Therapy speak can prevent the person from clearly and correctly understanding their situation or relationship.[12] Labeling a person or situation with psychology jargon may stop people from exploring any of the nuances or complexities.[4][12][17] For example, someone may say that a person is toxic, when it would be more productive to understand how they have been hurt by this person, or even whether they have been hurt.[12] Additionally, it may disempower people and reduce their psychological resilience by causing them to believe that minor or ordinary unpleasant feelings are symptoms of psychological disorders.[8][24] This can make managing the situation seem more difficult and can produce an identity around being mentally ill.[8]

Like other forms of pop psychology,[15] therapy speak can result in miscommunication.[18][16] When people use the same word to mean different things, they may have difficulty understanding each other.[3] For example, someone might talk about trauma bonding, thinking that it's the emotional bond between survivors of a shared experience; the actual meaning is the emotional attachment of abuse victims to their abusers.[12][19] Using the word to refer to a relationship between abuse survivors will confuse people who believe it refers to an abuser–victim relationship, and vice versa. Therapists may deal with this by asking the speaker to define the word or explain it in more detail.[3][12][14] It also impairs communication by substituting a superficial judgement for clear communication.[19]