Ing Says: Let’s Build a Language Together
A question for survivors of mental health system harm
Have you ever sat across from a clinician and heard words that stopped you cold?
Not because they were cruel — though sometimes they were. But because they were clinical. Measured. Delivered with the calm authority of someone who holds the chart and the credential and the power to define what is happening to you.
Words like:
“You’re treatment resistant.”
“You have poor insight.”
“Given your history…”
“This is your diagnosis talking.”
“For your own safety.”
“We followed proper protocol.”
“You couldn’t take no for an answer.”
If you have heard these words — in a psychiatric unit, an outpatient clinic, an emergency room, a therapist’s office — you already know what they feel like. They feel like a door closing. Like your account of your own experience being handed back to you, marked invalid, by someone with a title on the wall.
What you may not yet know is that these are not random phrases. They are not clumsy attempts at communication by undertrained staff — though that is part of it.
They are a system. A shared vocabulary of institutional self-protection, used in mental health facilities across this country to manage complaints, deflect accountability, and keep survivors from being believed.
They have a name. We are building the counter-language together.
What words have been used against you?
