I’ve always been a big fan of self-awareness. Understanding myself better has been one of my biggest motivations for as long as I can remember.
While I’d like to say that my love of psychoanalysis has just focused inward, I’d totally be lying! I can admit it – I love to psychoanalyze other people too.
I have an innate desire to understand what makes people tick, and to understand why people do what they do. It helps me relate to people, empathize with others, and realize that we all have a lot in common.
The downside to this is that I’ve totally fallen into some widely-accepted pop psychology beliefs that weren’t helpful at all. In fact, some of them kept me stuck and perpetuated the negative stereotypes I had about other people.
From diagnosing myself as codependent to labelling ex partners as narcissistic, sometimes pop culture psychology just gets it wrong about mental illness.
Education isn’t helpful when it’s rooted in misinformation.
Now that I’ve spent the past 6 years pursuing a shit ton of personal therapy and becoming a mental health professional, I’ve started to recognize that pop psychology can actually be pretty detrimental.
Here’s what pop psychology gets wrong
While popular psychology aims to explain complex psychological concepts in simple terms, it often falls short.
Perpetuates Stigmas and Misinformation:
One of the biggest issues with pop psychology is its tendency to perpetuate stigmas and spread misinformation about mental health disorders. Personality disorders, such as Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), in particular, often become targets of oversimplification and misinterpretation.
No, not everyone with NPD is devoid of empathy, nor is everyone with BPD intentionally manipulative. But to read armchair experts talk about them, you’d think otherwise.
By reducing complex conditions into catchphrases and stereotypes, pop psychology not only misinforms but also adds to the stigma surrounding these disorders.
Leads to Generalizations and Pathologizing Normal Behavior
Pop psychology tends to make sweeping generalizations about human behavior and mental health, oversimplifying complex situations. This can lead to pathologizing normal human behaviors and personality traits.
Human beings are complex creatures, and our thoughts, emotions, and actions cannot always fit neatly into predefined categories.
In pop psychology, everyday quirks and nuances are often labeled as signs of personality disorders or dysfunction. Terms like “codependent” are also thrown around without consideration for their validity, leading to confusion and misunderstanding.
I was relieved to learn (after years in therapy and becoming a clinician myself) that I wasn’t wrong or bad for behaving in “codependent” ways – the need to connect is human nature and I was simply responding to trauma! Better yet, healing was entirely possible.
If I had stuck to the pop psychology version of codependency, I’d still be struggling, instead of actually working through the root cause of my challenges.
Not Rooted in Science:
Pop psychology often sacrifices scientific evidence for the sake of simplicity and accessibility. While some concepts may have a basis in research, many are exaggerated or distorted for mass consumption. The problem with this should be self explanatory. Misinformation can be dangerous.
Self-Diagnosis and Reinforcement:
One of the most concerning aspects of pop psychology is its tendency to encourage self-diagnosis, which can lead to us reinforcing the very things we’re struggling with.
By labeling ourselves or others with terms like “narcissistic” or “codependent,” we risk pigeonholing complex human experiences into simplistic categories. This not only oversimplifies our understanding but also reinforces harmful narratives about ourselves and others.
As humans, we will always follow through on who we believe we are. If we believe that we’re flawed, diseased or disordered, we’ll usually show up in ways that reinforce that belief even if it’s not objectively true.
Worse yet, if we self-diagnose and then try to follow through with pop psychology advice on how to fix our “issues”, we could end up feeling ashamed and flawed when the suggestions don’t work.
Dehumanization of Individuals:
It’s totally normal to want to understand ourselves and others, but pop psychology often overlooks the humanity and nuances of individuals. Complex personalities are reduced to caricatures, often leading to all-or-nothing stereotypes. This undermines our ability to empathize and connect with others on a deeper level because it creates a “normal” vs “abnormal”, “us” vs “them” mentality.
Do we really need to put everything into a neat little box?
While the allure of labels and categorizations makes sense, it’s important to prioritize understanding and empathy instead. By seeking to understand the humans underneath the behaviors, we can cultivate a more compassionate and nuanced approach to psychology.
Seriously, we don’t always need to put labels on ourselves or others in order to cultivate awareness and understanding.
As I’ve learned from my own journey, true understanding comes from embracing complexity and allowing the full spectrum of human experiences.