Gossip-y parts of the internet have been chattering all week about the recent release of text messages purported to be between actor Jonah Hill and his ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady, a surfer and a law student. It’s all very messy, but if you’re in the mood for rooting around in other people’s emotional laundry hampers, here is a link to the texts in question.
Without getting too deep into the muck, there seem to be two problems in play here. The first: Unless there’s some real danger to others, no one should share private text messages from their exes in public. Even if your ex is/was a jerk. It’s a huge, obvious violation of trust.
We really have no right to know anything about this relationship, but since it’s out there, maybe it can be instructive. The internet seems to think so, which brings us to issue two: Jonah Hill seeming to use therapy-speak (specifically around the idea of “boundaries”) to control his girlfriend.
How personal boundaries actually work
There’s a simple rule when it comes to personal boundaries: You set boundaries for yourself. You don’t set boundaries for others.
In the texts he supposedly sent, Hill framed his concerns with Brady in terms of his own boundaries, but it seems obvious he was actually trying to set boundaries for her. As TikTok therapist Jeff Guenther summed up: “Jonah Hill was using therapy speak to control his girlfriend Sarah.” According to Guenther, Hill’s misuse of therapy language in the texts, “masks controlling behavior under a commonly accepted positive concept.”
This makes it harder for the person on the receiving end of the messages to challenge them. Like a lot of therapy-speak, it’s a weaselly, manipulative, and dishonest way to talk to others to get them to do what you want.
“Any boundary that is enforced [by saying] ‘you will do this or you’re a bad person, or you don’t respect me or you don’t love me, or if you don’t do that, I will kill myself,’ these are not healthy, respectful boundaries,” Amanda Major, head of service quality and clinical practice at Relate, told Cosmopolitan.
According to Major, within a healthy relationship, boundaries are shared. They are a “conversation about what makes both partners comfortable.” Seems reasonable. But in the Hill/Brady case, it probably shouldn’t have even come to that. If he was uncomfortable dating someone who posts swimsuit pics on Instagram and hangs out with surfers, Hill probably shouldn’t have pursued a relationship with a surfer who also models. It would take one conversation to understand what she did for a living and decide, “this person isn’t right for me.” This would be lacking in drama, though, and maybe the drama is the point—this is an actor we’re talking about.
The rise of therapy-speak
There’s nothing new about people taking what they learn in therapy sessions (or cult meetings) into the world and wielding it like a rhetorical weapon—when someone says “ego,” “repression,” or “death wish,” it’s because of Freud, the OG of therapy-speak. But lately, as actual rates of mental illness increase, therapy speak is on an upswing, with some online “influencers” advising people to speak to others in terrifyingly manipulative ways in the name of “mental health.”
Like all jargon-laden speech, therapy-talk is horrible to listen to. Trying to figure out what someone means through interpreting their buzzwords is exhausting and unproductive, but it’s made worse by how sanctimonious it so often is. The faux-enlightened “these are my boundaries” tone in the texts Hill is said to have sent is a prime example.
The reason for therapy-speak’s popularity may be intrinsically linked to its insidiousness. Therapy can give people the language to talk about their inner lives. This is positive. But people who are having so much trouble navigating their interpersonal relationships that they’re in therapy for it in the first place are usually not ready to dictate emotional terms to others. Meanwhile, being manipulative is reflexive and comes very naturally to many people. Based on the test he may have sent, Jonah Hill seems like an egotistical man (not uncommon among the famous) but he also seems to see himself as a benevolent, selfless figure—the kind of guy who would produce a documentary film about his own therapist.
This combination of moral authority and prescriptiveness reminds me of how some religious people believe in God because their version of God happens to agree with them about everything. This gives their opinion a moral weight it doesn’t deserve, whether it comes from the divine or a therapist’s office.
If Hill sent these texts, he’s displaying the arrogance of a person who hasn’t finished something, a concept so old the ancient Greek’s had a word for it—“sophomore,” from “sophist” literally meant “one who is wise,” but was understood to mean, “a fool who thinks he is wise.”
A more useful piece of therapy speak
Instead of misusing the concept of boundaries, Hill could have used a more time-tested kind of therapy-speak—phrasing things in terms of their affect on you, and leaving out the rest. Instead of allegedly texting, “you need to take down those pictures of yourself in a bikini,” he could have gone with, “Seeing those pictures of you on Instagram makes me feel X (insecure, sad, etc.).”
While I don’t underestimate how that kind of therapy speak could be and has been used to manipulate people too—“Oh, yeah? Well I feel sad when you’re a fucking asshole!”—it’s an easier concept to grasp than “boundaries,” and is more respectful of the equality and agency of the other person. It’s also more honest. It puts the ball in their court, and frees them up to respond, perhaps by saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way; but I’m going to keep on surfing and posting on Instagram.”
The problem with using “I feel…” statements is that they don’t “work” without vulnerability on the part of the speaker. Saying “I feel” implies that other people’s opinions and feelings are as valid as yours. It’s a hard, but useful part of creating a healthy relationship between equals.