The way that we talk is the blessing and the curse of being Irish in America.
The upside is that once we open our mouths we are often met with backslapping welcomes and sparkly-eyed accounts of family ancestry.
The downside, however, is that the novelty of one’s speech being an object of amusement wears off rather quickly.
Any reader who has spent any time in the US will be familiar with the tiresome routines of someone recognising your accent. One regular experience is the much-less-charming-than-they-think habit many Americans have of repeating to you whatever you just said with a nodding smile and their very best paddy whackery accent, expecting you to be pleased.
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Though there are certainly heavier crosses to bear, the regular scrutiny on the way I talk has given me extra pause to consider the peculiarities of how the residents of my adopted home in Berkeley, California speak, the self-identified “most liberal city in America” next door to San Francisco. I came here two years ago for a master’s degree and to work as a research assistant.
In simple ways, the rather lopsided cultural exchange between Ireland and the US means that we don’t find the same novelty in how Californians talk. While American kids’ exposure to Ireland often doesn’t extend far beyond the leprechaun on Lucky Charms cereal boxes, we are raised on a hard-core 18-year curriculum of American sitcoms and Hollywood movies. When a Californian describes something as “chill” or “hella tight” it doesn’t exactly ring with exoticism.
However, what I did first notice in Berkeley was how people talk about themselves. Compared to the typical older Irish man, who would likely prefer to have teeth pulled than talk about his feelings, people in Berkeley practically gush.
Those I meet are quick to share intimate details of their lives and relationships, and often with peculiar language. More than once someone I have been speaking to has placed the fingertips of both hands on their heart and told me that they were “practicing” things like “appreciation” or “communication”.
I’ve heard lifestyles, friendships, and house-shares described as “intentional”. I have heard the word ‘trauma’ used when recalling not having a date to prom.
Even interpersonal conflicts unfold with a curious vocabulary; a friend was told that they had “violated” a “boundary” when they moved their housemate’s plant to another part of their livingroom.
This strange way of speaking remained bemusing and a little perplexing until I started therapy. The university I am at provides heavily subsidised access to therapy (aka counselling) to student employees, presumably as a cheaper alternative to fixing the crushing workloads or low pay.
People in Berkeley could be sharing a dictionary with my therapist: “trauma” needs to be “healed”, relationships can be “toxic”, and “work” needs to be done.
Elsewhere, this phenomenon has been called “therapy speak”, where terms from mental healthcare seep into everyday conversation. Or maybe saturate in the case of Berkeley; for the well-heeled and often over-educated residents, having a therapist is more common than a gym membership. Indeed, not being in therapy can carry an air of suspicion.
The ubiquity of therapy infuses the words people use and their lifestyles with an odd deliberateness: everyone is always talking about “working on” some part of themselves.
Coming from Ireland, it’s hard not to be cynical. It all feels a bit, well, narcissistic. All of this carry on commits the cardinal sin of Irish culture – self importance.
If I rolled up to my family Christmas party and announced that I was practising intentionality and working on my trauma, I would be met at best with puzzlement. Even the process of therapy feels like making a fuss: could my problems ever be big enough to justify the $200 per hour my health insurance pays to have someone listen to them?
But, on the other hand, our culture of self-care in Ireland feels juvenile in comparison. For many Irish people, our stiff upper lip makes opening up feel like weakness or burdening others. The prevailing approach to interpersonal conflict is a binary – either you ‘say nothing’ or you ‘cause a scene’. And indeed, how many people do you know in Ireland who actually do access mental healthcare?
While it feels self-centred, there is something undeniably useful about a culture that normalises therapy and its caring approach to oneself and others.
Berkeley makes me wonder about mental health in Ireland. The last decade has seen the stigma around talking about it fall away in Ireland, but access to care feels far from mainstream, and therapy and the very Californian ethos around it feels at odds with the Irish imperative to, above all else, never make a fuss.
Where do we go from here?
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