Years ago, one of my sons described the "massive" bee he'd seen that was "this big!" I envisioned a bee I once saw that was as thick and as long as the top half of my thumb. In his little world, every "bee" was massive, even a lanky wasp. It was helpful to step into his world in our backyard, to stand where he stood, to look at the specific flying insect he was looking at. It wasn’t the size of the bee that was large — it was the ever-present threat and danger he felt when they were hovering nearby. Underneath a calm, curious exterior was a looming fear. This moment in our backyard was a lesson in perspective.
In my training as a therapist, both in my master’s degree and in my internship, I learned to tread carefully among broad adjectives and vaguely descriptive desires. Clients would sometimes say things like, "I just want to be happy," or, "I want a good—" (fill in the blank: relationship, job, life, etc.), or most commonly, they want to grasp their identity and know who they are.
It can be a great starting off point.
"Yes! Sounds important. Worthwhile. Meaningful."
The next question stumps them.
"What does (happy, good, identity) mean to you?"
And it is there, in the often inevitable "I don’t know," that we begin our work.
The beauty of language is that it acts as a bridge between people with different worldviews, experiences, challenges, and values. Somehow, it is enough to create sufficient trust and understanding that, through it, we create families, communities, and societies. We can foster hope and love and shared meaning.
The tragedy of language is that it is subjective, spun from the limited worldviews, experiences, challenges, and values of the speaker, and open to interpretation by the listener. This can be problematic in many ways (a quick glimpse at the current social and political climate attests to this), but I am particularly concerned with its impact on the field of mental health. The challenge is that, like my son’s bee, mental health can appear drastically different depending on perspective. Without some objective sense of what health actually is, how do we know what needs healing, or how to get there?
Years ago, when we renovated our first home through a few brave DIY endeavors, my husband broke his finger. I pleaded with him to go to the doctor. He didn’t want to and assured me he was fine. It’s been ten years and he still can’t make a fist. His pinky finger can’t bend enough to close it up.
If my husband wants to live with a permanently disfigured finger, that’s his prerogative. His ability to tough things out is something I deeply admire about him. But I certainly hope he wouldn’t hold his pinky up to curious onlookers and say that this is what a healthy finger looks like. The problem is, in the mental health field, we sometimes do exactly that—we hold up broken images of mental health.
Understandably, there is a desire to make room for nuance. I imagine this dilemma is similar to what a physician may experience. Physical health, to some extent, has to have objective criteria. You might feel fine, but that doesn’t mean you are fine. You might think you’re dying of every possible disease when you get an ache or pain, but that doesn’t mean you are. When a doctor identifies something potentially harmful, how do they advocate for a healthier lifestyle without a sound, objective basis of what healthy is? For some patients, it would be overwhelming, painful, fearful, or shaming to be informed of the ways their current habits might be harming them—even if unintentionally. But a doctor who pledges to do no harm would not sacrifice a patient’s well-being to protect them from the discomfort of truth.
When mental health fails to offer clear standards, we stay in a therapeutic limbo, where the full potential of care remains out of reach. And when therapists avoid taking a stance to stay comfortable, they risk enabling unnecessary suffering. I once saw a colleague hesitate to challenge a client who was spiralling into a harmful belief system because it would have required asserting what well-being actually entails.
We don’t need to reduce mental health to a checklist—but we also can’t afford to leave it entirely undefined. In general, we might look for certain signs of well-being: the ability to regulate emotions, form satisfying relationships, function productively, perceive reality with clarity, adapt to challenges, and engage in self-reflection. These aren't rigid standards, but they offer a compass—something we can hold up when we wonder whether healing is taking place.
It can be damaging to the client’s autonomy and sense of self when a therapist assumes that their own worldview, experiences, and values are the objective standard. Those things shape the areas where a therapist gets curious and wants to dig deeper. They influence the questions we ask, the moments we pause, the times we challenge. If left unchecked, a therapist can impose on vulnerable clients. Hopefully, a therapist is aware of this tendency and can be self-reflective and transparent about it.
But the fear of offending others, of treading off course from a moral and ethical duty to care for one another, has carved new paths into potentially tragic social landscapes. Health cannot be a fully subjective experience, or we miss the point of care entirely. Our instinct of not wanting to hurt others should be honored—but those very same values require us to take a stance toward objective realities, however uncomfortable. It is in this discomfort that we have the potential to do some of our most meaningful work.
As I navigate through broad adjectives and vaguely descriptive desires, I remember the power of language—not just as a tool for communication but as a means for real change. Words are little gems that allow for self-reflection and connection. This is one of the reasons I became a therapist. I want to immerse myself into the world of others: tell me what you see; let’s uncover what you’re feeling; what does happiness mean to you? how do you define a good life?
However, I believe the subjectivity of language like this belongs in the hands of the client—used for discovery, not as a definition for well-being. For that, I want to hand them a compass, an objective true north.
