Over the weekend Jonah Hill, 39, was accused by his ex-girlfriend, 26-year-old semi-pro surfer and model Sarah Brady, of “emotional abuse” during their relationship. To support the allegation, she posted screenshots to her Instagram account of message exchanges between — she claims — her and Hill.
Putting aside my glee at getting a glimpse inside a celebrity uncoupling, they don’t make for pleasant reading. Hill found her Instagram pictures “triggering”, he said. If she wanted to continue her relationship with him, she must not “post pictures of [herself] with a bathing suit”, “surf with men” or — most bogglingly — “have friendships with women who are in unstable places”. These, he asserted, were his “boundaries” — and therefore, presumably, sacrosanct.
In today’s trauma economy, where hitting rock bottom constitutes a powerful social currency, therapy has developed its own cultural cachet
The messages paint a picture of a petty and controlling little man, who uses the language of therapy as a way to distance himself from the odiousness of his demands (also, I mean, if not wanting your girlfriend to be pictured in a bikini is one of your lines in the sand, don’t date a surfer in the first place).
In one respect, plus ça change in the world of bad men who have been co-opting the language of therapy to coerce and control since Freud invented penis envy. In another, though, it seems symptomatic of the age of internet therapy speak. Even Esther Perel — everyone’s favourite superstar shrink — recently bemoaned the state of affairs. She told Vanity Fair in June that the funhouse mirror version of therapy is leaving us all more atomised and intolerant: “I don’t like what you do, so I say you’re gaslighting me. You have a different opinion, and I bring in a term that makes it impossible for you to even enter into a conversation with me. Labeling enables me to not have to deal with you.”
Labelling also protects us from having to truly engage with our own behaviours. One friend, for instance, recently diagnosed himself as a “sex and love addict”, with an “anxious avoidant attachment style” which in real terms means he sleeps with women and never calls them again. Blaming our sloppiness or tardiness on “ADHD” has now become so commonplace that it’s caused an outcry from the ADHD community, who’d rather neurotypicals didn’t just self-diagnose via TikTok.
In today’s trauma economy, where hitting rock bottom (and posting about it) constitutes a powerful kind of social currency, therapy has developed its own cultural cache. Being ‘in therapy’ implies that you have survived your trauma and that you are evolved, self-aware, dealing with your issues etc etc. On the flipside, there’s no cultural cache to being a dick. The fact is, though, sometimes it’s not your trauma, your attachment style or your indeed boundaries — sometimes, you are just being a dick. Maybe it’s time we all owned it.
