Therapy & Therapyspeak
You can't gaslight us. But we can gaslight you.
By Andrew Burmon
78% Respondents Who Have Been in Therapy
85% Respondents Whose Parents Have Been in Therapy
65% had been in therapy; among those earning over
20% Respondents Found Therapy Life-Changing
Upper Middle ’s “Therapyspeak Survey” looked at the ways in which members of the Oat Milk Elite use and react to clinical language in non-clinical situations.
Words like “self-care,” “trauma,” “boundaries,” and “gaslighting’ may be pervasive in open-plan offices and well-appointed suburban homes, but that doesn’t mean they’re embraced.
To the contrary, our data suggests therapyspeak bothers people – specifically high-earning men and people whose parents went to therapy.
Inside a clinical setting, these words are tools.
Outside, they are often perceived as weapons.
Engaging in therapyspeak does not require going to therapy 1 1 , but experiences with therapy do color reactions to that kind of language.
Though 78% of survey respondents had attended therapy – a number likely skewed by the topic – only 41% remained in treatment.
Just over half (56.6%) described therapy as helpful, fewer (15.7%) as life changing, and 12.1% as disappointing or unhelpful, most often citing a lack of connection (45%) or practical advice (30%).
Talk therapy was dominant (85%), followed by family (39.8%) and psychodynamic (13.9%).
Many also reported using medication (39.2%) or professional coaching (22.3%) for mental health support.
The dominance of CBT makes sense given the disproportionate number of therapy-seekers encountering profession 2 al problems or headwinds.
Therapy participation and satisfaction both rose with income 3 .
Among those earning under $125,000, 65% had been in therapy; among those earning over $250,000, 94% had.
High-earners were twice as likely to remain in therapy even though they were the least likely (20%) to find it life changing – suggesting they use it as maintenance rather than intervention.
Depression (58%) and relationship strain (52%) dominated among lower-income respondents; stress (55%) among middle-income; burnout (41%) among high-earners.
These differences deeply informed feelings about therapyspeak.
Use of therapyspeak closely tracked income and profession 4 .
The suits (strategists and finance/ops types) were three times more likely to say they “never” used it (24.2%) than creative types (7.1%) and seven times less likely to say they used it “frequently.” Service and care professionals (doctors and client-facing professionals) were also more likely to use it frequently (11.1%).
In other words, therapyspeak was common among middle-income professional communicators – a lingua franca for managing stress and expectations.
But not everyone is in the business of managing stress or expectations.
