healy-feely

English

Etymology

From heal +‎ -y (from how New Age pseudoscience often promotes a "healing" narrative to sell products) +‎ feely (from the importance of feelings and emotions in such practices).

Adjective

healy-feely (comparative more healy-feely, superlative most healy-feely)

1. (derogatory, informal) Relating to, or believing in, New Age pseudoscience.
   • 2012, Dan Zevin, he Day I Turned Uncool: Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up:

     Not to get all healy-feely on you or anything, but I believe that is what they call a “breakthrough” in the therapy game. For one thing, it shed some light on a behavior I'm now working through […]

   • 2012, Lone Morch, Seeing Red: A Woman's Quest for Truth, Power, and the Sacred:

     […] much more palatable to me than talking of chakras and clearing bad energy. It sounded more magical, less New Age. Once we settled on a not too healy-feely compromise, we sent out email flyers to everyone we knew.

   • 2018, Paul M. Cole, POW/MIA Accounting: Volume I:

     As anyone who has been around the healy-feely crowd long enough knows, the second Noble Truth of Buddhism states that the cause of all suffering is attachments.

See also

• woo woo