Addams Family Values: Stunted Development, Anti-Social Traits, and Family Systems

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
<v Speaker 1>movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
<v Speaker 1>I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by Ben Stover,
<v Speaker 1>individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're all
<v Speaker 1>licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice
<v Speaker 1>out of Chicago. Even though we are licensed mental health professionals,
<v Speaker 1>this podcast is purely for entertainment purposes and to fulfill
<v Speaker 1>our love of dissecting pop culture and all forms.
<v Speaker 2>Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
<v Speaker 2>we aren't your therapist.
<v Speaker 1>If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
<v Speaker 1>a local mental health provider. You are mister Debbie. Today, y'all,
<v Speaker 1>we're gonna be talking about Adam's family values. We are
<v Speaker 1>back with our guests from our first Adams Family episode, Benjamin,
<v Speaker 1>and then do you want to introduce yourself to the group?
<v Speaker 1>To the class?
<v Speaker 3>Hello, class, I am the new beat. This true.
<v Speaker 4>I think you know previously replace your your whole friend Benstover, No,
<v Speaker 4>I can never replace him. Hi, I am this is
<v Speaker 4>first on the podcast. I'm saying this Josser Benjamin Pice.
<v Speaker 4>Now yes, I'll finally get to say that, my god.
<v Speaker 4>So yes, I am doctor Bend Tights. I am a
<v Speaker 4>therapist in southern California, and I work in clinical and
<v Speaker 4>forensic psychology, and I am the co host of two
<v Speaker 4>mental health related podcasts, Mental Health Quests, The Therapist Office
<v Speaker 4>and Beyond.
<v Speaker 3>Of which all of you guys were guests on.
<v Speaker 4>I'm still editing Ben's episode, and also my hero Therapy podcast.
<v Speaker 4>We would talk about the psychology of my here academic anime.
<v Speaker 4>And I also present on a lot of PANDLA comic
<v Speaker 4>con stuff about this stuff too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I don't think we're going to be out before
<v Speaker 1>this year's comic Con, so we can't really advertise all
<v Speaker 1>the panels you're doing, but you do a lot.
<v Speaker 4>By the time this episode comes out, I will have
<v Speaker 4>done seven panels at Los Angeles Comic Con on Okay,
<v Speaker 4>so we're going to get them all, right, Dragonball, Fallout,
<v Speaker 4>Dead Full of Wolverine, X Men, Joker, and Public, When
<v Speaker 4>has Been Hotel? And Have a Boss? I somehow got
<v Speaker 4>to eat on my fingers, but it's seven.
<v Speaker 1>Apparently one panel manifested into being as you were talking
<v Speaker 1>about them.
<v Speaker 3>That's how it works, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So that's how it works. Once you get one
<v Speaker 2>and start rolling and people like it, you you get
<v Speaker 2>more and you get more and you get more, and
<v Speaker 2>it just takes an idea of why not me.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, especially at La comiccone, they really like to have
<v Speaker 4>a lot of these kinds of like mental health related
<v Speaker 4>So when me and my brother Isaac and our friends
<v Speaker 4>other geek psychology friends were like some mid panels, we
<v Speaker 4>each get at least two accepted and then we just
<v Speaker 4>arranged all other parents.
<v Speaker 3>We're just it's all the same panelists. Yeah, in an
<v Speaker 3>extroom over, We're just going to go from room to room.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Well, good luck with all that. And we're excited
<v Speaker 1>to have you here since you did grace us during
<v Speaker 1>our first Adam's Family episode, so it felt pertinent for
<v Speaker 1>you to come back, and then even extra pertinent because
<v Speaker 1>you actually work with the clientele that's not dissimilar to
<v Speaker 1>one of our main characters in this movie, Miss Debbie.
<v Speaker 1>So just a quick plot summary in case you weirdly
<v Speaker 1>wanted to drop in on this episode with no context
<v Speaker 1>for Adam's family around his family values which.
<v Speaker 2>People do sometimes, which we you know, We love you guys.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you for listening, even if you don't know the movie.
<v Speaker 2>That's kind of awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Actually, So where this movie takes off is kind of
<v Speaker 1>pretty soon after the first movie because she announces she's
<v Speaker 1>pregnant at the end of the first movie. So Martitia
<v Speaker 1>has her baby Puberts, and in trying to find help
<v Speaker 1>for a nanny for the baby, Debbie gets introduced into
<v Speaker 1>their lives. And Debbie is a black widow, which is
<v Speaker 1>a female serial killer who murders her husbands, who has
<v Speaker 1>her site set on Fester, who, if you'll remember from
<v Speaker 1>our other episode about Adam's family, is someone who is
<v Speaker 1>struggling with being an actual adult due to the intense
<v Speaker 1>infantilization by his quote unquote adopted mom who found him
<v Speaker 1>in the Beer Muda triangle. So we are jumping back
<v Speaker 1>the story. Sorry, children, that's true. I mean I don't
<v Speaker 1>a wait list and I haven't heard back yet. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>they lost it, you know. So we are watching the
<v Speaker 1>semination of the Adam's fate once again, but this time
<v Speaker 1>instead of a lawyer, we're watching a temptress Deborah come
<v Speaker 1>into Fester's house, marry him, force him to exercise his
<v Speaker 1>family from their lives and eventually she unfortunately gets exercised
<v Speaker 1>from theirs. So today we will be talking about Fester
<v Speaker 1>and touching upon the continuation of the topics from our
<v Speaker 1>last episode about him. So his infantilization, his were like
<v Speaker 1>social skills under development. And then we're talking about Miss
<v Speaker 1>Debbie and talking about antisocial tendencies to social personal disorder,
<v Speaker 1>criminal thinking, predatory behavior, and security, all that kind of
<v Speaker 1>good stuff. And then of course we'll be doing treatment
<v Speaker 1>and final thoughts. So let's jump right in with our
<v Speaker 1>boy Fester. He is introduced into this movie howling at
<v Speaker 1>the moon out of I assume loneliness and horning us,
<v Speaker 1>maybe in equal parts.
<v Speaker 2>I think that's one of the same. With the way
<v Speaker 2>they're showing him and the themes of this movie. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>even though, what was the last thing that Wednesday says
<v Speaker 2>to him about you missed having adult thoughts or something
<v Speaker 2>about her?
<v Speaker 1>Oh did you miss Debbie? Yeah, it's like adult time
<v Speaker 1>late at night time.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. It's the theme of this movie is that Fester
<v Speaker 2>is reaching well past the point of physical maturity, but
<v Speaker 2>his emotional maturity does not match.
<v Speaker 1>It's almost like him officially hitting puberty is that first
<v Speaker 1>shot of him in the movie, because he feels like
<v Speaker 1>a young teenage boy twelve ish thirteen maybe, who is
<v Speaker 1>discovering his body and his sexuality and his hormones and
<v Speaker 1>doesn't know what to do with any of those feelings.
<v Speaker 1>But he's very aware of them and feels very in
<v Speaker 1>the thrall of those emotional experiences and physical manifestations of
<v Speaker 1>those experiences.
<v Speaker 2>Which require calling at the moon just of course, as
<v Speaker 2>you do as one.
<v Speaker 4>I mean when you are feeling things.
<v Speaker 1>And I like to scream in my car with the
<v Speaker 1>volume on in full Handah, no car.
<v Speaker 3>Difference.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, But it.
<v Speaker 1>Is interesting how much in our first episode we really
<v Speaker 1>called What was going to Happen a second movie. So
<v Speaker 1>one thing I do want to say, from like almost
<v Speaker 1>a writing continuity perspective, is that the writers to the
<v Speaker 1>great job of tracking the personality a Fester from the
<v Speaker 1>first movie into this movie where this is something that
<v Speaker 1>would happen like he's not all of a sudden suave
<v Speaker 1>and Gomez, like he's not even how he seems to
<v Speaker 1>be discussed pre Bermuda Triangle, pre disappearance, there seems to
<v Speaker 1>be this memory of him as even more charismatic than Gomez.
<v Speaker 1>I think Gomez talks about how when they were kids
<v Speaker 1>that Fester would get all the girls, and so I
<v Speaker 1>think what's really cool actually and well written psychologically about
<v Speaker 1>Fester in this movie is that he hasn't done that
<v Speaker 1>thing that movies like to do where you go through
<v Speaker 1>this horrible life changing, mind altering situation, this huge trauma,
<v Speaker 1>and then once you're past it, once immediate distressor is gone,
<v Speaker 1>you're like back to basics, You're back to business, You're
<v Speaker 1>the person you were before all this stuff happened to you.
<v Speaker 1>Fester is forever changed by what happened to him going
<v Speaker 1>missing in his twenties. It is showing in here he
<v Speaker 1>got arrested development and it's still happening.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, definitely, it's actually really I also like that because
<v Speaker 4>so many times in movies where they are like these
<v Speaker 4>big changes in someone's life and in family units where
<v Speaker 4>it's like, okay, we live happily undrafted, right, this happily here,
<v Speaker 4>especially after the first movie, and it really actually doesn't
<v Speaker 4>make sense that this is how he's going to be
<v Speaker 4>presenting considering his experiences. He went from being someone who,
<v Speaker 4>according to Gomaz was very suave and a lady's man
<v Speaker 4>and whatnot to being uber and vantaalized. And now he
<v Speaker 4>doesn't know how to handle his own body, doesn't know
<v Speaker 4>how to handle his feelings. And that makes a lot
<v Speaker 4>of sense when you consider his experience, as someone who
<v Speaker 4>was held copied in that way would not know how
<v Speaker 4>to behave, would not know how to react.
<v Speaker 2>No, they wouldn't have gotten the social feedback of peers
<v Speaker 2>that kids get. Kids start to grow up when they
<v Speaker 2>start getting into peer groups and seeing how other kids
<v Speaker 2>interact with each other react to them. At schools, you
<v Speaker 2>see them, they start globbing on to older kids and
<v Speaker 2>watching what they do, and that has more influence on
<v Speaker 2>them than anything parents do. But if kids don't have
<v Speaker 2>that experience to glob onto peers as they develop or
<v Speaker 2>even you know, in the I guess in his case,
<v Speaker 2>in his twenties and he disappeared, that's a pretty important
<v Speaker 2>way to learn how to be an adult, how to
<v Speaker 2>handle the adult side of sexual feelings, of romance, of dating,
<v Speaker 2>of any of it. It's pretty profoundly different than the
<v Speaker 2>junior high probably to the benefit of everyone, that boys
<v Speaker 2>don't go around being me and the girls there in
<v Speaker 2>an entire time and pull their hair and run away.
<v Speaker 3>I will say I never did that. I never did that.
<v Speaker 3>The girls to me.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, if we think about Fester conceptually, he loses his memory,
<v Speaker 1>so he lost all the personality anchoring that Gomez and
<v Speaker 1>everyone else knew him for. He was raised by a
<v Speaker 1>woman who formed this whole narrative, lied to him about
<v Speaker 1>his past, and created a new identity for him in
<v Speaker 1>which he only had her because she had to keep
<v Speaker 1>him inside the house, probably because he was a famous
<v Speaker 1>missing person. Yeah, and had that weird pseudo sexual relationship
<v Speaker 1>with him where even though he was a grown man,
<v Speaker 1>she would hold him to her bosom and like cuddle
<v Speaker 1>him and definitely feel that hole, I'm the only woman
<v Speaker 1>you'll ever need. I'm the only person you'll ever need,
<v Speaker 1>and so really ostracized him from any peers. Now he's
<v Speaker 1>back with his family, which is great, and it seems
<v Speaker 1>like he still has not developed or experienced any of
<v Speaker 1>the socialization outside of maybe the Adams is that he
<v Speaker 1>really needs to grow. And it would make sense to me,
<v Speaker 1>like after what he'd been through, why he might just
<v Speaker 1>stay at home where he feels safe with his family.
<v Speaker 1>Wanting to spend time with Gomez and all the lost
<v Speaker 1>time he's had, but I do think it has kept
<v Speaker 1>him insecure and just not knowing what to do out
<v Speaker 1>in the world with other people. You know, he doesn't
<v Speaker 1>even seem to have friends, just the family.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, she mentions, you know, during his bachelor party,
<v Speaker 4>he's like, oh, you guys are the best friends a
<v Speaker 4>guy can come though. We don't know who these people
<v Speaker 4>are because they're all, you know, the outcast kind.
<v Speaker 3>So are they all family? Are they?
<v Speaker 1>Like they were all the people that were at the
<v Speaker 1>ball last movie?
<v Speaker 3>So it's like, are they all just related to him?
<v Speaker 3>And those are the only social interactions that he knows
<v Speaker 3>are family.
<v Speaker 4>And that's another thing, is that when it comes to socialization, yes,
<v Speaker 4>we learn a lot from our peers in school, but
<v Speaker 4>we also learn from family. And here we had someone
<v Speaker 4>like Pfesser who didn't have either.
<v Speaker 3>He was you know, stuck.
<v Speaker 4>And then now he's trying to gain that back only
<v Speaker 4>from Gomez, and you see how much he's really like
<v Speaker 4>trying to be like Gomez's sees Gomez's life and.
<v Speaker 3>He's like, I want that, but I don't know how
<v Speaker 3>to be that right.
<v Speaker 2>And we learn a lot from family and how they
<v Speaker 2>start to treat us differently as we age. Pretty Much
<v Speaker 2>every kid that has a reasonably normative life is going
<v Speaker 2>to at some point have those conversations, have parents tell them, Hey,
<v Speaker 2>you're ten, now, you're not five anymore, Like you got
<v Speaker 2>to have some responsibilities, There's some things you got to
<v Speaker 2>do differently because you're growing up, and especially once into
<v Speaker 2>the teenage years of Hey, expectation are different now. And
<v Speaker 2>if he didn't have any of that, and it would
<v Speaker 2>absolutely result in him being stock like he is.
<v Speaker 1>And I feel like and especially with a family that
<v Speaker 1>is reinforcing that constantly, right like Gomez continues to treat
<v Speaker 1>him like he's so small and so young, and that
<v Speaker 1>that's a big part. When a family puts you in
<v Speaker 1>a role, it's really hard to change that role all
<v Speaker 1>on your own without any support from anyone else. A
<v Speaker 1>lot of the work that I do with clients is
<v Speaker 1>helping them communicate better with their family. That can be
<v Speaker 1>really tricky and it's a really hard thing to do
<v Speaker 1>because you really have to fight through the role that
<v Speaker 1>the family puts you in and how do you pivot
<v Speaker 1>from that. We can tell that fester A doesn't have
<v Speaker 1>anybody telling him that, and b doesn't have anybody who
<v Speaker 1>can support him with that, because the family's vibe is
<v Speaker 1>so enmeshed.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely. One of the core things about family systems theories
<v Speaker 2>that you learn about even learning about it in undergrad
<v Speaker 2>is that thinking about a family as a machine, that
<v Speaker 2>each part, each person plays a role in the system
<v Speaker 2>of the family machine. And one person may be a sprocket,
<v Speaker 2>one person may be an engine, one person may be
<v Speaker 2>a belt, but changed the way one of those parts
<v Speaker 2>functions and the system no longer functions the same. So
<v Speaker 2>if you try to change and step out of whatever
<v Speaker 2>role they have molded you into, the whole system will
<v Speaker 2>try to pull you back in, and they don't want
<v Speaker 2>anything to change because they've found safety, they've found security,
<v Speaker 2>they found consistency in the dynamics as they are. But
<v Speaker 2>that might not work for the individual anymore, and then
<v Speaker 2>it's a push pull to get that to change. So
<v Speaker 2>it is important work to help people communicate with their
<v Speaker 2>family of I'm not six.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but I think what's tough about the Fester Gomez
<v Speaker 1>dynamic is that they both seem very comfortable with it.
<v Speaker 1>Other than Fester like starting to realize, which is the
<v Speaker 1>age when kids start to be like self individuating. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I want to be my own person. I think the
<v Speaker 1>scene you're talking about, Hannah that really sticks in my
<v Speaker 1>mind is when Fester's laying in bed and Gomez looks
<v Speaker 1>like he's tucking him in, yes, and he's talking to
<v Speaker 1>him like Infester's his little boy, and he does that
<v Speaker 1>You're just a boy. When Fester is talking about wanting
<v Speaker 1>a relationship and wanting to get married, wanting to have kids,
<v Speaker 1>and so it does make me curious as well how
<v Speaker 1>much Gomez is also trying to figure out how to
<v Speaker 1>be supportive to Fester, because it is like a odd
<v Speaker 1>dynamic in that Fester was his older brother who he
<v Speaker 1>seemed to really admire. He gets Fester back, but she
<v Speaker 1>has a lot of conflicting feelings about with guilt and
<v Speaker 1>stuff like that. He can't really treat Fester like his
<v Speaker 1>brother yet because he is so childlike. I do feel
<v Speaker 1>like Gomez is a good dad, and I think he
<v Speaker 1>feels very comfortable as a dad. So I wonder if
<v Speaker 1>Gomez just kind of puts on the dad hat with
<v Speaker 1>Fester because it fits and it feels comfortable, and Fester
<v Speaker 1>seems to thrive off of it until we're getting to
<v Speaker 1>this point where Fester is aging out of that kind
<v Speaker 1>of need. He doesn't need a dad like that anymore
<v Speaker 1>to make him feel comfortable and secure. And unfortunately, I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if Gomez knows how to go through that
<v Speaker 1>transition stage yet, because his kids are almost there but
<v Speaker 1>not quite like they're right at it, and I do
<v Speaker 1>feel like Gomez must be. I'm going to use the
<v Speaker 1>term parenting, which I guess is indicative of their dynamic,
<v Speaker 1>because I want to say, even though he's not Profester's parent,
<v Speaker 1>but that he's sort of like festering. I wonder how
<v Speaker 1>much he's festering. I wonder how much he's parenting Fester
<v Speaker 1>from like a guilt place of I want to keep
<v Speaker 1>you safe, I want to take care of you. I
<v Speaker 1>want to keep you here and protected, and I don't
<v Speaker 1>want to feel bad about yourself. I've worked with so
<v Speaker 1>many parents where their kids have gone through trauma. They
<v Speaker 1>can have a really hard time pushing them and challenging
<v Speaker 1>them and letting them take chances because they feel so
<v Speaker 1>anxious and or guilty about the situation. And so I
<v Speaker 1>feel like Gomez will struggle with that in terms of
<v Speaker 1>you have to back off and actually let him do
<v Speaker 1>this stuff that he's talking about wanting and that you
<v Speaker 1>also want forums. I think what's so interesting about the
<v Speaker 1>Gombz thing is he's not discouraging Fester. He's actually encouraging Fester.
<v Speaker 1>But Gomez doesn't quite understand, I think, which is also
<v Speaker 1>not uncommon when I've worked with family members in this
<v Speaker 1>on a situation like that, you need to walk Fester
<v Speaker 1>through how to do the things you're acting are second nature.
<v Speaker 1>It is this interesting thing where he both treats Fester
<v Speaker 1>like a little kid who needs that heavy parental hand,
<v Speaker 1>while simultaneously assumes that Fester has adult wisdom and a
<v Speaker 1>knowledge about how to find a date, how to ask
<v Speaker 1>woman out, how to plan a date. That isn't uncommon.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, with families I've even worked with where
<v Speaker 1>there is so much infantalizing in this very specific category
<v Speaker 1>under this column. But then simultaneously, you'll ask your kid
<v Speaker 1>in that scenario to know how to do stuff that
<v Speaker 1>you only think they know because you're projecting your adult
<v Speaker 1>wisdom onto them. And so where Fester ironically needs a
<v Speaker 1>heavier hand from Gomez is to coach him through all
<v Speaker 1>these life skills that he's forgotten and then never redeveloped.
<v Speaker 4>I think in the scene where you know, Faster wants
<v Speaker 4>to take her out to dinner, but he doesn't know
<v Speaker 4>how to have a conversation with her at dinner. He
<v Speaker 4>does not, so he asked Gomez and Matitia to double
<v Speaker 4>date with him.
<v Speaker 3>First of all. That was just very sweet though though,
<v Speaker 3>to be very honest.
<v Speaker 4>If I was like on the first date and I
<v Speaker 4>was double a with Matitia and Gomez, I would to
<v Speaker 4>be like so intimidated, you know, you know, but you
<v Speaker 4>could see how doing that date, Gomez and my teacher
<v Speaker 4>were trying to help Faster get a conversation going. They
<v Speaker 4>were trying to help him show himself off. He didn't
<v Speaker 4>do a good job of verbally expressing himself.
<v Speaker 3>No, no, he did.
<v Speaker 4>But you did see, you know, Martitia was telling her
<v Speaker 4>in the bathroom, he's this, you know, really great guy.
<v Speaker 3>If he likes you with all, that's why he vomented
<v Speaker 3>on you.
<v Speaker 4>And maybe that's why I never got I got a
<v Speaker 4>date to last.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't voment on them.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know one crucial step.
<v Speaker 3>You know. But the thing is is they did that.
<v Speaker 4>They were trying to help him and then they also
<v Speaker 4>took over, and then they just went a little too
<v Speaker 4>far with showing how amazing their relationship is when they
<v Speaker 4>started doing the dance that combined tengo positively and the
<v Speaker 4>flamenco all in one a little bit of blaming. It
<v Speaker 4>bothered me with them because I actually used to do
<v Speaker 4>balling dancing in high school.
<v Speaker 3>That was like my pe class.
<v Speaker 4>So like I was recognizing the steps and everything, okay,
<v Speaker 4>well to during the steps, but it's not that's not
<v Speaker 4>I'm saying, goore.
<v Speaker 1>Like I had. This movie has taken me out. I
<v Speaker 1>could get on everything like this I.
<v Speaker 3>Was going on.
<v Speaker 4>I was like okay, but they did and you know,
<v Speaker 4>the showing off how great their relationship is, how romantic
<v Speaker 4>they are. That's a tough act to follow for someone
<v Speaker 4>like Fessor, who isn't in this position where he's learning
<v Speaker 4>how to talk to a girl for the very first time.
<v Speaker 2>Mm hm, And I mean pure intimidation or either party involved.
<v Speaker 2>The way that those two are constantly in communication verbally
<v Speaker 2>and nonverbally, in coded language and direct language with each other.
<v Speaker 2>They have a symbiotic, idealistic understanding of love that is
<v Speaker 2>not attainable.
<v Speaker 1>It's just so all or nothing. They are showing Fester
<v Speaker 1>the most symbiotic, advantageous, extreme committed kind of love right
<v Speaker 1>and not really acknowledging that there are a lot of
<v Speaker 1>steps between, right, that where between we're Fester's at and
<v Speaker 1>where they're at. Unfortunately, I do think it does make
<v Speaker 1>Fester very vulnerable to imprinting, which I think I did
<v Speaker 1>say in the first movie, is going to imprint on
<v Speaker 1>someone in printing on the first possible option and then
<v Speaker 1>thinking like I can just make this into what gom
<v Speaker 1>as a Martitia have, but understanding that you have to
<v Speaker 1>date many, maybe many people, that there are things that
<v Speaker 1>you may or may not like about the person and
<v Speaker 1>they may or may not like about you. That it's
<v Speaker 1>not this soul mayy zero to sixty thing that gom
<v Speaker 1>as a Martitia have. It definitely would create a lot
<v Speaker 1>of high expectations, maybe even a lot of confusion and
<v Speaker 1>for Fester and like, why is my relationship not looking
<v Speaker 1>and feeling like their relationship? Yeah, it's just not giving
<v Speaker 1>him a lot of practical life experience stuff that he
<v Speaker 1>needs and is setting himself up for, Like I said,
<v Speaker 1>the extremest version of love that DeBie, of course, is
<v Speaker 1>all too eager to capitalize on.
<v Speaker 2>And offer falsely because if Fester has idolized, which he
<v Speaker 2>has some moments of dialogue where he indicates he does
<v Speaker 2>idolize the relationship and how hard it's been for him
<v Speaker 2>to listen to all of the shenanigans that they get
<v Speaker 2>up to at night.
<v Speaker 1>He's peeping, He's like, I've been peeping through those key holes,
<v Speaker 1>observing you guys.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, And he can't recognize that, Like you said, that's
<v Speaker 2>something that takes years of development, of being dependent on
<v Speaker 2>each other, of building a life together, of having children,
<v Speaker 2>of owning a home. There's so many things that go
<v Speaker 2>into a full on adult marriage. That's you know, we'll
<v Speaker 2>say twelve years in and at least Yeah, you can't know,
<v Speaker 2>you can't just have that in a dating relationship. And
<v Speaker 2>sometimes people really struggle with that of well, my husband
<v Speaker 2>to be would act like this, like hold on, but
<v Speaker 2>you guys haven't earned those steps from each other. You
<v Speaker 2>haven't had that man, that relationship manifest and grow, those
<v Speaker 2>investments have to mature. Yeah, no one is going to
<v Speaker 2>and no one should step into your life and be
<v Speaker 2>like I'm going to be your everything.
<v Speaker 1>Let's yeah, love bombing as they talk about it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Yeah, a healthy person shouldn't let you into everything,
<v Speaker 2>not for years.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And unfortunately Gomes a Mortician are not setting Fester
<v Speaker 1>up for protection around that. They are encouraging this idea
<v Speaker 1>of well continued in meshment. Unfortunately, we have Fester who
<v Speaker 1>came from an extraordinarily enmeshed dynamic with his fake mom
<v Speaker 1>and now they are Mortician and Gomez are now unfortunately
<v Speaker 1>encouraging another kind of potential enmeshment where it works out
<v Speaker 1>for them and it just happens to like be very
<v Speaker 1>perfect for them. But their love is also very singular,
<v Speaker 1>and so what it actually does is it sets Fester
<v Speaker 1>up to be taken advantage of and it continues to
<v Speaker 1>encourage that like enmeshment dynamic. And so when then Debbie
<v Speaker 1>is like, you have to be me one hundred percent,
<v Speaker 1>Like you have to be in on me, if you
<v Speaker 1>want my body, if you want my full love, you
<v Speaker 1>have to only be with me, and you have to
<v Speaker 1>push your family away. Of course that's what happens, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it is just a continuation of the relationship dynamic he's
<v Speaker 1>the most familiar with, which is you disappear within the
<v Speaker 1>other person, like you and one other person are two
<v Speaker 1>heads on one body.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, which you can't head.
<v Speaker 3>It's really just one and a half heads. It's yeah
<v Speaker 3>and you're yes.
<v Speaker 1>It is unfortunate that Fester doesn't get any models that
<v Speaker 1>are more middle ground people who are in a healthy
<v Speaker 1>relationship but they like to do things on their own
<v Speaker 1>where they like to be their own person, or maybe
<v Speaker 1>they fight sometimes but they work through it and they
<v Speaker 1>figure it out. I think this also goes to something
<v Speaker 1>we were talking about before we started, which is how
<v Speaker 1>Fester doesn't know how to talk about how he feels
<v Speaker 1>specifically to women, and how Debbie really has to walk
<v Speaker 1>him like a dog to the point like after their
<v Speaker 1>first date the double date, when they're in the cemetery,
<v Speaker 1>she has to throw and throw and throw and throw
<v Speaker 1>and throw and throw herself at him before he realizes
<v Speaker 1>that she's throwing himself herself at him, and how underdeveloped
<v Speaker 1>his communication is around her, around his basic communication, can't
<v Speaker 1>even introduce himself appropriately, which I think is also the
<v Speaker 1>fant to see that Gomez and Mortitia encourage, which is
<v Speaker 1>that if it's your perfect person, or if it's like
<v Speaker 1>the love match that you deserve, you'll just be able
<v Speaker 1>to figure it out. It'll just work out. When that
<v Speaker 1>isn't true, you have to learn how to talk to people,
<v Speaker 1>talk about what you like, talk about what you need,
<v Speaker 1>and there's work there. It makes me think of when
<v Speaker 1>I work with couples and you have to have the
<v Speaker 1>mean mind reading conversation, which is, you know, your perfect
<v Speaker 1>person isn't supposed to read your mind, no matter how
<v Speaker 1>much they love you, so get the fuck over it.
<v Speaker 1>But I think you're going with some Mortisha. Unfortunately, they
<v Speaker 1>do encourage that at mind reading Idea, and I can
<v Speaker 1>see where Fester would also take it from there, like
<v Speaker 1>I don't have to do the work, I'll just meet
<v Speaker 1>the person and it'll figure itself out.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I mean I agree completely. And actually we kind
<v Speaker 4>of see it a little bit with Wednesday as well.
<v Speaker 4>She's now starting to show interest.
<v Speaker 3>In a boy and everything and Graham.
<v Speaker 4>She doesn't follow her parents' way of doing things, but
<v Speaker 4>she's also like, I'm not letting someone you know, have
<v Speaker 4>their say no matter.
<v Speaker 3>This is stuff like.
<v Speaker 1>She's damastrate her own kind of like codependence, like tendencies.
<v Speaker 4>Like overly independent in this Okay, my relationship is only
<v Speaker 4>what I want and.
<v Speaker 3>The other person is just there, just to be there.
<v Speaker 3>Really like she.
<v Speaker 1>Wants someone she can boss around and potentially murder her
<v Speaker 1>or threatened with murder in any given moment.
<v Speaker 3>He scar because she cares.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, exactly.
<v Speaker 2>She wants someone that she can test with all her
<v Speaker 2>scariness and then they pass all her tests whenever she
<v Speaker 2>feels like testing them, because the family that she's got
<v Speaker 2>means this person needs to be constantly okay with her
<v Speaker 2>scariness and their scariness and just embrace it. And if
<v Speaker 2>they can't pass that test, they can't be with her.
<v Speaker 3>And also not just embrace it, but learn how to
<v Speaker 3>return it. Oh, yeah, you reciprocate that. How do you
<v Speaker 3>not just accept that this is.
<v Speaker 4>How she shows affection, but how do you give that
<v Speaker 4>form of affection? Like the love language thing? Right, It's
<v Speaker 4>not just that you know someone receives love language in
<v Speaker 4>that way, but how do they give the love language?
<v Speaker 4>And so we know that this is how Wednesday gives it.
<v Speaker 4>We don't know how she's gonna how she receives because
<v Speaker 4>we've never seen that, but I definitely think that in
<v Speaker 4>this kind of context she would receive it in a
<v Speaker 4>very similar way. So whether it's Joel or any other guy,
<v Speaker 4>and you know, not to talk about the Wednesday TV series,
<v Speaker 4>which was amazing. Like also, we kind of comes into
<v Speaker 4>that like she gives love in this scary way and
<v Speaker 4>she will only accept it in the same way.
<v Speaker 3>That's the only way she knows how right, which is.
<v Speaker 4>Really interesting because that's not how like her parents show love.
<v Speaker 2>They I mean, they they do believe we don't right,
<v Speaker 2>They do what they don't like, they work in like
<v Speaker 2>the bdsm angle into stuff, but they also keep it
<v Speaker 2>in like a clindestine way that they both know what
<v Speaker 2>they're talking about, and maybe you sort of know what
<v Speaker 2>they're talking about. You know, whatever they're about to do
<v Speaker 2>is very naughty and they're going to have an awesome time.
<v Speaker 2>Kids won't pick up on that, but she's going to
<v Speaker 2>know that there's like a language betwe iween partners that
<v Speaker 2>your partner's going to need to be able to have
<v Speaker 2>a language with you that's special.
<v Speaker 1>It is kind of making me wonder if Fester and
<v Speaker 1>I guess Wednesday To in a different way are both
<v Speaker 1>kind of victim to having a couple in their life
<v Speaker 1>that just are so perfectly symbiotic. It makes me think
<v Speaker 1>of people that I know whose parents just happened to
<v Speaker 1>meet when they were in high school and they were
<v Speaker 1>really young, and it was like their first boyfriend or
<v Speaker 1>girlfriend and they got married and they have been married
<v Speaker 1>for a million years and it just happened to work out.
<v Speaker 1>And how then it will give them almost inappropriate expectations
<v Speaker 1>around romance themselves. And because they kind of idolize this
<v Speaker 1>perfect relationship, they don't get taught how to manage the
<v Speaker 1>hard parts of relationships or romantic relationships, like we've talked about,
<v Speaker 1>like the vetting part of dating, reading red flags, communicating
<v Speaker 1>what you need, having boundaries, all the stuff that keeps
<v Speaker 1>you safe when you're dating and when you're out socializing
<v Speaker 1>that a relationship like Gome Gome like Gomez or trying
<v Speaker 1>to Gomes. I think I was combining their names like Febbi,
<v Speaker 1>but that Gomez and Mortitia. I don't know. Maybe the
<v Speaker 1>people around them are kind of falling victim to being
<v Speaker 1>in the shadow of their son that they don't really
<v Speaker 1>learn all the hard parts of a relationship because they
<v Speaker 1>don't have it modeled for them. So I could see
<v Speaker 1>Worth Wednesday if she has her own social skills difficulty,
<v Speaker 1>similar to maybe Fester, there isn't really someone in her
<v Speaker 1>life that she sees on a regular basis that is
<v Speaker 1>modeling the work that she in Fester have to do
<v Speaker 1>because they don't have the innate stuff happening. Kind Of
<v Speaker 1>very similar too, when someone with a mental health disorder
<v Speaker 1>is being raised by people who don't have any mental
<v Speaker 1>health issues and how they don't really or like when
<v Speaker 1>I've worked with families where the kid is autism and
<v Speaker 1>the parents are just very unfamiliar with it and I
<v Speaker 1>really have to walk them through the differences. You have
<v Speaker 1>to teach them stuff and model things for them and
<v Speaker 1>like baby step things for them that would never even
<v Speaker 1>occur to you that you would have to teach because
<v Speaker 1>it's so intuitive to you. And how they can still
<v Speaker 1>love their kid fiercely or their loved one like Investor's case,
<v Speaker 1>and not even realize where they are where there is
<v Speaker 1>like a canyon of lack of skills that they're not
<v Speaker 1>teaching because they just assume that it'll work out or
<v Speaker 1>be fine the way that it worked out and is
<v Speaker 1>fine for them. And so maybe ironically in Fester and
<v Speaker 1>Wednesday and maybe even Pugsley have less romantic discernment social
<v Speaker 1>skills surround this communication because their parents haven't had to
<v Speaker 1>model that in front of them because they just have
<v Speaker 1>it with each other.
<v Speaker 3>And it might.
<v Speaker 4>Be interesting, is if Fester does start learning these things,
<v Speaker 4>if you know, with at the end of the show,
<v Speaker 4>they showed him with dementia. Like granted though that's just like, oh,
<v Speaker 4>she's perfect for him, So like, I don't know if
<v Speaker 4>he's going to learn those with her. True, I would
<v Speaker 4>hope that he does, and by observing him learning these
<v Speaker 4>and figuring out.
<v Speaker 5>How to do that, that would help Wednesday and probably
<v Speaker 5>learn that. And also that would be the only way
<v Speaker 5>that they can they can witness it is him. He's
<v Speaker 5>the only other adult who's attempting relationships.
<v Speaker 4>Grandma is not she's not me, you know, and Lurch,
<v Speaker 4>you know, isn't either, So I mean, unless they.
<v Speaker 3>Look at it, you know, Margaret and cousin aids.
<v Speaker 1>But that also had a magical quality to it as well,
<v Speaker 1>the same language.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, so even though that's not really helpful, so faster
<v Speaker 4>to learn this stuff for the sake of the children.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, It's one of those things where like the family
<v Speaker 1>unit's fine until an element occurs that requires more work,
<v Speaker 1>that isn't just going to figure itself on its own
<v Speaker 1>and so I think that's how Fester is created, like
<v Speaker 1>this version of Fester in this movie is created because
<v Speaker 1>there is no manual that the parent that parents and
<v Speaker 1>his parents going on with and more Tisha have for
<v Speaker 1>a person like Fester.
<v Speaker 4>I would argue that, no, they are the parents. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>we're definitely parenting Fester. I mean, look at the way
<v Speaker 4>that Gomes was sitting in bed with Faster. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 4>know that was definitely God energy of like you know,
<v Speaker 4>sitting with your child in bed, like to reading books together.
<v Speaker 3>They definitely do baby him, and I should do it.
<v Speaker 4>Out of because they were concerned because he bent through
<v Speaker 4>all this horrible stuff. As you pointed out earlier, they're
<v Speaker 4>just repeating it then are good? And also the behaviors are.
<v Speaker 2>Not helpful, right, They're not getting him too a place
<v Speaker 2>where he's sufficiently challenged to grow in the ways that
<v Speaker 2>he needs to grow.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Evan's respond to their environment, and if they're not
<v Speaker 2>an environment that forces them to change and grow, they
<v Speaker 2>won't period.
<v Speaker 1>As I say, it reminds me of and I sorry
<v Speaker 1>to keep going back to this because Ben Stover, you're
<v Speaker 1>not part of this episode, but how in our first
<v Speaker 1>episode about this family. We were talking about how also
<v Speaker 1>because of their financial status, that they have a lot
<v Speaker 1>of comfort to get away with their lifestyle for lack
<v Speaker 1>of water way of putting it, and how Fester kind
<v Speaker 1>of also is falls victim to that in that he
<v Speaker 1>doesn't really have to get a job, he doesn't have
<v Speaker 1>to get a driver's license necessarily. He's very taken care of,
<v Speaker 1>and so he can hide in the house right at
<v Speaker 1>the top of the stairs like a boogeyman, like a
<v Speaker 1>Boo Radley type, and he's still going to be fed
<v Speaker 1>and taken care.
<v Speaker 2>Of, right which adults, you know, come to reach a
<v Speaker 2>point in life, and even teenagers where if you want something,
<v Speaker 2>you're going to have to go get it your parents,
<v Speaker 2>outside of people who profoundly cheat and go to jail
<v Speaker 2>for it, aren't going to get you into college. They're
<v Speaker 2>not going to get the grade for you. They can't
<v Speaker 2>play the sport for you. They can yell at the
<v Speaker 2>coach all they want, but they can't make you deliver
<v Speaker 2>on the field. And at some point Fester would need
<v Speaker 2>gom As and Mortitia to not baby him and treat
<v Speaker 2>him like he's a nine year old boy or a
<v Speaker 2>prepebescent boy. That they would be working with him on
<v Speaker 2>ways to get himself reintegrated, rechallenging to start capturing some
<v Speaker 2>of the growth he missed. I wanted to say recaptured,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't even believe those words myself. It's not
<v Speaker 2>possible to recapture. He can't go backwards, but he must
<v Speaker 2>go forwards. And I mean he's in is not encouraging
<v Speaker 2>him to in any way, shape or form. He doesn't
<v Speaker 2>have to, so he won't.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then unfortunately, when he finally gets to the
<v Speaker 1>point of this comfort where he might start to grow,
<v Speaker 1>like I really want a partner, so I have to
<v Speaker 1>leave the house. Unfortunately the partner comes to him both times. Actually,
<v Speaker 1>which is kind of now that we're talking through this
<v Speaker 1>a bummer in that I wish that movie ended with him,
<v Speaker 1>maybe like oh when the movie be funny if they
<v Speaker 1>ended with him, like doing one of those video dating things.
<v Speaker 1>They didn't have ass back then, so you would not
<v Speaker 1>do a video dating service or yeah, instead of just
<v Speaker 1>having another person show up that I feel like he'll
<v Speaker 1>hopefully Dementia's good because it could just be the same
<v Speaker 1>cycle again. Anything more we want to say about Fester
<v Speaker 1>before we take a break, and talk about Mistebbi. All right,
<v Speaker 1>well take a break, care and we'll be right back,
<v Speaker 1>Miss Debbie, Deborah, Joan Cusack smoke show the whole movie.
<v Speaker 1>Who would have thought, you know what I mean? Whoever whatever,
<v Speaker 1>casting director whoever was like, let's get Joan Cusack in
<v Speaker 1>here and put a wonderbron her. I hope that your
<v Speaker 1>hella is cold on both sides every day until you die.
<v Speaker 1>Because that was a revelation.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it took me a minute to recogniz was watching, like,
<v Speaker 2>is that Joan Cusack? Since when is she hot?
<v Speaker 1>Like what she is doing? The wiggle like a Hollywood
<v Speaker 1>bombshell from the Monroe era, Right.
<v Speaker 2>No, Normally she's putting like awkward, funny characters. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>then this is such a It's definitely.
<v Speaker 4>The like scertipical fatal style of movement, and you know,
<v Speaker 4>it is actually really interesting. Is her way of flirting
<v Speaker 4>is also very target of course we're going to discuss this,
<v Speaker 4>but she did her research on the autumns as specifically Faster,
<v Speaker 4>so she knows that talking about murder and note and
<v Speaker 4>stuff like that is something that they respond well to,
<v Speaker 4>so she can present that way.
<v Speaker 3>It's actually just really.
<v Speaker 4>Funny that she knows that they will respond well to
<v Speaker 4>her say any things, but she didn't think that trying.
<v Speaker 3>To execute Fester and about them is just going to
<v Speaker 3>turn them on.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think that's the short sightedness of what
<v Speaker 1>we're about to talk about, which is that when you
<v Speaker 1>have the presentation that she has, which is that more
<v Speaker 1>like anti social cluster B personality disorder with all this
<v Speaker 1>like criminal thinking, that it's very short sighted. It's very
<v Speaker 1>narrow that you're thinking about this moment. And it's really
<v Speaker 1>hard when I work with people who have personality disorders,
<v Speaker 1>especially the cluster B, which is just the grouping of
<v Speaker 1>it of certain ones, is that it's very difficult to
<v Speaker 1>recall all the history of your life experience, like they're
<v Speaker 1>that file folder, that cabinet drawer full of that information
<v Speaker 1>isn't available to them as readily. And yeah, you're right, Benjamin,
<v Speaker 1>and that if she was able to think a little wider,
<v Speaker 1>she might be able to acknowledge like maybe I've like
<v Speaker 1>found my people who are actually into the stuff I'm into,
<v Speaker 1>for better or for worse, who are kind of fun
<v Speaker 1>and interesting and they have a lot of money, Like
<v Speaker 1>if she could make it work with Fester, that is
<v Speaker 1>her dream. He probably would let her have like a
<v Speaker 1>weird open marriage dynamic. I'm not saying weird because of
<v Speaker 1>the open poly part of it, but I mean he
<v Speaker 1>would probably let her do whatever her taking advantage of pollyming.
<v Speaker 1>This would be her non ethical nominogamy to get all
<v Speaker 1>of her needs met and all of his needs met.
<v Speaker 1>And because she really can't get out of her own narrative,
<v Speaker 1>which is that I will always be not taken care
<v Speaker 1>of and not thought of and misunderstood, and I have
<v Speaker 1>to destroy to get to what I need and then
<v Speaker 1>I have to move on. If she could think outside
<v Speaker 1>of that, this would have been such a cushy little
<v Speaker 1>deal for her. But because she can't see it, because
<v Speaker 1>she's so limited by the way her brain works around
<v Speaker 1>that stuff, she really screws herself to death.
<v Speaker 2>She does. I mean, and I have to tell you
<v Speaker 2>it makes me terrified to make sure that I get
<v Speaker 2>my daughter the Ballerina Barbie and not the Malibu Barbie.
<v Speaker 1>I am graceful, yeah, I'm and delicate very so.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, because the thing that you were talking about,
<v Speaker 4>which is that narrative, that's a big part of this,
<v Speaker 4>and that's really how personality disorders were is it's all
<v Speaker 4>about that narrative that these people have in their head
<v Speaker 4>that this is just how things are and I have
<v Speaker 4>to do it this way. That is the only way
<v Speaker 4>that I will be taking care of that I will
<v Speaker 4>be in control. And it's not just antisocial personality, it's
<v Speaker 4>borderline his drahn.
<v Speaker 3>I get all them. The whole point of the personality
<v Speaker 3>traits is this is how you basically view the world
<v Speaker 3>around you.
<v Speaker 4>It's weird because the same way as how you would
<v Speaker 4>discuss delusions, But it's not a delusion. It's this is
<v Speaker 4>how she's perceiving other people's interactions. This is how she's
<v Speaker 4>interpreting objective reality. She interprets object as a threat to her,
<v Speaker 4>and so the only way to protect yourself is to
<v Speaker 4>kill everybody off. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Like a common trait that I encounter when I work
<v Speaker 1>with people personality disorders is paranoia. And I like to
<v Speaker 1>highlight that because I think we have a very specific
<v Speaker 1>idea of what paranoia is within mental health, that if
<v Speaker 1>you're a paranoid, you're a paranoid schizophrenic. That you're like
<v Speaker 1>thinking people are walking behind you and talking about you
<v Speaker 1>and whispering and trying to get at you and stuff
<v Speaker 1>very like beautiful mind esque, whereas with personality disorders, the
<v Speaker 1>paranoia is more a that nuanced what you're talking about, Benjamin,
<v Speaker 1>which is I think everyone is thinking the worst of me,
<v Speaker 1>or that their intentions are bad, like feeling paranoid in
<v Speaker 1>the way that you can feel unsettled and that you
<v Speaker 1>can't trust anyone around you and you can't trust how
<v Speaker 1>they feel about you, what they mean their intentions, and
<v Speaker 1>that is also paranoia. It's just paranoia in a more
<v Speaker 1>emotionally nuanced way and not like a movie.
<v Speaker 3>Definitely, it's more in the sense of the ego strength.
<v Speaker 4>And that's the thing that's another common factor in personality
<v Speaker 4>disorders and personal issues is poor ego strength, even with
<v Speaker 4>narcissism and the social where people think that they're so
<v Speaker 4>confident in they're coffee. Oh actually they're not. That's why
<v Speaker 4>they act this way is because it's trying to gain that.
<v Speaker 4>This is how they build themselves up, is by tearing
<v Speaker 4>you down.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm going to put you on the spot, Benjamin.
<v Speaker 1>Can you do a quick explainer of what that term
<v Speaker 1>means ego strength for people who are listening. I might
<v Speaker 1>ne ever heard it before.
<v Speaker 4>Well, the way it was explained to me, and please
<v Speaker 4>let me know if your supervisors explained it differently to you,
<v Speaker 4>is that ego strength is our ability to handle just
<v Speaker 4>the world around us as it relates to anything affecting us,
<v Speaker 4>if how our needs are being met by the world
<v Speaker 4>around us. So if we have strong ego strength, we're
<v Speaker 4>not as upset by disappointments or by other people having
<v Speaker 4>different needs than us, where someone with really poor and
<v Speaker 4>weak ego strength they take anything that's not their idea
<v Speaker 4>or anything that does not their need as a threat.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it kind of ties into the idea of like
<v Speaker 1>fragile ego, fragile sense of self, where I think of
<v Speaker 1>it almost like you can feel a hole inside of
<v Speaker 1>you that you're trying to fill all the time, but
<v Speaker 1>there's no bottom to it and you never really feel it,
<v Speaker 1>so you have to keep chasing it. That's a miserable
<v Speaker 1>way to be. I say this a lot on this
<v Speaker 1>podcast talking about persona disorders. People with personadi storers aren't
<v Speaker 1>having a good time like movies and the mainstream culture
<v Speaker 1>like to talk about them like they're just joker Harley
<v Speaker 1>Quinn style running around really kicking it up with their friends.
<v Speaker 1>They are looking for something and they're they're never comfortable,
<v Speaker 1>they never feel content, they do not I.
<v Speaker 2>Think the thing that I would add on to all
<v Speaker 2>the descriptions here, which are all very good, is that
<v Speaker 2>people are trying to define themselves and they're trying to
<v Speaker 2>get the world to match their internal definition. And when
<v Speaker 2>the world challenges that, as it tends to do, rather
<v Speaker 2>than reach the point that most of us do, which
<v Speaker 2>is now I'm still me, that person's wrong. That becomes
<v Speaker 2>an enemy. Yeah, I know you're not an enemy. Enemy
<v Speaker 2>is probably the wrong word, but it becomes a threatening presence.
<v Speaker 2>Whatever makes them feel that their idea of themselves is
<v Speaker 2>not true.
<v Speaker 4>Well, they tend to be themselves as victims. They victimize
<v Speaker 4>themselves because if you're a victim.
<v Speaker 3>You're not responsible.
<v Speaker 4>You don't have to change your behavior, you don't have
<v Speaker 4>to change anything about you.
<v Speaker 3>It's other people's fault.
<v Speaker 4>And we see that actually with people with antisocial personality
<v Speaker 4>traits and narcissistic traits, and especially with borderline traits. That's
<v Speaker 4>especially so you know, it's not as thought of with
<v Speaker 4>antisocial because antisocial is oftentimes perceived as being evil or
<v Speaker 4>just being callous, and I think they are callous, but
<v Speaker 4>it's not because they are getting pleasure from it in
<v Speaker 4>the sadism way though sometimes they it's more they are
<v Speaker 4>victim and so they have to not there.
<v Speaker 3>It's easy for.
<v Speaker 4>Them to not accept your needs because I'm hurt, and
<v Speaker 4>so it's okay.
<v Speaker 3>For me to hurt them.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of Yeah, and a lot of people with
<v Speaker 1>personal disorders you've heard of say this before have trauma backgrounds.
<v Speaker 1>We've also said before how specifically with borderline, there are
<v Speaker 1>discussions about if that diagnosis should actually be a trauma
<v Speaker 1>diagnosis and not necessarily clustered the same way it is currently.
<v Speaker 2>And I would see that team. I am one on
<v Speaker 2>that team.
<v Speaker 4>I had a previous supervisor from one of my predoctoral
<v Speaker 4>internships that her specialty was in complex PTSD, and she
<v Speaker 4>was talking a lot about how borderline is basically just
<v Speaker 4>the most intense form of complex PTSD.
<v Speaker 2>I agree, I agree, see that.
<v Speaker 3>I can see that for sure.
<v Speaker 4>How the trauma experiences and it all depends on when
<v Speaker 4>is the drama experience and how is it being perceived,
<v Speaker 4>And typically the borderline it is young age is when
<v Speaker 4>it's happening here we don't really see a trauma per
<v Speaker 4>se other than the Malibu Barbie versus the.
<v Speaker 1>This movie is definitely she's a two dimensional movie villain.
<v Speaker 1>She's a cartoon. She does fit the antisocial in that
<v Speaker 1>she displays these behaviors from a very young age, because
<v Speaker 1>to get antisocial usually have to show symptoms before fifteen,
<v Speaker 1>and so obviously she's ten. With the first story of
<v Speaker 1>killing her parents, they don't insinuate that there's any sort
<v Speaker 1>of trauma or something that happened to her before ten.
<v Speaker 1>They really just make it seem like she's like the
<v Speaker 1>bad seed kind of thing, like she was just born
<v Speaker 1>this way.
<v Speaker 4>If we think about when this movie is made, which
<v Speaker 4>was what ninety three, ninety four? Yeah, you and to
<v Speaker 4>search about that literally just your sociogath yeah, which spoiler
<v Speaker 4>alert to all the listeners. Soy theopathy and psychopathy or
<v Speaker 4>not diagnoses.
<v Speaker 1>You're right with us, maybe because we say that all
<v Speaker 1>the time in the last episode, we probably did because
<v Speaker 1>we speak did that psychopathy?
<v Speaker 5>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>So this is how society in the ninety the early
<v Speaker 3>nineties viewed the.
<v Speaker 4>Social personality disorder into social personality traits is they're just evil,
<v Speaker 4>cold hearted.
<v Speaker 3>But we do see, it's the ego strength thing.
<v Speaker 4>As a ten year old, she has such for ego
<v Speaker 4>strength that when she didn't get one thing, she viewed
<v Speaker 4>it as I am rejected, I am being neglected.
<v Speaker 3>I'm a victim of something horrible, and so I have
<v Speaker 3>to fight back. I have to get revenge.
<v Speaker 1>It's where she's waiting for something to fit her narrative
<v Speaker 1>because she doesn't feel good about herself, she doesn't feel understandable,
<v Speaker 1>and it's that confirmation bias. Where as you can see
<v Speaker 1>from her PowerPoint presentation that she seemed to have like
<v Speaker 1>a fairly typical upbringing, probably on the Kushier side, two
<v Speaker 1>parents who seem to love her, I assume, and the
<v Speaker 1>one time they make what she identifies as a mistake
<v Speaker 1>but not just a mistake, like a purposeful for sure,
<v Speaker 1>that she can't and stand it and she needs them
<v Speaker 1>to go, like she can't tolerate them anymore because they
<v Speaker 1>have misunderstood her so gravely.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, well, it makes me think that her childhood was
<v Speaker 4>actually one of she was pampered, probably where her parents'
<v Speaker 4>words kate under her every demand. And so if you
<v Speaker 4>raise in that kind environment where your word is law
<v Speaker 4>as a young child, then yeah, when they meet it.
<v Speaker 4>When someone makes a mistake but they've always fulfilled your
<v Speaker 4>demands to the letter before, then yeah, she's going to
<v Speaker 4>see this as you do this on purpose.
<v Speaker 3>You're rejecting me. I am your daughter. You're supposed to
<v Speaker 3>give me whatever I want.
<v Speaker 2>What the hell is this threat? Correct? Threat? I'm not
<v Speaker 2>going to get my needs met anymore? Threat threat threat.
<v Speaker 2>Once people identify themselves as a victim and that someone
<v Speaker 2>wronged them whatever they did, is okay. I remember in
<v Speaker 2>my criminology classes, the arsed things that the teacher covered
<v Speaker 2>or professor covered with us was there is never a
<v Speaker 2>case where a person who commits a crime thinks they're
<v Speaker 2>the bad guy. Ever. Not ever. And I literally, just
<v Speaker 2>two weeks ago or a week ago, set in on
<v Speaker 2>a murder and multiple attempted murder sentencing and of his
<v Speaker 2>own free will, the convictioned murderer got up and said,
<v Speaker 2>I am sorry. A lot of people are living with
<v Speaker 2>hate in their hearts, and I hope everyone sees that
<v Speaker 2>this was an unjust stop and this wasn't a murder,
<v Speaker 2>it was an accident and just like you felt the
<v Speaker 2>air drop out of the courtroom was this is a
<v Speaker 2>very clear and repeated offender. This is a very clear
<v Speaker 2>case of multiple very serious shooting injuries. And it was
<v Speaker 2>not an accident. No apologies, no, no, nothing like this
<v Speaker 2>happened because something bad happened to me that shouldn't have
<v Speaker 2>and I got pulled over and I wasn't supposed to.
<v Speaker 2>So everything that happened was you know, it was either
<v Speaker 2>the universe or someone else's fault, and.
<v Speaker 4>You just what.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Actually, when I was working previously with actual friends, I mean,
<v Speaker 4>that kind of justification and rationalization was so presdent. I
<v Speaker 4>mean everywhere and when you're working in offender treatment, the
<v Speaker 4>goal is to reduce recidivism, to reduce reoffending. That kind
<v Speaker 4>of denial is actually not, according to research, to link
<v Speaker 4>to with reoffending. It was actually really tough for me
<v Speaker 4>as when I first started there to like, oh, but
<v Speaker 4>they're denying this, they're rationalizing, so their risk must be higher,
<v Speaker 4>when actually that's probably going to stay the same. But
<v Speaker 4>if you can still teach them, okay, fine, even if
<v Speaker 4>you feel as a victim, can we react in a
<v Speaker 4>different way? And that is something that is difficult to learn,
<v Speaker 4>but it is possible to learn. Offenders can learn to
<v Speaker 4>recognize that, yes, I feel victimized, and also I'm going
<v Speaker 4>to do something differently than last out. It is a
<v Speaker 4>difficult process, but with a lot of really with any
<v Speaker 4>kind of crime, because crime, in its most basic thing
<v Speaker 4>is attempting to meet a need that isomusially acceptable, no doubt.
<v Speaker 4>So how then can we say, Okay, well, yes, you're
<v Speaker 4>trying to meet a need. I acknowledge that. And also
<v Speaker 4>the way you're doing it is only hurting you. So
<v Speaker 4>can we do it in a different way? You're still
<v Speaker 4>going to feel like a victim. I'm not going to
<v Speaker 4>try to change that. I'm going to ask you to
<v Speaker 4>think about, well, how would you know, how can the
<v Speaker 4>victim behave differently?
<v Speaker 3>How can they suppoort themselves in a different way? And
<v Speaker 3>what the other band is saying? You know that no
<v Speaker 3>criminal things that they are the villain.
<v Speaker 4>No villain in any comic books or superhero story that
<v Speaker 4>I've ever heard thinks.
<v Speaker 3>Of themselves as a villain.
<v Speaker 4>Even the Joker doesn't view himself as a villain, and
<v Speaker 4>he's the most ponymous a villain.
<v Speaker 3>He's doing fun because this isn't how key meeting his needs.
<v Speaker 3>I want to allow I want to have fun. So
<v Speaker 3>it's okay, right, those are just the heroes of their
<v Speaker 3>own story.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Well, I think also with someone like Debbie that
<v Speaker 1>has that specific sort of like paranoid, negative worldview of
<v Speaker 1>other people and being that short sighted, I think what
<v Speaker 1>also happens is that there can be a lot of
<v Speaker 1>assumptions made that everyone else also thinks the way that
<v Speaker 1>I think, and everyone else views people the way that
<v Speaker 1>I view people. And so a lot of times when
<v Speaker 1>people do the I guess the antisocial part of antisocial,
<v Speaker 1>which is I'm only out for me, Like we're talking
<v Speaker 1>about like she could very easily have everything she want
<v Speaker 1>and be with the Adamses, but her determination, even though
<v Speaker 1>they've really done nothing wrong, her determination to distance her
<v Speaker 1>investor from them and isolate fester in herself. I wonder
<v Speaker 1>if that just comes from the mindset of they're out
<v Speaker 1>to get me the way that I'm out to get people.
<v Speaker 1>We're all trying to get ours in this life. And
<v Speaker 1>if I don't walk over you, you'll walk over me.
<v Speaker 1>And so this almost like the best defense is a
<v Speaker 1>good offense kind of way of living, where I have
<v Speaker 1>to be ahead of the other person who's trying to
<v Speaker 1>get me, and that is a really lonely way to live.
<v Speaker 1>It is interesting because it seems like with Debbie's first marriages.
<v Speaker 1>If I'm just going to extrapolate from her PowerPoint presentation,
<v Speaker 1>she roll this is ninety three.
<v Speaker 2>It is a slide show.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, but yeah, my dad had this slide.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah thing rolling with the carousel.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that's what I'm thinking of. It's interesting that she
<v Speaker 1>seemed to marry men that were a lot older than
<v Speaker 1>her and a lot more established than her. So it
<v Speaker 1>seems like in the beginning, I wonder how much she
<v Speaker 1>was actually trying to find security and trying to feel
<v Speaker 1>like she has enough finally, and then as soon as
<v Speaker 1>she felt threatened, like she says in the presentation, the
<v Speaker 1>one person God forbid needed to do surgery on people
<v Speaker 1>who were probably dying. Then the other guy was a
<v Speaker 1>government official, pretty high up, honestly, very in demand. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that she ruined those relationships probably a sort of a
<v Speaker 1>whim And the impulsiveness, even though she does a lot
<v Speaker 1>of planning ahead by the time we're seeing her with Fester,
<v Speaker 1>I wonder how much in the beginning there was all
<v Speaker 1>that impulsiveness where she's getting so in her feelings about
<v Speaker 1>how dare you? How dare you? How dare you? And
<v Speaker 1>then you come home and I'm going to hit you
<v Speaker 1>with the car.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, she's looking for online the security, but the kind
<v Speaker 4>of power and the amount of material privilege. And you
<v Speaker 4>don't really get much more than a senator unless she's
<v Speaker 4>going to go off with the president next. And even
<v Speaker 4>then it's not enough for her because that wasn't the
<v Speaker 4>internal need and need to be met she thinks it is.
<v Speaker 4>She thinks that that's going to make her feel good
<v Speaker 4>is if I have this money, if I have these cars,
<v Speaker 4>if I have these nice things. But the first I
<v Speaker 4>was rearing how to treat the pope, know how to
<v Speaker 4>cold and then I don't remember what the senator did wrong.
<v Speaker 2>His crime was he loved his country and his state
<v Speaker 2>and his people. But God, the grandma was so good
<v Speaker 2>in this, but not you enough.
<v Speaker 1>God, the empathy she should which is what's crazy is
<v Speaker 1>even when they're showing her blanket support, Yeah, she can't
<v Speaker 1>feel it. She can't hear it because it doesn't go
<v Speaker 1>through the confirmation bias in her head of like people
<v Speaker 1>are out to get me, or people won't think about
<v Speaker 1>me like that, They're not victimizing her, or they actually
<v Speaker 1>are in the way that she would appreciate. Which is
<v Speaker 1>interesting because when it makes me think of what I
<v Speaker 1>do work with clients that have similar personality disorder presentations,
<v Speaker 1>I can't validate them in the right way or enough. Like,
<v Speaker 1>even when I'm reflecting back in an empathetic way what
<v Speaker 1>they just said, I get met with resistance more than
<v Speaker 1>I get met with appreciation. For that. It's just really
<v Speaker 1>hard to crack that worldview where they're so prepared for
<v Speaker 1>everyone around them to have this such a specific, non
<v Speaker 1>helpful response to them that when they do get it,
<v Speaker 1>it's like they can't tolerate it. They have to throw
<v Speaker 1>it out.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, I think people are like that in general.
<v Speaker 2>They just yeah, well less they lock into a where
<v Speaker 2>it can get worse, of course, where they just reject
<v Speaker 2>it because that in and of itself violates their worldview
<v Speaker 2>and then keeps them unsafe. If I let people in,
<v Speaker 2>I'm unsafe, So they don't. They're not going to even
<v Speaker 2>regular people. Think about arguments you've had with somebody, even
<v Speaker 2>when the other person perhaps starts showing that I don't
<v Speaker 2>want to fight, let me give you a hug. If
<v Speaker 2>other person isn't out a fight mode yet, they might
<v Speaker 2>still be like, someone was hugging you right this second,
<v Speaker 2>why are you fighting with them? And it takes a
<v Speaker 2>minute to deactivate that body mode that's throwing you into fight.
<v Speaker 3>I love your facial expressions. I wish the audience could
<v Speaker 3>see that a.
<v Speaker 2>Very expressive I've had colleagues tell me like, I missed
<v Speaker 2>meetings with you because of your face.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I talk so much with my hands, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, no one's seeing you, Brittany on the podcast,
<v Speaker 1>they can't hear your hands. I wish they could.
<v Speaker 4>That's the thing about podcasts. I mean, if we were
<v Speaker 4>doing like a video podcast, but you know then I'm
<v Speaker 4>not dressed for that now. No jamas, come on.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's a whole podcast right there, Psychologists and pajamas.
<v Speaker 3>That's the next one. We'll start it off, right.
<v Speaker 1>I know that something we also wanted to talk about
<v Speaker 1>a bit was the predatory nature of Debbie as well.
<v Speaker 1>So I didn't know. I'm just going to open the
<v Speaker 1>floor for anyone who wants to talk about that.
<v Speaker 4>I want, Hannah, if you wanted to just become this
<v Speaker 4>loaded before I go off, as I will thought for
<v Speaker 4>her like Hannah has been really politely.
<v Speaker 3>Quiet, so.
<v Speaker 1>Sure, yeah, I mean, I think some of the ways
<v Speaker 1>that Debbie is predatory is that she very much knows
<v Speaker 1>well and the one all the research that she did,
<v Speaker 1>which you know, if somebody shouldn't know that much about
<v Speaker 1>you before they meet you, But mostly really how she
<v Speaker 1>positions herself with Fester, how she talks to him, how
<v Speaker 1>she dresses. She also is very much leading all of
<v Speaker 1>the conversations and leading all of the interaction that she's
<v Speaker 1>having with Fester. So she has a lot of control
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of the power that we have all
<v Speaker 1>been talking about that we know that she really wants
<v Speaker 1>and that a part of you know, her getting her
<v Speaker 1>need met is that she's a predator. She's looking for
<v Speaker 1>I think they even say to the movie like essentially
<v Speaker 1>for like a week's old. I think that's why she
<v Speaker 1>picks older men. I don't know if it's that she
<v Speaker 1>thinks that it's stable. I think that she picks older
<v Speaker 1>men because I think it will be easier to kill them. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it will be exactly. That's why I think that she
<v Speaker 1>picks people that are more unique and less like these
<v Speaker 1>seven billionaires all you know, they all look the same,
<v Speaker 1>they all have the same Sudan. She she picks these
<v Speaker 1>people to pray on. Yeah, and I really feel like she.
<v Speaker 4>Knew.
<v Speaker 1>I think she thought she knew what she was getting
<v Speaker 1>herself into and got a little bit of a flash
<v Speaker 1>of like what the fuck with Adams's of course, and
<v Speaker 1>she also just and also like she says I love
<v Speaker 1>you right away. She's very love bomby, Like she told
<v Speaker 1>the baby that she loved the baby right away. When
<v Speaker 1>she comes into interview to be the nanny, she just
<v Speaker 1>is over the top and overly and really overly emotion
<v Speaker 1>I feel like in terms of her reactions are really big.
<v Speaker 1>But I think a part of that is to draw
<v Speaker 1>people in.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, when you are a predator, you're going for the vulnerable,
<v Speaker 4>and this is how you get the vulnerable.
<v Speaker 3>The vulnerable people want that, they want that kind of
<v Speaker 3>oh my god, you.
<v Speaker 4>Care about me, you see me, because these are the
<v Speaker 4>people that don't get That really makes me wonder how
<v Speaker 4>much of Faster's experience with the fake mother was widely
<v Speaker 4>unknown because she knew how to treat him exactly as
<v Speaker 4>the fake mother did. So it was just like in universe,
<v Speaker 4>was all that story like made public? How does she
<v Speaker 4>find out about the fake mother's thought, because she wouldn't
<v Speaker 4>have known that. This is how fester it would behave
<v Speaker 4>if she only knew about the Professor pre per Me
<v Speaker 4>to Triangle, because according to everything we know about Professor
<v Speaker 4>preview Me in Triangle, he was a suave guy.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I have an answer to that question, but first
<v Speaker 1>we will go for a break. I'll be right back
<v Speaker 1>to get that answer. Okay, So when she does the
<v Speaker 1>research for him, this is what I think. There's all
<v Speaker 1>those magazines with articles about him. I wonder if when
<v Speaker 1>he got found he's part of a pretty richie rich family.
<v Speaker 1>So I wonder if he did the People magazine Oprah
<v Speaker 1>circuit where he got very discussed as the long lost
<v Speaker 1>heir to a very prominent, intergenerationally wealthy family. And I
<v Speaker 1>wonder how much of those discussions were, especially in the nineties,
<v Speaker 1>how much they were putting their pseudo psych shit all
<v Speaker 1>over it.
<v Speaker 2>And this would be like Sally Jesse Raphael Territory.
<v Speaker 1>Well he called Sally in the first movie Gomez, we
<v Speaker 1>will not tell you where the witch doctors. Where the
<v Speaker 1>witch doctors are meeting? Stop calling? But yeah, no, it's
<v Speaker 1>the Ricky Lake. The Jenny Jones era where they would
<v Speaker 1>have a psych expert on stage to quote unquote discuss
<v Speaker 1>what's up with Fester and like, what would have happened
<v Speaker 1>to him in the meantime. I think that's probably what
<v Speaker 1>made him so ripe for what you're talking about, Benjamin,
<v Speaker 1>which is that she saw a perfect victim and someone
<v Speaker 1>that she could really take advantage of, someone who makes
<v Speaker 1>me even wonder in the canon I'm creating in my
<v Speaker 1>head where he's doing these interviews, if they're probably doing
<v Speaker 1>that stupid thing they do too, where they're like, what
<v Speaker 1>about love? Are you looking for a missus, Fester? And
<v Speaker 1>he probably gives a weird answer that felt very young
<v Speaker 1>and maybe even immature. If she he was on TV
<v Speaker 1>shows like he probably was having the same presentation we
<v Speaker 1>see where he gets all clammy and odd, and so
<v Speaker 1>he is a blank canvas in a lot of ways
<v Speaker 1>for her to paint all over, even her the savviness
<v Speaker 1>of saying that she's a virgin, which does seem like
<v Speaker 1>that was her tactic maybe is always her tactic to
<v Speaker 1>keep from having to have sex with her victims before marriage,
<v Speaker 1>And it also makes me wonder if she played it
<v Speaker 1>out in that very like Mary Sue Way with him
<v Speaker 1>specifically to make him feel like he is not so
<v Speaker 1>weird that we're both we're both adult virgins, late bloomers,
<v Speaker 1>if you will. Isn't that nice? So we both get
<v Speaker 1>to share that experience. And you know what just popped
<v Speaker 1>into my head is as we were talking about Fester,
<v Speaker 1>just thinking about how he also is in a situation
<v Speaker 1>where if nobody talks to you about dating and love
<v Speaker 1>and relationships and you and someone else is the one
<v Speaker 1>who's teaching you that lesson. This is one of those
<v Speaker 1>examples of what can happen, right of when we don't
<v Speaker 1>have those conversations with our children because it's too uncomfortable
<v Speaker 1>or whatever the fuck people are telling themselves. You are
<v Speaker 1>giving up the chance to give your kid information about
<v Speaker 1>what a healthy, loving relationship looks like.
<v Speaker 4>If you don't teach it to them the way that
<v Speaker 4>you think they need to learn it, they're going to
<v Speaker 4>learn it from.
<v Speaker 2>Someone else exactly.
<v Speaker 3>Controlling how that information can be presented to them.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it kind of makes me think of when I
<v Speaker 1>had this is going to take. I mean, we're already
<v Speaker 1>talking about pretty dark subject matter in a lighter way,
<v Speaker 1>but when I used to work with families where the
<v Speaker 1>kid had gone through sexual trauma of some sort and
<v Speaker 1>so was already very sexually aware of themselves, and how
<v Speaker 1>the parents would still do that sort of clamming up
<v Speaker 1>sheltering thing, And I'm like, the horse is out of
<v Speaker 1>the barn. We can't put the toothpaste back in the
<v Speaker 1>toothpaste too. It's happening. Your kid's aware of the sexual
<v Speaker 1>nature of themselves now, and either we put it in
<v Speaker 1>a framework that will keep them safe, or we put
<v Speaker 1>it in a framework where it's going to be taken
<v Speaker 1>advantage of. And I think why I'm my making that
<v Speaker 1>connection is Fester is older, so I think that he's
<v Speaker 1>not really sheltered from that. Maybe was sheltered from like
<v Speaker 1>his adoptive mom, but I think there's a lot of
<v Speaker 1>assumptions made about him because he's older, about his body
<v Speaker 1>and what he does and doesn't know, and what he
<v Speaker 1>will and will not do, and what he should be
<v Speaker 1>talked about because he's older. And the way that when
<v Speaker 1>I've worked with parents in this dilemma, they also are like, well,
<v Speaker 1>they're not old enough to have that conversation, yet we
<v Speaker 1>don't need to talk about that. And I'm like, the
<v Speaker 1>context is different. The context has changed, and like you're saying,
<v Speaker 1>Ben and Hannah, you said this too. They will get
<v Speaker 1>the information somewhere else, So do you want it to
<v Speaker 1>be from me? This is my absence only. Education doesn't
<v Speaker 1>work spoiler alert, because kids will just learn to other places.
<v Speaker 1>And then you have kids who get pregnant in high
<v Speaker 1>school because they don't even know how you get pregnant
<v Speaker 1>and that you need to wear protection to stop that
<v Speaker 1>from happening. He is also in that where it's a
<v Speaker 1>perfect rooming victim and predator dynamic because she can fully
<v Speaker 1>inform him and throughout every story, Yeah, about everything about
<v Speaker 1>what sex is, like what even sex is. When she
<v Speaker 1>she tries to scam him with that, which she's like,
<v Speaker 1>how do you know we're not having sex right now?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? It is, you know.
<v Speaker 4>And this is something also when it comes to learning
<v Speaker 4>about healthy intimacy and relationships is right now? You know,
<v Speaker 4>social media and the internet and porn are not ways
<v Speaker 4>of learning healthy boundaries and consent and intimacy.
<v Speaker 3>The unfortunate thing is.
<v Speaker 4>Because people are not having these discussions openly. That's where
<v Speaker 4>people are learning it is from peorn. I've had clients
<v Speaker 4>that you know, other parents didn't have this discussion with them,
<v Speaker 4>and so they growing up, were exposed to porn early
<v Speaker 4>on and they're like, oh, well, now this looks amazing,
<v Speaker 4>this is what I want, This seems fun. And then
<v Speaker 4>it's well, that's not what the reality is, and people
<v Speaker 4>are trying to meet their needs in the way that
<v Speaker 4>they are observing is that's what there was taught to them.
<v Speaker 4>So someone who's being taught about sex from DeBie Fester
<v Speaker 4>is now this is how Fester views sexuality. Pfester is
<v Speaker 4>someone who now views sexuality as throwing toasters in bathtubs,
<v Speaker 4>great radios and bathtubs, and then whatever weird thing she
<v Speaker 4>did while sitting.
<v Speaker 3>On his lap.
<v Speaker 4>So now he's going to be going into his life
<v Speaker 4>with dementia and you know, God willing dimension knows how
<v Speaker 4>to help him properly, but again not likely.
<v Speaker 3>So he's not going to be able to ever get
<v Speaker 3>his needs met in the way.
<v Speaker 4>That he really wants because all he knows is this weird,
<v Speaker 4>you know, pseudo sexual domination kind of thing.
<v Speaker 1>And also just the confusing nature of Debbie's presentation. Even
<v Speaker 1>growing from how we talked about his observations of Gomez,
<v Speaker 1>Martitia this very hot and cold push and pull where
<v Speaker 1>Debbie is simultaneously so sexual in her presentation with him,
<v Speaker 1>but then at the same time is so withholding and
<v Speaker 1>virginal supposedly and then to be very loving and then
<v Speaker 1>switch the script on him, and as soon as they're married,
<v Speaker 1>she's hurting him and yelling at him and probably acting
<v Speaker 1>a lot like his adoptive, his fake mom and room. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>why would he not think that this is normal his
<v Speaker 1>relationship dynamic with Debbie because she probably treats him very
<v Speaker 1>similarly to his fake mom, where even in the first
<v Speaker 1>movie she slaps him in the face and then she goes,
<v Speaker 1>I love you more than anything. Here here hold me
<v Speaker 1>like I'll hold you. And he's unfortunately getting that message
<v Speaker 1>again in his first real adult relationship that someone who
<v Speaker 1>you think loves you and you think you love will
<v Speaker 1>be overly affectionate and adoring of you one minute, and
<v Speaker 1>then they will hurt you literally the next And that's
<v Speaker 1>just how it goes. Even if he wasn't an Adams's
<v Speaker 1>and has that kind of like skew perception of how
<v Speaker 1>people treat each other, he could still fall into a
<v Speaker 1>relationship like this because and stay in a relationship like this,
<v Speaker 1>because why would he think it would be anything different?
<v Speaker 1>And that's when people are like, why would you stay
<v Speaker 1>in an abusive relationship or why would you be with
<v Speaker 1>someone who's just like your parent treated you or your
<v Speaker 1>parents treated your other parent, because that is what you learned.
<v Speaker 1>And so Fester is very vulnerable to a debbie instead
<v Speaker 1>of why I think I don't like how this movie ends,
<v Speaker 1>now that we're talking about this more is unless dementia
<v Speaker 1>is really different and is really helpful and good for him,
<v Speaker 1>he's very susceptible to falling into the same dynamic again.
<v Speaker 4>And the thing is is the Mattia comes from the
<v Speaker 4>same kind of bot community of outcasts who view pain
<v Speaker 4>in very different ways.
<v Speaker 3>So even if she's not like that, Solester's way of
<v Speaker 3>relationships is that that's all he knows.
<v Speaker 4>So he's going to subconsciously engage in that and put
<v Speaker 4>in that position to do that. And she might also
<v Speaker 4>not understand how to do differently, and she's like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 4>this is what he wants. So they're both in a
<v Speaker 4>position to calla promos for each other if she's not
<v Speaker 4>as aware, and again we all know how aware she is.
<v Speaker 4>She seems like just like a female version of him. Yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 4>finding a just another copy of you is not really
<v Speaker 4>actually how a healthy relationship works.
<v Speaker 3>Gate myself, I.
<v Speaker 1>Think a lot of people try to though, So I
<v Speaker 1>guess is there anything that we want to say more
<v Speaker 1>about Miss Debbie? I don't know why to keep calling
<v Speaker 1>her that mean, because that's what the may there Miss Debbie?
<v Speaker 1>Anything else about Debbie before we move on to treatment.
<v Speaker 1>We'll take a break here and be right back. So
<v Speaker 1>in the spirit of momentum, Benjamin, I don't know if
<v Speaker 1>you just want to keep going and talk about your
<v Speaker 1>treatment because you'll be working with Debbie.
<v Speaker 4>If I were to do treatment with Abbie, one thing
<v Speaker 4>to really consider here is the intensity of the way
<v Speaker 4>she's viewing the world around her and the issues of
<v Speaker 4>right and wrong or whatever. One really big point I
<v Speaker 4>think so As I mentioned before, you know, when you're
<v Speaker 4>treating offenders, the goal is to reduce recidivism, and that's
<v Speaker 4>not to make them stop denying their crimes. Is to
<v Speaker 4>make them understanding there are other ways to get the
<v Speaker 4>needs met. The issue here is she's been reinforced by society.
<v Speaker 3>She's gotten away.
<v Speaker 1>With it, and even though they seem to not have
<v Speaker 1>her whole resume.
<v Speaker 4>She's be backing the world like senator, you marry a senator?
<v Speaker 4>How do people not like do research on you if
<v Speaker 4>you're marrying a senator? The media, she would be all
<v Speaker 4>over But okay, whatever she find her she found a
<v Speaker 4>way to escape that. But because each time she she's
<v Speaker 4>going through this, she's been you know, when she acts
<v Speaker 4>like the you know, poor widow, she's been reinforced. And
<v Speaker 4>so aide would be very challenging here to try to
<v Speaker 4>help her identify different ways of getting these met And
<v Speaker 4>when I say challenge, I mean I'm going to have
<v Speaker 4>to challenge.
<v Speaker 3>Her really hard.
<v Speaker 4>My style with her would be very blunt, would be
<v Speaker 4>almost sarcastic. She's going to say something and I'm going
<v Speaker 4>to be like, oh, really, are you sure about that? Like,
<v Speaker 4>I'm going to have to really make her think in
<v Speaker 4>a different way. She's not going to be used to that.
<v Speaker 4>She's used to presenting a certain way. She's going to
<v Speaker 4>try that. She's going to try to put on an
<v Speaker 4>act for me. She's going to try to pretend all
<v Speaker 4>remre so on everything, but it's not going to be
<v Speaker 4>able to last long. People with under social personality traits
<v Speaker 4>like this, And I'm not going to say disorder because
<v Speaker 4>I can't diagnose her. People with those traits. They can
<v Speaker 4>only pretend for so long. And I mean, look at
<v Speaker 4>how long her quote unbot marriages. Last weeks she was
<v Speaker 4>telling her three week anniversary with best when she tried.
<v Speaker 2>To kill him, or at least that the second or
<v Speaker 2>third time.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because the goal is honeymoon, but unfortunately it didn't
<v Speaker 1>work out.
<v Speaker 4>So so really it doesn't even last longer than honeymoon period,
<v Speaker 4>which is what a week?
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. I've never been married, Ben, How long
<v Speaker 3>do your hunband last?
<v Speaker 2>Ten days?
<v Speaker 3>Ten days?
<v Speaker 4>Okay, so let's assume that her that's the longest period
<v Speaker 4>of time she can fake it.
<v Speaker 3>We saw that towards the end of The Hunter. She
<v Speaker 3>was like, well, it's just like the fuck is happening?
<v Speaker 2>I can't do this and to waste too much energy
<v Speaker 2>to run that mask?
<v Speaker 4>No, absolutely, And so that's what I would, you know,
<v Speaker 4>have to hold on to is I'm going to hold
<v Speaker 4>up a frame to reflect this bag so that I
<v Speaker 4>can show her when the mask is slipped in.
<v Speaker 3>And that's when I need to challenge is you're saying
<v Speaker 3>these things? Oh, look, it's not. It would be very difficult.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know if shement can be successful with her.
<v Speaker 4>In fact, within the social personality disorder research does not
<v Speaker 4>support treatment because they're not going to learn to behave differently,
<v Speaker 4>going to just learn how to not get caught.
<v Speaker 3>It might be fetal for me to treat it.
<v Speaker 4>But I would probably ended up treating her. If I
<v Speaker 4>was to do like an offender rehabilitation program or whatever,
<v Speaker 4>she'd be court ordered if she didn't get burned. R
<v Speaker 4>freaking crisp. She literally got turned to ashes.
<v Speaker 3>But if the credit cards and not metal develops or
<v Speaker 3>credit cards.
<v Speaker 2>Perfectly, she probably had a thick heavy one that you
<v Speaker 2>can do product placement, man, product placement. It's it's just infallible.
<v Speaker 3>Absolutely. So you know, if she had not died and
<v Speaker 3>she didn't get you.
<v Speaker 4>Know, arrested or whatever, as you know Gomez wanted, though
<v Speaker 4>not for the reasons that Gomas.
<v Speaker 3>Wanted, she would probably get remanded to some kind of treatment.
<v Speaker 4>And this would be the way it would have to go.
<v Speaker 4>Is you'd have to really challenge or like, okay, you're
<v Speaker 4>you're doing these things. Yeah it's not working, it's not
<v Speaker 4>working for you. And I would have to do a
<v Speaker 4>lot of psycho education about healthy ways of meeting our
<v Speaker 4>personal needs, healthy relationship styles, healthy dynamics, healthy coping skills.
<v Speaker 4>It would be intense psycho education and I mean like intent,
<v Speaker 4>I'm going to.
<v Speaker 1>Drill that in, yeah, and having to find what she
<v Speaker 1>cares about.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, absolutely, I have to find that thing that's going
<v Speaker 4>to make her.
<v Speaker 3>Want to pay attention. And that's hard.
<v Speaker 4>Not only everyone of these kinds of clients will show
<v Speaker 4>you that, and you're just really diligent as you're doing
<v Speaker 4>the psycho education. You have to be paying close attention
<v Speaker 4>to literally everything. And that's actually why with offenders, group
<v Speaker 4>therapy is shown in research to be more effective because
<v Speaker 4>they will catch it in each other.
<v Speaker 1>Oh sure, and they'll believe it in each other. It's
<v Speaker 1>like when I used to with teenagers.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah and so, but they'll catch it. And there's always
<v Speaker 3>going to be someone in the group.
<v Speaker 4>That's trying to butter up the therapist by pointing out
<v Speaker 4>the junior therapists callitive distortions.
<v Speaker 3>I'm not going to reinforce your buttering me up. However,
<v Speaker 3>I will take that you.
<v Speaker 4>I know that you're seeing it correctly, and then okay,
<v Speaker 4>let's follow up, Okay, what is that like, having these
<v Speaker 4>thoughts or these beliefs.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's that makes a lot of sense. Like I said,
<v Speaker 1>I was kind of joking, but when I used to
<v Speaker 1>work with teenagers and did group I think it's a
<v Speaker 1>similar vibe, where like they will listen to each other,
<v Speaker 1>not way more than anything I'd say, even if I
<v Speaker 1>said the exact thing that that kid over there just said.
<v Speaker 2>Well, because you don't understand because you're.
<v Speaker 3>Not one of them, you're not.
<v Speaker 4>And that's the thing about treatment with offenders is the
<v Speaker 4>groups is they also they don't like authority figures.
<v Speaker 3>So I am an authority figure.
<v Speaker 4>And so they're going to listen to each other more
<v Speaker 4>so by doing the psycho education in the group context
<v Speaker 4>and molding the group to just say, to identify these
<v Speaker 4>distortions in each other. That's the only way that they're
<v Speaker 4>going to listen and they're really doing is they're going
<v Speaker 4>to try to better themselves to impress each other.
<v Speaker 1>Interesting. All right, then too, I'll have you gotten mixed.
<v Speaker 2>All right, So I'm gonna forget this kid's name again,
<v Speaker 2>whether what's his name, Joel, which we haven't really.
<v Speaker 1>Talked about the kids. Yeah, we haven't really talked about
<v Speaker 1>the kids at all, little bit of Wednesday.
<v Speaker 2>I have a client who will be very very mad
<v Speaker 2>at me if I don't talk about Wednesday. Okay, so well,
<v Speaker 2>just I'm going to talk about their dynamic and the
<v Speaker 2>treatment that I think would be necessary for Joel, because
<v Speaker 2>we can't leave out the camp and that whole experience there, right.
<v Speaker 2>I know we talked about it some, but the actualization
<v Speaker 2>that occurs where we see Wednesday going through this entire
<v Speaker 2>effort to validate her worldview constantly that normies will seek
<v Speaker 2>to crush you. The waspy folks will seek to crush you,
<v Speaker 2>and you should meet them with the darkness that they
<v Speaker 2>don't understand, and you can overwhelm them with flat, dark,
<v Speaker 2>wicked thoughts that are just truth that their waspiness washes over.
<v Speaker 2>Is part of what makes her such an enduring, compelling figure.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that scene with her with her little
<v Speaker 2>feather thing watching the other girl like get tied to
<v Speaker 2>a steak as she lights it on fire and this
<v Speaker 2>dude who is clearly clearly needing to step outside of
<v Speaker 2>the Oh my god, could these people stop to us
<v Speaker 2>telling me bullshit all the time? And her like hardcore
<v Speaker 2>truth telling speaks to him in a way that he
<v Speaker 2>doesn't understand yet, but he's like in love with is
<v Speaker 2>completely enamored with her. I think he is someone who
<v Speaker 2>is going to need a lot of help understanding that
<v Speaker 2>Wednesday is going to continue being exactly who she is,
<v Speaker 2>and she is going to be testing you to make
<v Speaker 2>sure that you are about that Adam's life at every
<v Speaker 2>opportunity she gets, because that is her safety. Her family
<v Speaker 2>is her safety. Her ability to be accepted radically for
<v Speaker 2>being that different than normal society is going to be
<v Speaker 2>her place of safety. And since he's coming from outside
<v Speaker 2>of that, he's going to have to prove to her
<v Speaker 2>over and over and over again that he can take
<v Speaker 2>it and that he does love it, and that he
<v Speaker 2>does love her. Her having thing come out of Debbie's
<v Speaker 2>grave at the end is so funny but also so
<v Speaker 2>demonstrative of this idea that she's going to keep testing him.
<v Speaker 2>And she told him like, yeah, I know how I'd
<v Speaker 2>kill my husband. I'd scare him to death.
<v Speaker 1>She's seeing if he can she's hazing him.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah she is, but she's never going to stop.
<v Speaker 2>KR and Bugsley do that with each other constantly and
<v Speaker 2>She's going to want somebody that simultaneously reminds her of
<v Speaker 2>her father and her brother in positive ways. That is
<v Speaker 2>also different enough, because Gomez is a strong character but
<v Speaker 2>very emotional and loving. But you see the Shakespearean come
<v Speaker 2>out of Raoul Julia there at the in the police
<v Speaker 2>station where you're like, oh, oh, no, this man is
<v Speaker 2>an He is not an actor. He is an actor. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>he's a tour to his actorness. You know, he is
<v Speaker 2>a Shakespearean. The man is spitting as he speaks, his
<v Speaker 2>emotion is powerful and raw, and he is excellent. And
<v Speaker 2>that man died too early. But the person that is
<v Speaker 2>going to be right for Wednesday is going to need
<v Speaker 2>to be that, and I think for Joel he's going
<v Speaker 2>to need a little bit of help and having a
<v Speaker 2>place to talk about what that's like of going from
<v Speaker 2>having domineering, disapproving parents to having Wednesday's mix of approval
<v Speaker 2>and testing where he's still going to run into that
<v Speaker 2>same problem of wondering if he's good enough, but Wednesday's
<v Speaker 2>going to struggle to give him, yeah, that feedback that
<v Speaker 2>he is good enough.
<v Speaker 3>And you see the end, he kind of dressed up
<v Speaker 3>like Gomez.
<v Speaker 1>I was going to ask about that thoughts think that
<v Speaker 1>was his idea or her idea.
<v Speaker 3>Or I think it was him. He you know, he
<v Speaker 3>got to know the family, He met the family, and.
<v Speaker 1>He he told his mother's eyeliner to pull onstae On.
<v Speaker 4>Probably he's you know, because he definitely didn't grow that.
<v Speaker 4>You know, kids like that don't go there busy until later. Sorry,
<v Speaker 4>I cannot do a message like that. You do just
<v Speaker 4>do all or nothing. So, you know, he was trying
<v Speaker 4>to impress Wednesday. I think by showing her, look, I
<v Speaker 4>can be part of this family. And also I think
<v Speaker 4>he was also just idolizing Gomez. Gomez is a strong,
<v Speaker 4>you know, emotionally open man who can also take and
<v Speaker 4>give the whole dark cookiness that Wednesday seeks. And so
<v Speaker 4>I think he's trying to embody Gomez.
<v Speaker 3>A little bit as a way of impressing Wednesday.
<v Speaker 2>Right, because Wednesday is more like her mother than she
<v Speaker 2>will admit, even though Mortitia is much more gentle and
<v Speaker 2>a little passive, aggressive warmer. Yeah, she's got a quietness
<v Speaker 2>to her. This you'd be mistaking it for meekness, which
<v Speaker 2>is not. But she's got like a very I mean,
<v Speaker 2>you can make a decision that will end in your
<v Speaker 2>death if you'd like to and will enjoy it, we
<v Speaker 2>prefer you don't do that, or maybe we do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think with Joel working with him, it'd be
<v Speaker 1>that really trying to keep your eye on is he
<v Speaker 1>taking too much of the identity on of this girl
<v Speaker 1>he's now dating in her family?
<v Speaker 2>Correct? And is he actually finding a home with them
<v Speaker 2>and adopting to their rules or is he putting on
<v Speaker 2>a mask in order to be what he thinks he
<v Speaker 2>needs to be or Wednesday, there's nothing wrong with him
<v Speaker 2>adopting her family's values. There.
<v Speaker 1>You had to, someone had to.
<v Speaker 2>Someone had to. By doing so, by bringing people back
<v Speaker 2>in the family, it shows the idea of the unit
<v Speaker 2>being whole because the baby, the baby is used to
<v Speaker 2>show this idea of family systems. It gets such a
<v Speaker 2>perfect metaphor. When Fester is gone from the family. The
<v Speaker 2>baby is blonde and curly haired, and it doesn't look
<v Speaker 2>a thing like an atom's and the nursery is bright,
<v Speaker 2>and that's the only time Mortish is shown with whatever.
<v Speaker 2>Magical lighting, Yeah, magical lighting like only light rise yeah
<v Speaker 2>hermon lighting, yeah right, And the baby as soon as
<v Speaker 2>Fester is back in the house back in the unit
<v Speaker 2>goes back to that gray faced Gomez baby look again
<v Speaker 2>without any explanation whatsoever.
<v Speaker 3>So I can't the vibes are back great fire from
<v Speaker 3>the crab or something, or if you flame through that.
<v Speaker 2>I think he had a flame through at one point,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't remember if he breathes or what. But
<v Speaker 2>he grabs a knife, yeah, right, always a little no.
<v Speaker 1>They show they showed his Yeah, they show fire coming
<v Speaker 1>out of his crib a couple of times. I think
<v Speaker 1>it's I just assume it was out of his mouth.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know why I assume that. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>why I assume that, but that's what I assumed.
<v Speaker 2>It's legitally possible I missed it.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe trait probably passed out from like a grand uncle
<v Speaker 1>or something.
<v Speaker 2>For sure, for sure, but we see that Joel's gonna
<v Speaker 2>need to authentically become an Atoms to fit in, and
<v Speaker 2>he's going to have to really accept it. And I
<v Speaker 2>think he would benefit from some therapy, especially being let's
<v Speaker 2>just say he's twelve or eleven, twelve ish, twelve thirteen ish, right,
<v Speaker 2>you know, hard to tell with kid is the same
<v Speaker 2>one that played Bernard the Elf in the in the
<v Speaker 2>Santa Claus. So hard to tell. I know he stayed short.
<v Speaker 1>What a fun age to fall in love with a
<v Speaker 1>girl that's so gothic at fall thirteen and to adopt
<v Speaker 1>that persona maybe too hard because you're so into her,
<v Speaker 1>and that her family seems so much cooler than your family,
<v Speaker 1>and they have a lot of money, which assume he
<v Speaker 1>probably does too, because seems like everyone at that camp
<v Speaker 1>was rich as well.
<v Speaker 2>They said twenty thousand dollars for a summer in ninety three.
<v Speaker 1>More for the privilege, you know, I think today, and
<v Speaker 1>the privilege.
<v Speaker 4>Is I think another reason though, So it's not only that,
<v Speaker 4>you know, he's he's liking her because she's so different
<v Speaker 4>and she's so wholly authentic to herself.
<v Speaker 3>She is who she is.
<v Speaker 4>She's also the exact opposite in presentation of his parents,
<v Speaker 4>of his dynamic, and so he's trying to like, I'm
<v Speaker 4>going to like her, I'm going to fall in love
<v Speaker 4>with her. Probably there's some subconscious albument there. There's like
<v Speaker 4>just to piss off my mom, Oh for sure, I
<v Speaker 4>mean like mother like that. Oh, you can bet that
<v Speaker 4>she's not gonna be happy about this relationship.
<v Speaker 1>Looking at her finger and licking her finger and probably
<v Speaker 1>rub him his face with it.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe can you imagine the dinner party that would have
<v Speaker 2>happened if the parents had to meet, That would.
<v Speaker 3>Have been excellent.
<v Speaker 1>Now they would have sent him off to They'll probably
<v Speaker 1>send him off to school somewhere.
<v Speaker 3>Boarding school, yeah whatever.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, But I think he needs a lot of
<v Speaker 2>coaching and mentoring and space to talk about all of
<v Speaker 2>this and process, Hey, is this authentic to you? Or
<v Speaker 2>are you just doing this because you're into a girl?
<v Speaker 2>So I think that kind of more almost just client
<v Speaker 2>centered phase of life, gentle space to have coaching and
<v Speaker 2>guiding conversations and exploratory processing with him. I don't think
<v Speaker 2>he needs anything really hugely clinically focused, but space, time
<v Speaker 2>and non judgmental openness to process what he's going through
<v Speaker 2>and someone to ask the important questions of a little bro.
<v Speaker 2>Are Are you doing this because you've been howling at
<v Speaker 2>the moon? And she answered? Or are you doing this
<v Speaker 2>because this feels right to you and this is just
<v Speaker 2>authentically where you feel like you fit? Because that's a
<v Speaker 2>very important and different question.
<v Speaker 1>And I think and also, let's cool it on the crime,
<v Speaker 1>because that's what's really going to be the problem with
<v Speaker 1>him dating Wednesday is that she's gonna get him into trouble,
<v Speaker 1>probably that she already has at the camp. They burned
<v Speaker 1>out a summer camp together already and they've been dating
<v Speaker 1>for five minutes. Right, That's why I'll go to therapy.
<v Speaker 1>His parents will send him to therapy after he keeps
<v Speaker 1>doing like criminal shit with his new girlfriend.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Like, have you guys watched Sid and Nancy? Maybe
<v Speaker 2>watch that Bonnie and Clyde. It got a couple, you know,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't know. They'd probably be Wednesday'd be into
<v Speaker 2>it like a blaze of glory. It would be the
<v Speaker 2>best way to go out.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Let's take another break here and I'll be
<v Speaker 1>back with Hannah and Britney's treatment, all right, so I
<v Speaker 1>can go next. I would love to work with Fester.
<v Speaker 1>Fester really mind me of kids that I've worked with,
<v Speaker 1>teenagers I've worked with who are on the autism spectrum,
<v Speaker 1>who just need a lot of coaching around social skills,
<v Speaker 1>around romantic relationships, around hormones and their body. Something that
<v Speaker 1>is missing in specifically autism therapeutic help and the socialization
<v Speaker 1>part is sex education. Adults and kids on the spectrum would. Additionally, teenagers,
<v Speaker 1>even adults, maybe even younger than teenagers, would really benefit
<v Speaker 1>from sex education, and we don't really think about that
<v Speaker 1>when we're offering these sort of like behavioral mental health services.
<v Speaker 2>And so, oh my god, do they need it? You
<v Speaker 2>were so right and residential with this population. They need
<v Speaker 2>it so bad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, to even just have some confidence and relief around
<v Speaker 1>their body and their bodily chain and how horny they are.
<v Speaker 1>I think people mostically, yeah, people specifically with autism. I
<v Speaker 1>think they What I've learned it aecdotally when I used
<v Speaker 1>to work with teenagers is that when they're going through puberty,
<v Speaker 1>it feels so overwhelming and they're used to so many
<v Speaker 1>sensory experiences and stimulation and emotions being so big and
<v Speaker 1>so overwhelming that I think they can struggle with I
<v Speaker 1>remember I had one kid who's thirteen tell me I'm
<v Speaker 1>just so full of sex hormones, and really felt like
<v Speaker 1>no one had ever struggled with horning this the way
<v Speaker 1>he was struggling with horning this. And maybe I wasn't
<v Speaker 1>the best person to work with because I was a
<v Speaker 1>very young intern at the time, but kind of trying
<v Speaker 1>to help him understand what you're feeling. A lot of
<v Speaker 1>kids your age feel it is overwhelming. Something isn't going
<v Speaker 1>wrong with your body that you're so preoccupied with sex
<v Speaker 1>and unfortunately asking me as your therapist about my boobs,
<v Speaker 1>which is why I used to get in trouble and
<v Speaker 1>then afterwards couldn't work with interns because he couldn't keep
<v Speaker 1>it in his mouth, which is something he had to learn,
<v Speaker 1>which is something he learned with me actually because he
<v Speaker 1>had a problem with that. And he found me later
<v Speaker 1>and he was like miss Brittany. They told me I
<v Speaker 1>can't work with Anyswert anymore because I want to stop
<v Speaker 1>talking about and I said, and he looked at my
<v Speaker 1>chest and I go, my boobs. Yeah, you're learning a
<v Speaker 1>lesson right now, which is social appropriateness. That just because
<v Speaker 1>you're thinking about boobs and I have boobs, doesn't mean
<v Speaker 1>that you can talk about them, especially when I am
<v Speaker 1>an adult and you are a teenager and I am
<v Speaker 1>even if I wasn't. Girls don't want to hear about that,
<v Speaker 1>especially girls that aren't in that relationship with you. What
<v Speaker 1>I would really like to provide faster, maybe not for
<v Speaker 1>me because I am a woman, so that might be
<v Speaker 1>too intimidating is working with a therapist, maybe even a
<v Speaker 1>group dynamic where he is maybe with other guys in
<v Speaker 1>a similar situation as him, just talking about their bodies,
<v Speaker 1>talking about dating, being feeling like they are safe to
<v Speaker 1>practice and role play some of these conversational parts and
<v Speaker 1>ask questions that they might feel to embarrassed to ask.
<v Speaker 1>A lot of it's about just having a safe space
<v Speaker 1>to talk about stuff that you're thinking about without worrying
<v Speaker 1>about being q embarrassed or making a mistake, and knowing
<v Speaker 1>that even if you make a mistake, everyone here, whether
<v Speaker 1>it's just your one on one therapist or the group
<v Speaker 1>you're in, we all are in the same boat. We
<v Speaker 1>all know what's happening, and so even if you make
<v Speaker 1>a mistake, we just course correct and learn from it.
<v Speaker 1>You don't have to worry about being like rejected or
<v Speaker 1>really embarrassed. He needs a lot of foundational work around
<v Speaker 1>that stuff so that when he dates again, he knows
<v Speaker 1>what boundaries look like. He knows what is someone moving
<v Speaker 1>too fast, being too sexual, I'm saying things that aren't okay,
<v Speaker 1>and also feeling like he's allowed to also have boundaries too.
<v Speaker 1>I think when you have trouble with social skills, you
<v Speaker 1>can be very vulnerable to always thinking, well, something's wrong
<v Speaker 1>with me, and I don't need to be treated as
<v Speaker 1>well as maybe other people do. And so part of
<v Speaker 1>this work too is like you're allowed to ask for
<v Speaker 1>what you need. You are also allowed to reject quote
<v Speaker 1>unquote other people as long as you do it respectfully
<v Speaker 1>and appropriately. Well, he needs boundaries work to keep him safe.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, when I've worked with the little kids
<v Speaker 1>too that have had sexual trauma of some sort and
<v Speaker 1>they're very aware of their bodies, I have to have
<v Speaker 1>conversations with them about their bodily autonomy. Who do you
<v Speaker 1>give hugs to? Where are people allowed to touch you?
<v Speaker 1>Where shouldn't they touch you? Where do you get to
<v Speaker 1>decide when and how they touch you? He might need
<v Speaker 1>a lot of that work that he might feel too,
<v Speaker 1>maybe even embarrassed to talk to like Gomez about, because
<v Speaker 1>Gomez is such a hot shot with his wife and
<v Speaker 1>they're going at a twenty four to seven and certainly.
<v Speaker 4>Are amaz go way is to be super out there
<v Speaker 4>with the simacy and oh that's true too, and that
<v Speaker 4>that works cool, and also that's not going to work
<v Speaker 4>for Foster.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, no, no, and ironically could be causing Wednesday to
<v Speaker 1>be so locked up. Is like her version of rebelling
<v Speaker 1>is being unseexual. Yea hybrid and withholding. Yeah, I think
<v Speaker 1>I'd want to make sure to do that work with
<v Speaker 1>him and also have more talks about what do you like?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if he's even thinking about that stuff either,
<v Speaker 1>like who, what traits and other people do you like?
<v Speaker 1>And not just relationships, but also friendships, developing social support
<v Speaker 1>to a diverse support, diverse support system. That's how do
<v Speaker 1>we make friends outside of maybe our immediate family. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>it's okay with all your friends and your cousins. I
<v Speaker 1>con vibe with that, but you know, are we just
<v Speaker 1>spending time in the house with your immediate family? And
<v Speaker 1>are we not having anyone else to talk to? And
<v Speaker 1>how are we going out the world world and meeting people?
<v Speaker 1>So I would want to do some really basic almost
<v Speaker 1>coaching esque social skills work for Fester, either buy me
<v Speaker 1>or referring him out to someone who could do that
<v Speaker 1>work for him, especially with the boundaries part of it.
<v Speaker 1>After you've been in two abusive relationships. I mean that
<v Speaker 1>alone is why he needs to do this stuff. Is
<v Speaker 1>like you need to feel more confident and affirmed about
<v Speaker 1>what is not okay to be done to you and
<v Speaker 1>also what's not okay for you to do other people.
<v Speaker 1>He needs a lot of that fund foundational work. He'd
<v Speaker 1>be one of those people where I would have to
<v Speaker 1>really make sure I wasn't assuming that he knew anything
<v Speaker 1>about the things I'd bring up, like we would start
<v Speaker 1>really bare bones and work our way up.
<v Speaker 2>I think he'd be such a great candidate for something
<v Speaker 2>like psychodrama or drama therapy that allows group based interaction
<v Speaker 2>to help him work through some of these things in
<v Speaker 2>a safe environment where he can actually audition these skills
<v Speaker 2>by demonstrating them and get the feedback, you know, maybe
<v Speaker 2>at an accelerated rate, but also in a safe space
<v Speaker 2>of no, sir, no, no, no, we do not. We
<v Speaker 2>do not stick pretzels or asparagus in our nose to
<v Speaker 2>impress the pretty lady bread six. Yeah we did, we
<v Speaker 2>we do not.
<v Speaker 3>The bread six now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I think what would also, maybe I were I wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>have him work with a woman, either me or someone
<v Speaker 1>else either is because of all this dynamics he's had
<v Speaker 1>with women. If I was trying to do some of
<v Speaker 1>that practicing work with him, I would be cautious about
<v Speaker 1>him maybe forming an inappropriate attachment to me.
<v Speaker 4>I think in this kind of situation in the individual
<v Speaker 4>service would being male. But if he was in a
<v Speaker 4>group having two.
<v Speaker 1>Male and oh yeah, that's a great idea a bottle.
<v Speaker 4>Rafts and everything that I think could be very helpful
<v Speaker 4>therapists individually, can I won't have a worry about those
<v Speaker 4>those inappropriate coachments, and can really kind of provide that
<v Speaker 4>guidance and education and then model it in the group
<v Speaker 4>cure how men and women can interact together without its being.
<v Speaker 3>A sexual mm hmmm. That's also an important thing for
<v Speaker 3>him to learn.
<v Speaker 1>He doesn't know how to do that.
<v Speaker 3>Never interacted with our our family.
<v Speaker 1>Or fake family, or women that have been weirdly inappropriate
<v Speaker 1>with you in a number of different ways.
<v Speaker 3>Right, he can learned how to normal a tonic collegial
<v Speaker 3>with women.
<v Speaker 2>Right. Unlike Gomez and Martitia are always at every opportunity
<v Speaker 2>reinforcing their love and desire to jump each other's bones.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they're really bad role models for appropriate behavior, really bad.
<v Speaker 1>Even if he had like a healthy girlfriend, would probably
<v Speaker 1>be like, why stop kissing Mike? You'd probably smother her
<v Speaker 1>trying to act like Gomas and like get off of
<v Speaker 1>a kissing me my arm episode.
<v Speaker 4>On the first one, we talked about how like domain
<v Speaker 4>like you know, relationship goals in the sense of how
<v Speaker 4>they are with each other. But now we're seeing that
<v Speaker 4>while they're good for each other, it's actually not a
<v Speaker 4>good example of a healthy relationship for someone like Faster
<v Speaker 4>to observe.
<v Speaker 1>It's not a transferable set of skills and a baby.
<v Speaker 3>There's a one off thing that they they you know,
<v Speaker 3>they find it works for them.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Well, Hannah, if you don't mind taking us
<v Speaker 1>home with treatment, yep. So something that I wanted to
<v Speaker 1>do in treatment that I was thinking about is doing
<v Speaker 1>family therapy with the whole family in order to help
<v Speaker 1>them understand that they have to stop treating Faster like
<v Speaker 1>he is a child, because again we've already talked about
<v Speaker 1>family systems.
<v Speaker 2>A little bit.
<v Speaker 1>We've already talked about how the system very much keeps
<v Speaker 1>them in a role that is not helpful for him
<v Speaker 1>in any way, shape or form, and so really having
<v Speaker 1>to get the family on board of we have to
<v Speaker 1>treat him like an adult. He is an adult person.
<v Speaker 1>This is how we have to treat him. And the
<v Speaker 1>other thing that I think would be really helpful that
<v Speaker 1>I would also want to do in those family sessions
<v Speaker 1>is help Fester talk about his needs and wants with
<v Speaker 1>them in terms of what he wants his relationship to
<v Speaker 1>look like, not only so that he can know that,
<v Speaker 1>but also so his family can hear that he does
<v Speaker 1>have thoughts and opinions about what he wants in his life.
<v Speaker 1>And also just to point out, like, he wouldn't be
<v Speaker 1>someone I would see him after like two years of
<v Speaker 1>work with Brittany. Right, I'm not saying that we would
<v Speaker 1>that he should be both kinds of treatment at the
<v Speaker 1>same time, right, Like, he has to know who he
<v Speaker 1>is first and feel confident in who he is before
<v Speaker 1>we can do that kind of family therapy. But I
<v Speaker 1>think that once he got to that place, it would
<v Speaker 1>be really helpful not only for him, but also for
<v Speaker 1>the rest of the family to really hear from him
<v Speaker 1>about what he wants and what he's interested in and
<v Speaker 1>how he wants to be an uncle and what does
<v Speaker 1>that look like, you know, does that look like playing
<v Speaker 1>together with us like you're another child, or does that
<v Speaker 1>look like you leading little experiments with them and teaching
<v Speaker 1>them things right, which is a whole different dynamic. So
<v Speaker 1>that's a treatment that I would do to help the
<v Speaker 1>family get on the right page with Fester, so that
<v Speaker 1>he has another space that he can be himself, and
<v Speaker 1>another space that understands that he has wants and needs
<v Speaker 1>and he's allowed to voice them and allowed to use
<v Speaker 1>his voice in his family. My prediction would be that,
<v Speaker 1>as do you encourage a Gomez to be maybe a
<v Speaker 1>little more detached and or a little more challenging, that
<v Speaker 1>he might flip out and that you might have to
<v Speaker 1>refer him out to individual therapy so that you can
<v Speaker 1>develop distress tolerance around his feelings about Fester. Yeah, absolutely, well,
<v Speaker 1>but he's my baby boy, he was exactly for twenty years.
<v Speaker 1>How can you tell me to cast him aside? Doesn't
<v Speaker 1>he felt enough in exactly? And that would be a
<v Speaker 1>very And of course I've already thought about what Gomez
<v Speaker 1>would be like in therapy, and it would be very much.
<v Speaker 1>There would be a lot of we're going to listen first,
<v Speaker 1>and then you'll have a turn to say what you
<v Speaker 1>want to say, but first we have to listen to
<v Speaker 1>what Fester has to say, and we're going to listen
<v Speaker 1>to what I have to say, and then you'll get
<v Speaker 1>your turn. And I don't know, Gomez might get up
<v Speaker 1>and walk out of the session. I mean, there's a
<v Speaker 1>really good chance that that would happen. And that would
<v Speaker 1>also be another point where Fester could use his voice
<v Speaker 1>and say this is really important to me. I want
<v Speaker 1>you to be a part of the please stay, I
<v Speaker 1>want you to listen.
<v Speaker 4>I think in that kind of situation, if you know,
<v Speaker 4>Gomez would probably definitely walk up, but Mortitia would stay. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>she's defferently more calm and she can hold it together
<v Speaker 4>and she would listen. She would recognize that what you're
<v Speaker 4>saying has value in merit, and I think a big part.
<v Speaker 3>Of that would be, you know, helping them and say
<v Speaker 3>you guys are allowed to have your.
<v Speaker 4>Relationship that we you would have it, just don't push
<v Speaker 4>it onto Vester and the kids and that's not the end.
<v Speaker 4>They'll be all it works for you, and we're glad
<v Speaker 4>for that. And also they want we want them to
<v Speaker 4>explore them. So and so while Domes might not be
<v Speaker 4>able to see that at the beginning, Motitia will Mortisitia
<v Speaker 4>will stick with this, will sit in the session, will
<v Speaker 4>let Bester speak, we'll follow your instructions, and then she
<v Speaker 4>will convince Gomez to try another session and she will.
<v Speaker 1>Try to help it. Yeah. Probably, she probably develops some
<v Speaker 1>shorthand with him where she squeezes his hand and whenever
<v Speaker 1>he starts to get worked out and she he goes okay,
<v Speaker 1>all right, Well those are excellent ideas. So we'll take
<v Speaker 1>one last break here and be back with final thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>All right, I'm gonna pick on you and Hannah to
<v Speaker 1>go first. Oh, final thoughts. I love this movie. I
<v Speaker 1>love these movies. I as much as we talk shit
<v Speaker 1>about Gomez and Martitia, I love them still. And I'll
<v Speaker 1>definitely watch this movie again because I love it and
<v Speaker 1>I love Joan Cusack. I love all her costumes. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so I love this movie. I'll definitely watch it again.
<v Speaker 1>It was really fun to talk about with you guys today,
<v Speaker 1>Benjamin our guest.
<v Speaker 3>So I also really liked this movie.
<v Speaker 4>I mean, that's family genre all is always so amazing
<v Speaker 4>because the whole point of that is that the challenging norms, yeah, expectations.
<v Speaker 3>They like that. They enjoy that this movie looked at
<v Speaker 3>it very differently.
<v Speaker 4>They weren't so overt with child do the expectations as
<v Speaker 4>they were in the first one, but it differently was there.
<v Speaker 3>I like the camp scenes Joel always because I was.
<v Speaker 4>Like nerdy, like I don't want to play sports, I
<v Speaker 4>don't want to do this, so like no, but so
<v Speaker 4>like I'm allergic to everything.
<v Speaker 3>You're allergic to archery.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, but he threw that arrow.
<v Speaker 3>Because the arrow has to.
<v Speaker 4>Leave her hands, right, So okay, fine, I'll just do
<v Speaker 4>that out of this. I really felt that, and especially
<v Speaker 4>whether they oh have you seen evil? And he's like,
<v Speaker 4>have you met my mother? I mean, I'm not saying
<v Speaker 4>anything about my mother.
<v Speaker 3>I love my mother, but there's.
<v Speaker 4>Something about that statement that like just it's such a
<v Speaker 4>powerful Jewish humor, like, yeah, the mother is overbearing. It's
<v Speaker 4>the stereotype. All Jewish mothers are like that, but the
<v Speaker 4>stereotype has some that's some basis in fact. This was
<v Speaker 4>a great movie. I'm just very glad that we were
<v Speaker 4>to talk about it. Thank you so much for having
<v Speaker 4>me back on of course, and there's funny more on
<v Speaker 4>the family where this came from.
<v Speaker 3>So I guess I'm just putting myself in pot.
<v Speaker 2>This year Wednesday show is fantastic, so good, so good,
<v Speaker 2>so good. Ben One or Ben Ben Prime, Ben Prime. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>I also love this movie. I I have not watched
<v Speaker 2>it in quite a long time. I remember watching it
<v Speaker 2>as a kid and loving it, and the camp scene
<v Speaker 2>was always so good, and it was like there was
<v Speaker 2>just a theme with camp in the nineties, man like
<v Speaker 2>this and heavyweights, which yes eventually will do people, yes eventually,
<v Speaker 2>but there's such like a look with like camp, and
<v Speaker 2>it had such a prominent feature and it's just so
<v Speaker 2>funny how they turned it on their head or turned
<v Speaker 2>it all on its head, like the kids, all the
<v Speaker 2>all the outcast kids are just like, we're just going
<v Speaker 2>to burn your shit, like buck you you.
<v Speaker 4>Because casts on and we're in a wheelchair right because
<v Speaker 4>they couldn't handle those activities and everything.
<v Speaker 1>Oh I didn't even think about that they.
<v Speaker 3>And they're still burning shut down.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>Don't don't be a bully, guys. This movie is so funny.
<v Speaker 2>The Adam's family is. It's iconic. It's so ridiculous with
<v Speaker 2>its macabre absurdism, and they just they love each other
<v Speaker 2>so much despite all of that and are such a
<v Speaker 2>strong unit that it's it's something that so many people
<v Speaker 2>look up to and have found a home in and
<v Speaker 2>I just love the hell out of it. For that,
<v Speaker 2>I think the Adams family will continue to exist in
<v Speaker 2>so many forms throughout time.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I love this movie obviously. I've seen it a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of times. I'll watch it a bunch more. It's
<v Speaker 1>like a very fall movie in my mind, even though
<v Speaker 1>it takes place literally over summer because they go to camp.
<v Speaker 1>I think interesting about what you said, Benjamin, is that
<v Speaker 1>I think the first movie was more about how weird
<v Speaker 1>they are in reflection to like mainstream society, whereas I
<v Speaker 1>feel like, especially with the camp in this movie, I
<v Speaker 1>think it's more highlighting how fucked up quote unquote normal
<v Speaker 1>people are, like even the way they were talking about
<v Speaker 1>the first Thanksgiving and how fucked those counselors are at
<v Speaker 1>the camp when he says, what did he say something
<v Speaker 1>four eyes when he took the book from Joel about
<v Speaker 1>reading in the Harmony Hut. Not on my watch, ye,
<v Speaker 1>not my watch test. I think what this movie kind
<v Speaker 1>of more shows is that the Adams family, or people
<v Speaker 1>who are outcasts are actually maybe the people that are
<v Speaker 1>in on what's really going on, and the people that
<v Speaker 1>are caught up in mainstream society, they are fucked up.
<v Speaker 1>Of course I love that and I will watch. Like
<v Speaker 1>I said, I watched the movie again and again. I
<v Speaker 1>love Wednesday Adams. I've dressed as her for Halloween in
<v Speaker 1>the past. Yeah. I love it, love it, love it.
<v Speaker 1>I love it. So Happy Spooky season everybody. This is
<v Speaker 1>our first spooky episode of the season. Thank you Benjamin
<v Speaker 1>again for joining us. Where can you say one last time?
<v Speaker 1>Where people can find you?
<v Speaker 4>I can find read through my two podcasts on Mental
<v Speaker 4>Health Quests, which is on all the social media at
<v Speaker 4>MHQ Podcasts and my hero Therapy is at my hero Therapy.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you, and as always, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram,
<v Speaker 1>and TikTok at Popcorn Psychology. Also threads to Popcorn Psychology.
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<v Speaker 1>you can email us at pop Pornpsychology at gmail dot com.
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<v Speaker 1>So everybody, I guess, kind of stay out of trouble,
<v Speaker 1>but maybe not. If you're like an Atoms, then you
<v Speaker 1>can pay your way out of it. Good for you.
<v Speaker 1>That's a da