Text bombing with therapy-speak is a trend that destroys friendships

Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go.. . Kendal, 33, had known her friend for nearly a decade, but they'd grown a lot closer over the past year and a half after both going through breakups...

While friendship breakups via text, email, and even letters have existed for decades, there's one new element making text bombing so much worse: therapy speak, where people use phrases such as "emotional labor" or "gaslighting" to call out behavior they don't like, often in the name of self-care...

The problem with therapy-speak labels such as "unsafe" and "toxic" is that they criticize the person as a whole, rather than their specific actions, Morley said.. Kendal said that even if she one day mended her friendship, the way she was characterized would be hard to shake...

"It's also OK to just slowly shift how often you see that person or what you divulge to them," she said.. Andrea Bonior, a clinical psychologist, said that sometimes, text bombing may arise out of too-high expectations for friends...

In Kendal's case, the end of her friend's text bomb said that her friend was committed to showing up for their friendship but would require patience because she didn't feel Kendal was trustworthy...

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