauma to some of the instances "felt" as terrible .
As far as I can tell, those professionals are well-qualified and competent. They're not trying to deceive. I suspect what's really happening is that even at the "technician" level, there's some dispute about what counts as trauma. They also have the "we can't read our clients' mind and can't know everything about our clients' history" problem. A client may deny that a trauma happened or that what happened really counted as trauma. Or the client might forget what happened. Or the client might remember, but in retelling what happened, downplay or ignore certain points that might illuminate the traumatic (or non-traumatic) nature of the episode. The mental health professional then has to judge by that client's reaction to what happened. If the reaction quacks like a trauma response, then it's probably a response to something we can plausibly call "trauma."
All that said, we should acknowledge that when people use technicians' words in a non-technical way, they sometimes convey an unintended message. That message isn't always good. It can, in fact, minimize others' very real suffering.
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