Oversharing: Stop Taking Relationship Advice from TikTok

TW: This may come across as overexploiting simplistic ideas, because I am but new to the world and some of my ideas arrive late to the party.

It takes travelling to the other side of the world with your mother for you to really remember said world.

As this is my oversharing series, I will be doing just that: Oversharing. And, as the world continues to sink into a fascist autocracy, and I am one day deported or detained because of how well I can run my mouth, then it would have all been for a good cause: forcing strangers on the internet to read about my life. But, then again, this may only be read by three people: my gorgeous flatmate, my perfect co-editor of Low Altitude, and maybe some rando. And the previous two people are already subjected to hearing every thought that swims through my neurons, so I don’t understand why they would want to see it in writing.

Substack has basically become a proxy for me to fulfil my dream of my diaries being published because I have somehow become Oh So Important and everyone suddenly wants to know what I would think about while I ate breakfast and before I go to sleep.

Back to the point.

Therapy Speak is a great danger of our time. Not as bad as nuclear bombs or the looming threat of WWIII, or the labubu craze, but it is up there. Please do not interpret the following paragraphs as Boomer-esque. We must break away from the idea that Gen Z cannot criticise Gen Z.

A lot more people are going to therapy or studying psychology. This is a good thing! Hip-Hip Hooray to us! But not everyone can afford to go to therapy or university, so a lot of us go to the internet to figure out why we do not feel 100% okay. It used to be WebMD, now it is the fyp on TikTok. And if you are one of the Superior Beings who has not yet fallen into the deep dark pit that is scrolling on TikTok, you are scrolling on Instagram reels or living out of a van somewhere without access to the internet.

To solve our pain, our unfullness, we look for an explanation, or a label, that will make us feel less alone and lost and hopeless. We want to anchor our emotions in something that seems more understandable and less static.

But, because our attention spans have dwindled and we don’t want to or have the time to conduct proper research we search something with /r at the end or watch the first ten seconds of a video and decide that: recognising people’s footsteps is a trauma response, him paying on the first date is lovebombing and misogynistic, and asking a friend for a favour is crossing a boundary. We are stuck in this current where every action is interpreted as an ulterior motive. I believe that this is partly because capitalism seeks to isolate us even more, and therefore, profits off of our inherent mistrust of everyone.

So, when we don’t feel good, we want the cause to be external. We want it to be lovebombing and a trauma response and and boundary-crossing because we want our pain to be unique. We all want to believe that we are shattered in a different, explicable way. And to some extent, we are. But not to the extent we believe. At least, this is not always the case.

I have recently entered my very first relationship. My boyfriend is the sweetest, loveliest man to ever walk the planet and I will not be accepting negative criticism at this point in time. Before this relationship, my algorithm tapped into my desperate singleness and general disappointment in med. And I do still feel the latter. But, I was force-fed terms like gaslighting and lovebombing and more through rarebit and hashtags and trends.

I didn’t understand the damage this could cause until a friend of mine went through the inevitable devastating end of a situationship. I heard her friend explain his actions. This other friend interpreted his motives and his actions in such a malicious way, that I forgot we were talking about a real person. I listened mostly in awe as she made rash and dangerous assumptions and drew mad conclusions.

It was difficult to listen to someone explain and demean someone that not only I had personally met, but someone my friend had deeply cared for. And while I do not condone his actions, I do believe that some TikTokker who took an intro to psychology course does not know the real reason Why He Dumped You.

Because of Therapy Speak, we have dehumanised people. We will interpret even neutral behaviours as nefarious and manipulative and dangerous. And this is not conducive in the quest to find love in the contemporary era. If anything, this is just isolating us more, making ourselves hate ourselves and each other more, and when WWIII breaks out, we will be eating each other with no remorse. Okay, well, we’re not there yet.

After this event, it became a hobby of mine to tell that friend of my friend all the stuff that happened to me in the dating scene. I found it fascinating to see how she interpreted their actions. She spoke about people she hadn’t even met, let alone known about three seconds before, as if she were a psychiatrist examining con-men behind a two-way mirror in prison. They became formless, abject.

And yes, my interactions in the dating scene have not been healthy nor always happy. The men were fucked up in their own unique ways. As we all are. (You read The Will to Change one time and it’s all you begin to think about). But now I am dating the most emotional mature person, besides my therapist, that I have ever encountered. And yes, I also must humanise him and say he has his own insecurities and doubts and stressors.

But now, let’s talk about me!

What I discovered at the beginning of my relationship and before I come to write this, is that therapy speak has made me second-guess my own actions as well as his. I find myself reading into my own behaviour, trying to see if I had an ulterior motive, if I was trying to manipulate him. Sometimes, I look into his own actions with a grain of doubt, trying to find notches and cracks in his way of interacting with me. Because I have been taught the craziest things on the internet.

For example, I watched a video that went like this:

Ladies, I am convinced that there is only one way astraight relationship can work.

And like that, I am sat.

If the guy is more patient and more obsessed.

Another went like this:

If you are saying I love you before the half-way mark, your relationship is doomed to fail.

Every way you engage with your partner or your partner engages with you has been made to not be good enough, or healthy enough. It can always be better.

Basically, the point of this is I think we all need to take a break. Touch grass, swim in the sea, hug a tree, feel the pull of gravity beneath you if you can’t do those other things. Distance yourself from your fucking screen because that might be the real reason your relationship is crumbling.

Again, I must say, that sometimes your relationship is fucked up, or your partner is. But don’t seek answers from some kid on TikTok who is telling you what to do while she does an over edited GRWM video. She is not the expert. You are. Or a licensed therapist. Or your friends, who actually know you. But then again, am I not doing the exact thing I am condemning?

We all just need to connect again.

p.s. never thought I would hard-launch my boyfriend on substack but here we go.