CNN
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In the midst of planning her vacation, Natalie Williams was feeling overwhelmed.
Life was busy and booking a trip was at the bottom of a to-do list already flooded with other miscellaneous tasks and obligations. She wasn’t even sure she still wanted to go. Still, his friends asked him: When do we book this?
“When I’m stressed, it can be quite debilitating,” Williams told CNN. “It just said, ‘I don’t even have time to think about going on vacation.'”
So she went to X, formerly known as Twitter, and wrote a message and click on the message: “The only vacation I’m willing to take is one with grippy socks.”
The message was intended to be ironic. A “non-slip sock vacation” refers to a stay in a psychiatric hospital, where patients are often given non-slip socks. Williams didn’t really want to stay in a mental hospital, but his stress was real.
Williams, a 27-year-old DJ from Philadelphia known as Prosper., said she often uses humor as a coping mechanism for real-life difficulties. She and her friends often use the phrase “holidays with grippy socks,” she said.
And she’s not the only one. In recent years, phrases like this have become ubiquitous, especially online: “stressed, depressed”, short for stressed and depressed, “menty b”, short for mental breakdown, and “suey”, short for suicidal, are just some of the most pleasant expressions. people started using shorthand to talk about mental health and mental illness.
On the one hand, using these terms can help destigmatize mental illness, shedding light on typically dark circumstances and provide a way to talk about mental health without fear of reprimand.
This can be positive.
But for Dr. Nicholas Westers, a clinical psychologist at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, simply talking about mental health isn’t always a good thing. How you talk about it, that counts too, he said. And using these expressions, he says, can have certain drawbacks.
“Grippy sock chic,” Erikka Nelson, 43, posted on X, along with a photo of herself in a hospital bed. Nelson, to be clear, was just making a joke about recent surgery — she wasn’t in a mental institution and she never was. But she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, Nelson told CNN, and had her share of mental health issues.
For Nelson, using this type of language helps bring levity to the situation. It’s a way to share a struggle without being “trivial or oppressed,” she said. And it helps her feel seen: By sharing her personal challenges online, people realize that not everyone has rainbows and sunshine.
“I think it can help, to the point where you say, ‘I’m not the only person going through this,’” Nelson said.
Even in her comments, Nelson said she sees people making connections and helping each other feel less alone.
A 55-year-old taxi driver in New York said using this type of jargon could also be a way to build community with people like you, who may be experiencing the same thing. They posted an article on X about taking vacations in grippy socks and said they had struggled with mental illness throughout their lives. They spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitive nature of these topics.
“A lot of my jokes center around mental illness, LGBTQ, or neurodivergent-related jokes, which means most of my followers fall into one of those three categories,” they said.
“I think young people are doing this unintentionally by adopting jargon online that would only really be understood by specific groups of people, meaning that people outside of those groups are less likely to see, let alone interact with. these publications.”
But the potential benefits aren’t just for people with a diagnosable disorder. Even for those who don’t suffer from mental illness, Nelson said the commonality of this type of language could help them realize the importance of taking care of their mental health.
“Mental health is part of your physical health, and I think the internet and social media have definitely played a role in that (association),” she said.
Of course, using these phrases can help destigmatize mental illness and mental health issues, said Westers, the clinical psychologist. Acknowledging what they’re going through can even help people really address their mental health and seek the help they need.
That being said, such language could also have the opposite effect. Using these expressions could be a way for some people to distance themselves from the experience by using humor, Westers said.
Although it may be a coping mechanism, Westers said Studies show that the use of these avoidance strategies is often practiced by people who have self-labeled or identified a mental illness, without a diagnosis from a doctor. People who have self-labeled or self-identified are also less likely to seek help through therapy or counseling, Westers said, but more likely to seek medication.
Westers used depression as an example. Saying something like “depression got me” could be a sign that a person is moving away from the symptoms. And if that person hasn’t actually been diagnosed with depression, they might be more likely to seek medication rather than seek counseling or therapy first, making it more difficult to overcome their situation.
Using these terms can also remove personal control from the experience, making the person seem powerless over the situation.
“So, ‘I’m going to have a mentaly b’ — well, there’s no control there,” Westers said. “This reflects very little control over distress and reflects no search for healthy coping strategies.”
There is also concern that these terms could lead to a trivialization of serious mental health issues, Westers said.
Making a quip like “I’m going to kill myself” when I’m feeling depressed or “I’m so OCD” when you just like the organization can also create a stigma around mental health, Westers said. This extends to those Internet shortcuts.
“These trivial uses of these kinds of terms can really minimize and invalidate people who are really struggling,” Westers said.
Minimization can also lead to overinterpretation. A person who is going through a period of sadness after a breakup — a relatively common and normal experience — may now think they are depressed, Westers said, when in reality they are experiencing grief. Applying a clinical label to a sad situation can make it even harder to distinguish between a truly serious situation, Westers said, and could also inadvertently reinforce a stigma.
All of this indicates that there are limits to jokes, even if they are also coping mechanisms – at a time when funny is no longer funny and real consequences can arise.
Williams, the DJ who struggles to plan vacations, noted that sometimes using these cutesy phrases can be a way for people to sweep their pain under the rug. Mental health resources, including therapy, aren’t always accessible, she said, and using these little sayings or words could be a way “to help them cope.” But that can also be a problem.
“In my personal experiences with my friends, sometimes I don’t even know that they’re going through things because people hide it, or people aren’t able to say, ‘Hey, I’m going through a really tough time and I ‘I need a friend right now,’ Williams said.
In the past, Westers said, mental health was so stigmatized that people never talked about it, for fear of being sent to an institution or being considered “crazy.” Today, the pendulum seems to be swinging – and yet the consequences are still there.
“It is possible that our culture will move to the other extreme, where we will trivialize it and destigmatize it to such an extent; everyone is going to talk about it using funny language,” Westers said.
And that, he says, can be just as serious.
Editor’s Note: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, the following support is available through Suicide and crisis lifeline: Call or text 988. The Lifeline provides free, confidential 24/7 support to people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you and your loved ones, and best practices for professionals at UNITED STATES.
