I’m in recovery, and have been for a long time, and I’ve started to call it the Recovery Mindfuck. It happens in recovery and outside of it, when people use concepts and phrases meant to highlight and help, admonitions intended for instruction and illumination, to weaponized and pathologize ordinary human behaviors.

“You’re so controlling.”

Have you ever heard the word controlling used in a way that isn’t pejorative?

I haven’t.

When someone says “controlling” we know what they mean. Controlling behavior at work means micromanaging, trying to exert influence over something not in one’s purview or job description. In the personal arena, a controlling individual trys to dictate the behavior, choices and responses of the people around them, often in ways that limit the autonomy or independence of those people.

Bad. Right?

How did that word, and others like it, become honed into weapons, lobbed into conversations at work, home, media?

Our cultural conversation is full of therapy speak. People without any training in psychology label the behavior of others as narcissistic, borderline, PTSD. I get it, those terms are juicy with the authority of science; deep and definitive. We know this.

What I hear less about is the way that recovery speak has also become braided with therapy speak. Words like enabling, controlling, denial are tossed about, in and out of recovery, until they, too, have saturated the cultural conversation.

Recovery speak, like therapy speak, is often used against someone. “You’re controlling” is a phrase wielded as a cudgel. If you protest, you can be accused of being in denial. We all know the disease model of addiction, it is a common scene in television or film – you are incapacitated, not responsible, enmeshed in denial which needs to be smashed.

Listen for more.

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