'Text bombs' are destroying friendships, and therapy speak is making it worse
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People are sending their friends "text-bombs": huge texts full of grievances about their relationship.
These texts are full of damaging therapy speak, overusing words like "toxic," and "boundaries."
Therapists say there are better and kinder ways to handle disagreements with friends.
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.
"In my mind, she was just like a completely safe place," Kendal told Insider, which agreed to identify her by her first name only to protect her privacy; her identity is known to us. "It felt like we were really healthy, like we could talk to each other about anything."
So when this friend seemed a little distant in person, Kendal sent her a quick check-in text. What she didn't expect to receive was "a huge novel" about all the bad things Kendal had done to her, including being a dishonest friend.
"I never would've guessed in a million years that she felt all of this," Kendal said. "I still have a hard time processing it."
Let's call these friendship grenades what they are: text bombs.
Text bombing — known in therapy circles as the "giant block of text" — is an unfortunately popular way to express grievances. Isabelle Morley, a clinical psychologist, told Insider that she'd had many clients on the receiving end of text bombing.
"People get paragraphs with a friend explaining the ways in which they've been hurt and their new boundaries or why they don't want to be friends anymore," Morley said. "And it can be incredibly upsetting for people to receive, especially if they had no idea this was happening."
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.
One TikTok text-bombing template titled "How to break off a friendship in a nice way" says that while the text bomber and friend have had great times, the friendship is too "toxic and unhealthy" to continue.
While Morley thinks mental-health awareness is a good thing, she said, texts laden with therapy speak take it "a step too far," cruelly severing ties when other options for repair — or at least kindness — are available.
Labels like "toxic" judge a person instead of their actions
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.
"She really focused on attacking what she thought my inner world looks like instead of asking for behaviors to change," she said.
Broad character judgments also don't leave room for nuance. Sylina Lyew, 40, was going through an "extremely traumatic time" that made her more distant with many people, including a friend she'd known since she was 5, she told Insider.
Because they had periods of low contact throughout their decades of friendship, she didn't anticipate receiving a text about how hurtful her radio silence was — and how it marked the end of their relationship.
Lyew said the text bomb, which Insider saw, ended with her friend saying Lyew treated her inhumanely and this was her version of "closure." After it was sent, Lyew's number was blocked — she had no chance to explain herself.
Former text bombers often regret the way they handled things
Many text-bomb senders feel like their missives are reasonable — at first. Morley said that they "feel justified in hurting somebody if they think they have been more hurt." After someone is painted as a narcissist, even the harshest measures are excused.
But the text-bomb senders Insider spoke with often expressed regret about pressing send.
Hilary Davis, 35, remembers text-bombing her college best friend in 2010 — when there were character limits on her LG flip phone.
At the time, a misunderstanding about meeting up to work on an assignment felt like "the worst thing that could have ever happened" to Davis, she said. But once she found a new project partner, Davis said she was "embarrassed about the way I acted and just so thankful that she still wanted to be my friend."
Because her friend had never brought up the texts, Davis went years without knowing whether she ever even received them. For this article, Davis finally asked her — and found out her friend had no recollection of this incident that Davis had been ruminating on for over a decade.
A man in his 40s whom Insider spoke with, and who asked to remain anonymous for the sake of privacy, viscerally remembers emailing a group of male friends he met two decades ago. As his friends got older and entered new stages of life such as marriage and having kids, he felt abandoned — and wrote so in their listserv. He still thinks about it.
"Even 10 years later, I feel the weight of it," he said, adding that he remained friends with some but not all of the people in the group. "There's a certain strain or awkwardness within many of those one-on-one relationships that I still feel like I have to make up for it."
But because he and Davis sent their bombs over a decade ago, therapy speak was not yet ubiquitous — and that may have saved some of their friendships.
"I didn't use things like 'boundary' or 'toxic' because in 2010, that wasn't the vocabulary," Davis said. Instead, she remembers focusing more on how frustrated her friend's actions made her feel, rather than writing her off as an emotionally unsafe person.
Thirteen years after her text bombing, Davis said she and her best friend still text all the time.
"The fact that we stayed friends for so long is huge — those college years were so minuscule that they just don't matter to us anymore," she said.
Therapists say it's better to talk about friendship issues in person, not over text Johner Images/Getty Images
There are better ways to talk to a friend — and don't call it "emotional labor"
It isn't that friendships shouldn't involve calling out hurtful behavior — or even distancing when things don't feel good anymore. But the way it's handled makes a huge difference for both parties.
"If you want a relationship with someone, it's a constant push and pull and conversation and nuanced understanding of people's behaviors and forgiveness," Morley said.
Sending a huge text outlining someone's flaws doesn't leave room for that.
Morley said that using "I" statements and focusing on how specific actions made you feel — all said in person or at least over the phone — are better ways to address issues.
Another option is to place less emphasis on that friendship.
"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.
"I think you need to evaluate whether or not you're trying to fit a friend that is a square peg into a round hole," she said. "There are different roles for different people in our lives."
But if the intent is conflict resolution, a text bomb full of therapy speak doesn't set the relationship up for success.
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.
Kendal was less than relieved.
"I don't really want to have people in my life who don't give me the benefit of the doubt," she said.
Since the text bomb, Kendal has taken time to reassess the friendship — and write a message back.
"I haven't sent it," she said. "I always sit on these things and make sure it's what I want to say."
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