Reservation Dogs: The Impact of Suicide and Grief Within a Community

Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster movies and psychoanalyze them.
My name is Bernie Brownfield and I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by
Ben Stover, individual therapist, Hannah Espinoza, marriage and family therapists. We're
all licensed clinical professional counselors also known as therapists, who practice out of Chicago.
Even though we are licensed mental health professionals, this podcast is purely for
entertainment purposes and to fulfill our love of dissecting pop culture in all forms.
Please remember that even though we are all licensed therapists, we aren't your therapist.
If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find a local mental
health provider. Hello. So today we are talking about reservation dogs. It's
a little different. It's only i think the third TV show we've really talked
about on our podcast, and so we thought it would be a good show
to talk about because it is Natural Indigenous Month here in North America. I'm
not sure where it is everywhere else in the world. And also, this
is the show that just ended its second season. It's on Hulu but also
on FX, and it is a show that's getting a lot of critical acclaim.
It won a Peabody Awards, Spirit Awards, Chritish Choice Awards, Golden
Globes. American Film Institute called it one of the ten best shows of twenty
twenty one. And it's a show that's very beloved of me, very beloved
of Hannah. We're trying to get Ben on board kind of our part of
our slight agenda with picking this topic, and so we are covering the first
season of Reservation Dogs, which is just eight episodes. The first series,
this kind of a quick plot summary is it follows the lives of four indigenous
teenagers in rural Oklahoma as they spend their days committing crime and fighting it.
After the death of their friend Daniel one year prior to the events of the
series, the gang wrestles with a desire to move to California, the way
Daniel dreamed of doing. But first thing each type loose ends in their lives
and community and make preparations to leave. And the main four characters we will
be referencing are a Laura, Willie, Jack Bear, and Cheese and Daniel
is, like I said, their friend that died the year previous. So
the topic that's going to be a pretty heavy episode as basically the big topic
we're going to be discussing is suicide and the impact of suicide for the people
who survived the person who died. Specifically, we're going to be talking about
a Laura as someone who found the body of their friend Daniel who passed via
suicide. We're also were talking about Willie Jack and her parents and the impact
of Daniels suicide on them. And they're also going to address generational trauma as
the show makes it clear throughout that this how they deal with the death of
a loved one is something that is repeated generationally to the generation above them.
So, like I kind of mentioned up top, we find our four main
characters a year from their friend Daniel committing suicide, dying by suicide, and
they are have a memorial for him in the first episode as they are trying
to figure out a way to get out there, get out of their reservation,
and something very striking from the very beginning of the show, they don't
make it clear right away how Daniel died. They just keep making references to
this place killed him. Basically like we need to get out of the reservation
because it's going to kill us the same way it killed Daniel, and so
we are seeing these four teenagers really feeling as if they're fighting for their lives
by trying to get out of the rez, as they put it. One
thing I wanted to highlight first is that according to the NAMI website, the
rates of suicide in Indigenous adolescence is twice as much as in white adolescence,
and they mentioned on the show one in five Native Americans struggle with mental health.
QUANTINAMI and another website it's about eighteen and nineteen percent. So I wanted
to put that out there at the top of the episode. And in treatment
we'll talk about like the National Suicide Holland and that kind of thing. So
first we can talk about Laura as a Laura's kind of the one who has
the most I don't know if I want to say the most impact. I
don't think that's true, but she's the one who finds Daniel. I think
it might be fair to say that she is the most impacted because she's the
most associated throughout the series, which of course doesn't become clear because we don't
realize until we're more than two thirds of the way through what actually happened,
But you start to realize that Laura has more than one loss that she's dealing
with, and that there's extra layers of complication for her as we learn I
think early in the same episode that we learned that Daniel committed suicide, that
her mother died in a car accident while drinking, that no one has ever
told her a single thing about. Yes, you're right, Laura's she's the
products almost like both in her present day and her past are both haunted by
two pretty big tragedies, the death of one of her best friends, Daniel,
and then finding his body, which is supremely traumatic. And then you're
right, we find out over the course of the show that she lost her
mom when she was three to a it was actually a motorcycle accident in which
her and the driver were both drunk, and no one will talk to her
about it, Like absolutely, it seems like nobody will tell her anything about
her mom in a way that is really upsetting to put it, you know,
simply, And so I think for Laura, she does seem to be
the one who's the most adamant and like aggressive kind of about like we have
to get the fuck out of here. Like I'm going to California, hell
or high water, And we see over the course of the show that going
to California was Daniel's idea. So it almost is this thing where it's her
way of kind of dealing in multiple ways. Is this idea almost this mythical
idea of going to California and she's trying to make meaning. Yeah, she's
trying to make meaning of her loss by completing his mission. Which is a
common thing that happens when people have lost someone tragically, is when they're all
aware of a mission and they're all on something, they often try to make
meaning by completing whatever the task that they had always talked about was as if
that will ultimately resolve their grief and guilt over what they live through, and
it won't. Yeah, they definitely talk about California like it is this truly
like mythical place that will, like you said, Ben, will have so
much meaning and give them an answer like if we can get to California,
Daniel's life, Daniel's life and death will make sense and we can't live here.
Like Laura seems just really adamant about the fact that she can't survive within
her community or where she grew up makes sense. Every person that she's cared
about has encountered tragedy after tragedy after tragedy, So her feeling like she can't
be safe there and that there is some mythical place where she can be safe
and anonymous, because ultimately what we see as she joins up with the first
but we see her hedging her bets basically, and this girl Jackie, who's
part of a rival gang. Yes, she meets her without her gang in
a grocery store, and Jackie starts offering her another avenue to get out when
she is losing faith that Bear and her original crew can actually complete the task,
and she feels like this girl might be an avenue to it. She
starts hedging her bets and investing in both groups. She truly yeah, she's
the most determined and yeah to the fault of everything else she feels. She
genuinely feels like someone who is like I have to choose myself. I am
drowning and I have to get out of here, and I will make whatever
sacrifices I need to make to get the fuck out of here. And it
feels like I don't know what both of you will think about this, but
it also kind of feels like a part of the magical thinking that is a
part of being a teenager naturally, and then having with this complication of the
of Daniel completing suicide that makes her because I think that she might have always
been a person who wanted to leave, but that after Daniel, after losing
Daniel, really feels like that's the only answer, kind of what you're both
already saying that that really is the answer for her in terms of the next
step or the only place that she can be or the only way that she
can deal with losing Daniel and the only place you can find safety from the
same fate. Yeah, I can imagine she probably feels variance. I mean,
she does feel very unsafe in their current in their community. I mean
she says it over and over again, we are going to die if we
stay here, like this place is going to kill us. And you're right
at the very towards the end of the season, when when it is obvious
that parts of the crew are losing faith in the plan or deserting the plan,
she doubles down on that. She's like, what are you doing?
This place is going to kill us? You can say that she really struggles
to understand how they can find worthwhileness and staying there, and that they're not
feeling the same desperation she's failing, and and I think, well, I
don't want to jump ahead, but I think it. You know, obviously
they'll have a lot to do with her home life too, which I think
we'll touch upon a generational trauma. But like you were saying, Ben,
is that she doesn't have a very enriching home life her. We don't know
anything about her father. Even through season two, I don't know if we're
told anything about her dad, and her mom died when she was young,
and she's being raised by a moa, by a grandma who is quite cold
to her, is sort of how it's portrayed. And so there's I definitely
see how there feels like there's nothing for her there. And I think there's
also a pretty heavy and pretty heavy insinuation that she was I don't know,
I want to say that she was like in love with Daniel, because I
don't know if that's true, but that they might have had their own sort
of romantic possibilities going on there, and so also with him dying, I
could imagine too that with a kid as abandoned as she is, that she's
like, that's it, Like there is no future here. I kind of
saw a future maybe with Daniel and my friends, but now that's ruined and
I and where we used to hang out was ruined, and everything is bad
well, and everything that she had built in order to keep herself safe was
no longer safe and essentially built on bis because what she created in her head
was that these group of kids were her family and that they were the ultimate
ties, and that they were just as tied to her as she was to
them, and that is not true. Willie Jack in particular, is the
first one to declare she's not leaving. Yeah, after she realizes that she
is still very much tied to her dad and her mom and she is not
ready to leave. She has not finished what she needs to do, and
actually that conversation she has where her dad sits with her in the woods and
it gets vulnerable and actually tells her about the guilt that he has, the
sadness he feels over the loss of Daniel and the generational losses their family has
had, and also that her feelings are common, they're shared she's not on
an island with these feelings, and it makes her feel seen and it makes
her feel connected. And then soon after she declares that she's not going to
leave. And Cheese has also invested in this woman who's not really his grandma.
But I think I think you're read is right that we never do see
who his actual family is. That he's just kind of there with people.
And as soon as he's feeling like, nah, I've actually got a pretty
good gig here, he reveals himself to be betraying the plan, and Bear
is never sure of anything. Yeah, because I'm like you, I think
you also mentioned Hannah. They're all sixteen ish. I think Cheese is a
little younger than them. He's at least fifteen, if not maybe even younger
this season they say, they say that he's fifteen this season two, so
he could be as young as fourteen in this season. I think it is
that think two of like you were saying, Hannah just being really young and
thinking you haven't figured out, and I think Bear is struggling with that.
I think a big theme two of this as well is like individual versus community,
like we've talked about in other episodes and a Laura does not feel I
think the community or the community has been taken from her. Well a little
that she felt, and so now she's like, I have to make it
out. I have to focus on the individual. And she also realizes that
the attachment that others have two family that does cause this conflict that we really
see heightened, like Bear decides he's ready to leave. But it also the
director made a clear point in that last shot to show Bear is struggling with
wanting to actually just sit his mom's gonna pay attention to him and have dinner
with him and click the table off and give him everything he wanted. And
he's not actually ready to leave that And that's why she leaves with Jackie because
she realizes the ties that other people have are actually betrayals to the tie she
thought she had with them. That ride or diamontality that she holds onto wasn't
actually adhered to at the same level because the other people have attachments she does
not, Yeah, exactly, And I think you really see that too when
they go to visit Brownie and she's really trying to establish a connection with him.
You know, you're like my cousin uncle. She keeps calling him Uncle
Brownie, and he doesn't really know who she is at first, and so
you do see her make attempts throughout the show of that connection of wanting to
be with people and she wants to be meaningful to people. I mean,
that's all you really want when you're young, especially when you're a teenager,
but anytime you're a kid, but all life, and even when she's in
that episode with the coach Bill Burr, you know, she asked him like,
I want to know what my mom was like. I want to know
what it was like when you were with when you were friends with my parents.
You know. I want someone to include me, to bring me into
the circle and share with me and make me feel warm and loved. And
I think what also is sad? And I'm curious in that when she quit
sports because that coach was like, you were so good at basketball, and
then what happened and she makes it sound like, which could be very true,
that she had to quit sports to go pickpocket at the casino, which
could be very true. And I wonder if that lined up with when Daniel
died. Oh, that was a subtext. Daniel died and she stopped it.
It was a year ago, so there was no way that it wasn't.
I imagine she's stopped going to school that day. Has noticed when we
see the day that he or she finds him, she's the only one not
at school. So I think her connection to the belief in what school can
even provide her is weak. In the first place. She doesn't have any
hopes that she's going to have a different life than struggling the whole time.
So this ride or die mentality and grabbing hold the cars and living this kind
of gangster lifestyle that they're trying to do to commit petty crimes and put aside
the risks that they could get into serious trouble makes sense to them because they
don't see a future beyond that, which is the same thing that causes gang
type of activity in other cities like our dear Chicago. Is a lot of
the kids that live in some of these neighborhoods where gangs have set hold is
that they don't ever leave the neighborhood. They don't get a chance to experience
the world beyond that and see that it is bigger. So many of them
have never even been downtown, and it starts to make sense why you might
trade that lifestyle for one where you could pursue safety, because the only safety
that you believe you'll ever get comes from doing things in the way that you've
seen and latching onto what's in front of you immediately because other people have let
you down or left through deaths. I think one thing we're also sort of
hinted on two is that you know, she found Daniel's body, and no
one seems to have helped her deal with that. There seems to have been
that we saw no debriefing, no checking in with her, no therapy.
No one's gone to therapy as far as I can tell. It's just she
found Daniel's body in a horrific fashion and she was just kind of left to
deal with it. And I think that's the part where them not talking about
anything as a community, and that people who people who die, their whole
story dies with them, and how hard that is for as always for the
people that are present. But mostly I think it just seems like they when
no one is there to answer questions and no one is willing to talk about
things because they're too painful, we end up with young people who are just
waiting for anyone to tell them the answer and want anyone to answer any questions.
So even and even how it seems like they're getting answers from people that
they don't spend a lot of time with and may not, but they're willing
to take anything they can get because there is no information out there and having
and also like in a part of the reason why Laura doesn't have any attachments
is because of the trauma of her mother with her grandmother. And also these
kids are also surviving in a place where it's really hard to live, and
especially for young people, it's hard to get through the experience of being an
indigenous person in this country. And I think that struggle which we definitely see
with Bear of do I do I stay and take care of my community and
be with my loved ones and try to help my community thrive, or do
I leave and try to make something of my life quote unquote in a way
that feels more possible or more full of hope kind of going out there.
And you're right in that a Laura, she's looking for scraps. You know
the fact that she does have such a meaningful touching and direction with her coach
that she hasn't seen in like a year as he's giving her a driving test
where they go to a show like a shootout at a hotel. Is you
know, the last person or the most random person for her to be feeling
so close to and have such intimate moment with And but you're right, he's
one of the few people that talks to her about her mom, shares sweet,
loving moments, and also he tells her, you know you have your
mom smile and you have her caring heart. I'm like, God, I'm
gonna cry. I knew I would possibly cry talking about this show, but
my eyes are watering right now. And that's so meaningful to her. And
if she would have given more, been given more of that, I think,
more connection to her mom and the people who loved her mom, she
would have more of your saying, been more of those attachments. To stay.
No one has really shown her besides her friends that they want her around,
to be quite frank, and why would she stay? And then something
horrible happens to her And that doesn't change anything either, And that must have
been I can't imagine that wasn't a mind blowing revelation to her in some capacity
of the worst thing possible happened to me again, and no one's really taking
care of me, No one's taken me under their wing. I'm sixteen years
old, and the only person there was and the only person who did besides
the coach, was Daniel. You see from their interactions together, like them
or be they romantic or not, you do see Daniel working to get her
out of her shell, working to get her connected to something else, taking
her I don't know if it's off the reservation and into town to go see
music and to share parts of his life with her. And it doesn't seem
like she lowers that armor with anybody else. She lowered it with the coach
and she lured him. Otherwise, She's playing sort of a ring leadery type
of role. Bear thinks he's the leader, but he's not. He thinks
a lot of things that are true when he says he's the leader so seriously
and they all laugh in his face. Yeah. Yeah, Laura's the only
one who actually is operating with any sense of guidance. The other ones are
just going like, yeah, it seems fun. And also to like,
on top of the trauma of finding Daniel, I think also to something that
doesn't get talked about enough is the trauma of being one of the last people
to see someone who completes suicide. And she doesn't really talk about this herself,
but the rumination that must be occurring inside of her of what I could
have said differently, what I could have done differently to have prevented it from
happening. I think we see that as we'll also be talking about like Willie
Jack and her parents. I think we see that as well as like episode
seven, as they kind of track Daniel's movements on his last life, the
last day of his life and the people that see him last. I think
it's it's so hard, it's so human to feel like I really could have
said something or done something different and I would have changed everything. Is it
possible that a Laura could have taken him down this road or stayed with him
longer, or that Willie Jack's dad could have done something a little differently,
Sure, and that could have made things differently. I mean, that's always
possible, and we'll never know that. I tell clients sometimes, like until
they involve like the invent like the multiverse, you know you're never going to
be able to see what could have happened. If things would have gone differently,
you'll never know, and to hold onto that is just punishing yourself as
well as going through such deep, deep grief, and that is exactly what
happens I Unfortunately, this is a reality of my work, as a reality
of therapist work in general, that we often encounter people who have gone through
that. But working where I do, I have encountered it quite a lot
the past few years, and people do ask themselves these questions, and this
show did a masterful job of showing that. Seeing the uncle yeah replay that
scene in his head, going why would it this kid be asking me if
I wanted to help and just be out wandering around and then finding out what
happened it coming back and making sense that that little spidey sense you got that
something was wrong that you just went like, this is weird. But whatever
I'm doing, what I'm doing, which is normal. It happens all the
time. That's what normal people go through. But the number of people I've
talked to that have seen someone that has completed suicide the day of day before
and like he was normal, he was fine, he was talking about you
know, all these normal things. I mean, something seemed a little off
about him, and the actor that playe Daniel had that look in his eye
that these people describe it. There's just something a little bit off, but
you can't quite place it because people that are going to do it do not
tell you yeah, because they want to do it. And it is really
scary to see those scenes replay where you see them kind of working on going
down their checklist, which I think was exactly what Daniel was doing, where
you see them kind of work on going through their final validations that this is
exactly what I should be doing and nothing else is going to actually make me
feel better. But maybe I'll try these things anyway and go Nope, No,
it's the same as it always is. Nobody has time for me.
There's no spot for me, there's no place for me. My house isn't
safe. I don't fit anywhere. I'm better off dead. And watching everyone
struggle with seeing those interactions when they make sense in context is one of the
hardest things about this show, and one of the hardest things about dealing with
surviving a suicide of a loved one is every one of these things you can
play back ten thousand times, knowing what happened and you can apply context to
it that you did not have in the moment. And the way the brain
tricks you is it tries to make you think about it as if you had
known that, could you have made a difference. Yeah, everything has meaning
that they wouldn't have had any other context. You know. With the work
I used to do working at like partial hospital programs, is I would get
a lot of people that had come from the hospital and this is kind of
like they're stepped down therapy, so they'd been in hospital obviously for you know,
attempts sometimes and when I would work with the families, there was a
lot of that, you know, well, what should I do differently next
time? And how what I've known and I should have known and and it's
a lot of what you're talking about, Ben, which is sort of trying
to comfort them what we see Willie Jack and her dad do in that hunting
episode, which is just comforting them and saying like there's nothing you could do.
I think I wrote down Willie Jack's exact quote. She tells her dad
you can't control everything, because he says I couldn't help him and the way
he needed to be helped, and I think he meant that in like the
general umbrella sense, and then also on that specific night, I mean,
if we want to slide to talking about Willie Jack and her parents, she
has like she's the only one who's directly related to Daniel. He's her cousin,
and so there's also the familial impact of his death too, even though
everyone feels that it seems like in equal parts. But she has like pictures
on her wall of him. She talks to him a lot. They all
talk to him to a certain extent, And like you were saying, her
dad was probably the last person. My assumption is as he parted ways with
the Laura was like walking around the neighborhood, ran into his uncle and then
left. And I can't imagine for Willie Jack's dad how he can't be and
he is I think thick stating on I should if I would have let Daniel
help me with the car, help me with the seed or whatever it was,
he would still be there. I would have talked to him, maybe
he would have stayed the night. I would have figured it out well.
And even though he does ask him if he's okay, he does give him
a jacket because it's cold outside and he says to him, are you feeling
okay? And again not saying that Daniels maybe able to be honest in that
moment, which is okay, but that that's a part of also that there
wasn't anything that her dad did that wouldn't be that would have made this different,
Like he asked all he asked questions. He checked in with Daniel in
that moment, and kind of what Ben said is that there's some people who
some people who are who are planning on attempting or completing suicide that sometimes they
just aren't going to tell anyone because it feels like because it feels like the
only answer, it feels like the only way that they can And as we've
talked about on this podcast, it's a lot about not being in pain anymore
and trying really hard to figure out how to not be in pain. YEP.
I think this show did a great job of showing what has essentially been
the way I've come to understand it is that people may not be in a
hurry to complete suicide, but once they've decided that that's their only way to
get out of pain, that that becomes something they lock into and decide that
that's what I'm going to do, and I think Daniel walking around and kind
of completing things, revalidating for himself. Like I said before, that that's
really the only way he can do these other things. But they're just going
to stall and keep him in pain longer. They're not going to absolve his
pain. He'll just be in the same spot going, oh, look there's
fighting going on at home again. It's not safe there, and no one
can commit to taking me in. No one can rescue me from this.
And one of the ways that I've been describing it to people because unfortunately in
a Chicago police department, we've had six completed suicides here and the collective trauma
of that is profound, and being able to help people understand, Look,
if I ask you a question, you're going to be able to answer it.
And that's an important part of understanding that we are all born with a
part of us that can decide between a rock and a hard place, and
that suicidal part is a function of our fight part, where it is decided
that there is no other way out of pain. And part of the ways
that I'll do that or looking at people going if you were standing on a
mountaintop lost in the woods and knowing that you had a rabbit pack of cannibals
chasing you off that mountaintop. Who if they catch you, they are going
to tear you apart and eat you alive, or you're going to jump off
that cliff? Which one are you going to choose? And the fact that
all of you just had an answer to that question proves the point that you're
born with it. It's a function we come with where we have that is
within the expected range of human experiences to encounter a situation where the best option
for having a painless death or getting out of pain is to take your own
life. And it's scary and it's tragic, but if you think about it,
it's a hard truth and understanding it that way can help you find empathy
and also help people out of that darkness if they're able to that that is
not the only way to get out of pain. Yeah, there are their
life goes far beyond this. But you in order to help someone out of
a suicidal time in their life, you have to be able to convince them
that they will not just be prolonging their pain. Yeah, and I think
too, there are those moments like when they're walking back, and you can
clearly hear very big time fighting happening at Daniel's house, and you can see
the whole group, which is very sweet of them, especially at their age,
very quickly assessed the scenario and then try to give him options for to
not be at home, like they're all very aware of the situation. And
in season two you see that his parents have now split up and his mom's
actually in prison, and there's an episode where Willie Jack visits Daniel's mom that's
I cried, that's done, no surprise, and I think, And we
also see in these flashbacks, which they do look pretty great, leave Gray
in the show about if there was even something contributing to Daniel's mental health as
well. He seemed to have these moments when he seemed really impulsive or like
not a ratic but kind of like edgy or like the Hunting flashback when he's
like screaming in the woods, and then when they go to that honky talk
as they call it, which could be what it's called, and there and
he's like being really uncomfortable, like he's like dancing in loops and pushing against
like the band and stuff, and that could have just be because he's like,
I'm gonna leave the earth tonight, so might as well act would do
whatever I want. But I think they do kind of demonstrate over more of
the sense I get from the show is that he had these moments of really
acting out or acting maybe even like odd and or intensely. And so it
also makes me curious if there's like an additional mental health component on top of
just having a really hard home life life and living in a community with lower
SCS where there's a lot of hopelessness, and also like a higher suicide rate,
and when there's higher suicidality, it becomes more of a path to go
down. You know. It's like if you know people who have committed suicide,
you're more like when we do assessments for suicidality and clients, if you
know someone or love someone, or have someone in your family who is attempted
or completed, that is a factor we have to keep in mind in terms
of upping your risk because it makes it seem more available. Yeah. If
he did it, fucking I could do it too. Yeah, And so
I think we see all those components to Daniel, and I do think it's
interesting that the show does not provide any clear answer to Daniel in the sense
of like, oh he had bipolar, Oh he was this, or oh
that it is Truly, he does feel like a ghost that's kind of haunting
our main characters, and we find out what he was like in these bits
and pieces, and clearly he was very beloved, so there's a lot about
him that was lovely and that they like him wanting to go to California.
They seem to have really not just in making meaning, but that Daniel knew
what he was talking about. And it makes me curious if maybe Daniel was
the leader of their little group before he died. He was at least the
beating Heart. Yeah, I don't know if he was the leader, but
he also looked like he was older, so he very well may have been,
if not the leader, at least the beating heart. And I think
that that is an accurate way to depict how a lot of people who survived
suicide feel, is that this person now feels exactly like that. Like I
only remember in bits and pieces, and I always wonder what happened, or
what they would be thinking, or how they would be feeling, or what
would be different if they were here. It does become like a ghost that
haunts people, and people convince themselves when they're nearing the point of doing it
that both they and the world will be better off without them here, and
it's never true. I think going back to Willie Jack's dad specifically, he
is one of the few where they actually talk about mental health pretty specifically,
and it's clear that in the year since Daniel died, his OCD has been
flaring up. He's lost interest in the things that he typically would care about.
He was a big hunter, and Willie Jack has to sort of pull
him out of bed to get him to go hunting, and he's carrying a
lot within him. And she says that two in that speech she gives when
they're in the church basement for the tornado, of like my parents haven't been
the same, Like none of us have really been the same. And I
think Willie Jack, God bless Her, is trying to do that work that
we've been talking about of we all need to really talk about what happened and
come together and hold each other. Because the Hunting episode, why that's my
favorite I think of the of the season is it's just the two header.
It's her and her dad hunting pretty much, and they do finally have it
out where they both have a really good cry and they hold each other and
they say all the things I think that they've been holding on to for like
the past year. He finally says his deep dark secret, which is I
could have done more to help him. I am crying, and she kind
of says like she helps heal him. And I think, what's so beautiful
about Willie Jack and you see more and Morris the show goes on, is
her role, as I think, a healer for others and herself, and
really I think taking on more of that role within her friend Group two and
giving that to her father and therefore feeling that healing herself. When you can
help someone else and hold that together, that's so powerful. And I do
feel like once she left that hunting trip, I think that for her was
like I can't I don't need to leave anymore because I got the closure I
needed from my parents and now I want to stick around and help them feel
better and give that to them, and someone's got to do it. She
changed her meaning, yeah, but what felt like, what felt meaningful about
her mission changed from something that was mythical to something that was tangible, and
people will quite often make switches like that when they realize that they can get
what they need and that there is something for them to do that matters where
they are. And she didn't feel the need to escape anymore. Her flight
part is not on as much anymore because her attach part is back on.
She is connecting back to her family, and then she's coming back to herself.
She is able to give the part of her that's been activated to defend
her from what she couldn't get closure on, give it what it needs,
and that part recedes back into her personality and she steps back into herself,
which when we see her step up and step into the community and take a
leadership role because she's able to do that because she is integrated again. She
is herself. She is her core self standing up in that moment, not
feeling the need to protect herself from pain that has no answer. She found
at least some answer, the answer that you can have, which is that
we're all going through this. Nobody knew. There isn't something that you actually
missed and you didn't do that's significantly different than we all missed, and that's
a powerful moment when you're dealing with survivors of a suicide is helping them on
like have a space to process where they actually physically hear other people say I
saw something a little weird, but it didn't click, because then the guilt
doesn't feel like it's all on them that they missed it. Because our internal
system is very egocentric, and that's even worse in teenagers. It assumes that
we can influence the world in ways that we cannot, and that can be
really damaging when you're struggling with some part of you knowing there was something that
maybe you could have done, but that part can't accept the control, leaving
the control you never had the control, You never had it from the universe.
And that's why existential therapy is so powerful, is because it helps you
to give control back to the universe that always belonged to it. Anyway,
you couldn't do any of the things. Even the version of you that would
have known those things wasn't okay. I wasn't strong enough to do it because
you were a child then. And I think, like we've mentioned, I
think what helps Willie Jack be able to do that at is that she does
have the most secure attachment and the most secure home life. I think she's
the only kid we see on the show that has both of her parents not
just in her life, but still married, still in the same home,
still seem invested in her. And also you see in the ironically in the
Hunting episode, her dad is I think the only parent that's told that one
of these kids is going to be leaving. Relly Jack tells her dad,
we're going to California, and he gives her ironically gives her permission. He
says, if you need to leave, I'm here for you. Yeah.
And like I said, I keep saying ironically, but I think that's what
helps her stay too, is is knowing that her dad's not going anywhere,
right, and that also him exploring with her, you know, if you
want to be something, maybe you do have to leave to be something that
you want to be, like genuinely, because like I said, there's real
life factors to this. No, it's not just like, oh, something
bad happen, so now you want to leave your hometown. It's like the
community they live in is hard to succeed in, impossible, very limited options,
you know. I think he tries to in that moment he tries to
reconcile his duality, which is I want my child to stay with me,
and you know, just be with me the way that I think any parent
wants their teenager to stay with them, and also recognizing for her own good,
if you have to go, you have to go. And I'm sure
a part of that too. I don't know how it couldn't be somewhat impacted
by what happened with Daniel, in the sense of, you know, maybe
I don't want whatever happened to Daniel to happen to you, So if you
have to go to be okay, I don't want to keep you here if
it's going to be damaging, right, And sometimes giving people that permission is
important because it acknowledges the truth of the situation that if they're going to go,
they're going to go, and that it is true that she can't complete
her mission there. If she decides her mission is something that can't be obtained
there, that she has to go, and him giving her that permission calls
some of that storm because it enables her to see, two things are true.
That I can leave, but if I alter my expectations, I can
find happiness here. Which is part of the point of what her dad is
telling her is like, you know, yeah, it's sad and I wish
it was different, But also I find my happiness here doing things that I
can do, that I can have, which is super existential standpoint of understanding.
I can only control what I control. I can't fix what my parents
sold in the thirties, but I'm going to come here in hunt on in
anyway. And I wrote my grandparents sold and what they were tricked into doing,
and how you fucked up the way Americans have treated Native Americans in the
first place, and looking at the truth the situation is sometimes that rock in
the hard place. Decision you can make is doesn't have to be escape.
It can be I'm going to make the best of this situation, and I'm
going to invest in it, but I'm going to give myself permission to let
go of the dreams of a different life. Well, yeah, I think
of technique I use a lot with clients is like radical acceptance to do that,
which is sometimes simply just They'll have them draw a circle, and then
in that circle, I will say, what are your choices? What are
the things you have control over? And then outside of that circle or things
you do not have control over, And I use that as that practice,
like you're saying to kind of refocus, you know, if it's if I
have to, if I've made a decision, then I'm not going to go
to California, And if you will, then I have to radically accept the
consequences of that decision that are out of my control. And then what's still
in my control is focusing in on what is still available to me, and
that's your right. Like what will the Jack's death says, which is like
going I think it's just going on walks, like three times, Like you
can go on walks and hunting and all the simple parts of life and look
at stuff and look at stuff. He's very very sweet. I can tell
he's trying to do that hard sell that parents do sometimes, and he's trying
is kind of falling flat because he's like, oh, you can eat catfish
something like, dude, that's also we're already doing by an eat catfish.
Then they're going to turn into catfish, those poor kids. But I know
we've kind of talked about is there anything else specifically about the people we've talked
about so far? Willie Jack or Laura Willy Jack's parents. No, but
things are going to be harder for those that don't have as firm attachments.
And that's what the ACES study has been all about, that trauma hits harder
to people that have less resources. And when we even look at these characters,
the variants in between the level of resources each one of them have,
it's important that more care be given to people that have less in order to
help them adjust as best as possible, and that needs to be a better
focus in society. So we will take a break there and then come right
back. So I know one thing we wanted to hit upon as well is
generational trauma. So you know, put in the Bengal board, guys,
we're talking about trauma, babe. Like we've been talking about trauma, but
I think specifically in this show, it's a very clear demonstration of very specifically
like the generation that is Bare and A Laura and their parents and the generation
that is them, and the second season it really focuses more on their parents
and specifically A Laura's mom Cookie and her death and the impact of that.
So it's this very interesting parallel in the second season to the first. But
I think what we do see in the first season, and we've already come
talked about a bit, is how nobody really talks about what happens when someone
that they love dies. I think the first kind of clear demonstration of that
is when a Laura they go to Brownie's house to learn how to fight,
and right away Laura's like, can you talk about my mom to me?
And Brownie says no. He literally straight up refuses to talk about her mom,
even though it's been thirteen years since she passed. The way these trauma's
hit when you talk about underprivileged, underserved communities is that the amount of trauma's
stack so profoundly that people enter a protective stance and choose just to keep living
that they don't have space or time to give to being sad because it will
impact their survival and they're here now, and it can be a really pervasive
problem because it keeps people from being able to process or digest anything, and
then they keep being stuck in the perpetual state of survival that does not allow
healing. And I think what's so interesting about the Brownie Cookie, which is
their racist siblings. So it's very cute that their names were brownie cookie is
that he says to her. It's not that I don't want to talk to
you about your mom. I can't, right, And I think like what
you're saying, Ben is when you're just kind of trying to make it through
and you're given very poor resources, if any at all, that you're not
given any language in which to discuss these difficult things. There's no shared vocabulary
around this kind of loss. And if you don't ever learn it, you
don't ever learn it. I mean, it's kind of as simple as that.
Part of our role as therapists, if not the role as therapists,
is to teach that language, to give words to what has happened to somebody.
The amount of times that I feel all I do for clients and not
in a good way, is put something in a different way for them and
they look at me with their wide eyes and they're like, oh shit,
that's it, Like I've never I never had words for it before, and
now that I have words for it, I have context, and now I
can put everything through that context, and it's almost like hitting a relief valve
within them where now they know what to do with the feelings and the memories
and the pain that they have. I now know how to communicate that to
someone else, and then when I communicate it, then I teach them and
I model for them and then they So it's just very like it is a
very communal passing down thing to be able to share that language with someone else.
And what we have seen the generation trauma of the show is they don't
have that language and so they really can't process it and they can't give that
to each other. This younger generation is looking towards the older generation to tell
me what to do, tell me what happened, tell me how to talk
about it, and they really cannot give that to them. No, they
cannot. They can't give what they don't have. And also, people who
aren't safe have a really hard time processing trauma. And none of them are
safe. They are all struggling. There is no one we see in this
show who is doing well, who has a stable, consistent pattern to life.
They are all waiting for the next shoe to drop. So even taking
a minute to a sign language to these things wouldn't do a ton for their
survival. And it's it's hard to see and realize that that's a reality that
we create for so very many people, not just for the Indigenous population,
but for so many people that they live a life that is so focused on
s viving the next round of bullshit that has come their way due to poverty
or other tragedy, that they don't feel like they ever good a minute to
fucking breathe, And that usually contributes to high rates of substance use, which
we also see in the indigenous population at a rate that is far higher than
what we see in some other populations. But if your life is nothing but
awful or nob out, what are you going to choose? And so many
people we see in this show are smoking weed all the time and literally say
something very similar to what I just said. It's like, it's terrible,
just smoke. Yeah. I think there's definitely this energy of like just shut
up and to try to have fun, eat your catfish, you know,
play with your friends, try to get some joy out of this life while
you can, and that's it. And I think that's very true of I'm
out an Indigenous person, but I am. I am from the white communities
that have a similar energy, like the more like poor white communities where it's
all very like, let's write our ATVs and like, let's just like like
go out on the weekends and you know, party and drink, and I
think it's kind of the same idea of you know, we're just trying to
live this life while we have it. And that's that you see it over
and over again of people reach this point where they can't get from regular levels
of anxiety. What they're supposed to Anxiety is supposed to make you uncomfortable enough
that you do something to change or respond to a stressor. You're supposed to
feel anxious so that you do something different. You don't do things when you're
comfortable, you just don't, and you seek to maintain comfortability. But then
people oftentimes get stuck in this loop where it's Okay, I'm anxious, I
have no control, or I have limited control, and or I can't see
the things I can control. So what is available to me to get away
from this stressor is to deal with it and try to manage all the things
that I have to do until I get frazzled. And then as soon as
I get frazzled, I'm going to numb the fuck out, and then I'm
gonna start the whole cycle over again. Tomorrow and that's my life. And
so I think where we're at with our this show and specifically is I do
think we see more in season two and not see referencing that, but attempts
to sort of break out of that and to provide more resources. And it's
just hard to do and you have to get buy in from the community,
and you need you do need I think in every community, regardless of like
this when we're talking about other ones, is you also need for lack of
litter term like the elders to show you the way, like you do need
people above you that you respect, to our leaders to also, like said,
create that safety, but also to model that we're going to do something
different and instead of just like head down power through life, you know,
we're going to sit down together. And so it is like going back to
Willie Jack and that speech in the church basement. I would be really interested
to see like sort of the personal ramifications in a positive sense of her kind
of breaking that generational cycle. You know a lot of people nowadays are talking
about breaking generational cycles, and I think she's doing that. I also think
Cheese later on we see he kind of does that. He's just a truly
resilient person. I don't know how. He's just the kind of a magical
being, truly, and it is having to create this out of nowhere,
and you're right like, until you feel safe, you can't really do that.
It's kind of impossible because if they really, like you see in the
Hunting episode, if you really allow yourself to feel it, you will cry,
You will break down, you will need to be held, you will
need time to be a mess kind of especially if you're sort of the first
round of people acknowledging this, and you have to have a safe spot to
do that. You have to have a safe space to land and to be
held and to not worry about how your bill is going to get paid.
Whose you know is if I talk about it, will I upset one of
the few people I care about and they'll dip? Because I think that's also
you can feel the tenuousness for this whole show around these issues, and not
just Daniel's death, but also Cookies death. I think a lot you can
see with a Laura when she pushes in certain times to learn more about her
mom. You can feel that tension of why are you doing that? Why
are you breaking the rule? Which is that we don't talk about these things
capital Tea or Bruno. Yes, but it's the same thing. It's the
same thing as that song. And looking at how powerful generational trauma is and
how it creates systems that when it's not safe to process the trauma, it
keeps people perpetually trying to survive even when they may not continually need to survive
at the levels the old wisdom they're holding onto tells them to the remembering that
our parents saw the civil rights movement, We were taught about that in black
and white, living in a world in color, and the perception of a
lot of millennials learning about social studies is that so much of that happened so
long ago, and it wasn't. It was not. It was not so
long ago. That happened within your parents and grandparents' lifetimes, and the things
that you do with people that look different than you now that you don't think
twice about your grandparents would have not been caught dead doing because they would have
been punished by society that you're not being safe, or you're being whatever race
trade or whatever nonsense. They may have come up with it, but they're
not following the rules, and looking at a show like this, we see
that that when people, especially like a Laura, like it's just bursting out
of her that she wants these answers. She needs to get completion on this
and get closure on it, but no one will give her the answers because
they can't. But can't is relative to what they believe about themselves, not
what their body comes equipped with to be able to deal with. Yeah,
but you can't see that if it's not reinforced. Because Brownie could, I
know, he feels like he can't. He could, but he doesn't know
if he can tolerate it right now. And if we were in like a
therapist office, if he could with me, you know, I would say
like, let's see if we can, and let's just be curious about what
comes up when we try, and then move through that like having to learn
how to sit in the discomfort of breaking the rules, you know, because
I think what's so profound in terms of how deep the generational trauma is on
this show is that she doesn't even know exactly how her mom died. Like
that's how secretive the circumstances around her mom's death is. Oh, that would
make I wouldn't be able to deal with that, I think at her age
of like, I don't even know what happened to her, and I live
with her mom, I live with my grandma. And the only person who
finally tells me is this white guy used to be my coach, you know,
in these crazy circumstances. But I think that is just so telling on
how the deep the pain is in And you see as the show goes on,
how her mom cookie her friends, her mom's friends that generation, which
includes like Bear's mom, were close, the way that Bear and Laura and
Cheese and Willie Jack are, and how her death shattered them as a group.
And it is such a genuine shame that Laura was already three at that
point that they couldn't have wrapped their arms around Laura and taking care of her.
And it says so much about how going back, how much they just
didn't have the ability to process it. Everyone seems like they just kind of
shut down and did their own thing. Also, Bear must have been born
almost like he must have also been three or around the same age, so
I know there was a lot going on period, But you know, it
just says so much about how much their dynamic changed and how distant they are
from each other. And I think what is beautiful about the group we see
in this generation is like even in the first episode, is they do make
a valiant effort to stay together as a friend group, and like they even
do that ceremony at the beginning of the at the end of the first episode
where they do pull in their understood language, like some of their cultural ceremonial,
you know, rights, they pull that in in order to have their
own version of closure. Like they're really trying to do their best to recognize
Daniel and talk about Daniel and celebrate him, and I think going to California
celebrating him, and so they are doing now that we're talking about this thoroughly,
I think it is amazing how much the current group of kids is trying
to do things differently with the tools they have, which is you know,
doing the like the staging ceremony and all the things that I don't quite have
the understanding of to wish him well a year out, you know. And
I would imagine just by how you see the things with Cookie, that generation,
I would have been shocked if they would have done anything similar to that
a year out of Cookie's death. Is there anything else I want to talk
about in terms of generational trauma before we shift into treatment. I'm good,
Okay, we'll take another break here. I can go first, just because
we've kind of been touching upon what I was going to talk about for treatment,
and that's just what came to mind for me is when I used to
work. I used to work in a pretty like lower SCS community in Ohio
where I'm from, and when there was a shared tragedy, like at the
local high school a kid died, I think at the local elementary school a
child died in a drowning incident, like you know, just a very shocking,
unexpected death occurred. What we would do is the counselors at my partial
hospital program would go to the local school and just offer their resources just kind
of be available for just general sort of grief counseling and it was just drop
in. Whoever needed to talk could go into a room, a designated area,
and one of the counselors that I worked with would just be available.
And the point of that is to just one recognize that something happened. I
mean, that's the first big step something really horrible happened, and we are
going to make the assumption that it could have impacted any of us, and
so we are going to have resources available to talk to for if it has
impacted you in anyway. So I think one, just instilling that opportunity,
just validating recognizing that I think goes along way. And then like I said,
it allows, if nothing else, short term availability of resources, like
it wasn't something where we wouldn't have build the school, like it was truly
like a volunteer situation. And so also it's not a strain on resources when
people volunteer to do that. And so it isn't one of those things where
the more weller off kids or the kids with the more involved parents get access
to mental health resources. It's any kid who has the courage to go to
the room where the counselor sits can And then that also allows the mental health
counselors to assess people about how they're doing, if they need extra care,
if they're at risk of any of any kind, And so that also can
open the doors potentially to more support. And like I said, it doesn't
require going through parents or going through insurance. Eventually you might have to do
that if the person needs to continue therapy. But I think that feels like
something that was just so sorely missed in this story is how different would would
it have been if after Daniel died, if there was just a counselor in
their like IHS that the health center or at the local high school. Maybe
there was. I don't know they'd ever mentioned it, but that's something treatment
wise that came to mind for me, is just having someone available after your
tragedy to just for as much as you need them. Like I said,
it could be one and done, and it can be ongoing if they think
that you need it. And also it normalizes therapy, like I said,
it makes it more of a known quantity. And then if nothing else,
you can give in short term like brief counts brief counseling to help people have
some resources that they can pull from to go on with. And so that's
what I would do as treatment. Any therapist can do this, like if
you can just be in contact with a local community, like you can volunteer
your services in this way to be available to do this for others. And
I think that would that does go miles when something like this happens. When
something in the community occurs. Okay, definitely important points. Being able to
create a space to have the community heel the community is important and that be
something that we remove barriers to. Yeah, Hannah, you want to go
next, You have me too, you can go next. Okay. This
show does a really good job of pointing out the barriers that exist too low
SCS communities in particular, but also even more particular like homogeneous population ones where
there's a very limited range of people and there's a small space like a reservation,
would be a great example of a niche population where there is a concentrated
group of people from one particular or a few ethnic groups that have particular needs
that are really easy for the system to ignore or can be really difficult to
get people who want to be medical providers or providers of any kind to go
out to the community because it's so far away from everything and so isolated.
And we see the impact of that when you see this piece of shit doctor
Bobby, like median Bobby Lee, I think out there and he is openly
telling people like I don't want to be here. Well, also I'm the
eye doctor and the dentist probably, and the butthole doctor. Yeah, gy
doctor, like I am the doctor capital d yeah. I mean I don't
think he straight said I'm the eyehold the eyeball doctor and the bothole doctor.
Oh yeah, because she is that stomach ache from eating flaming flamers, right,
which the importance of understanding how pervasive that is in our society. Pane
ties into an earlier planeties into Brittany's point about why it's important to have the
community heal the community and to empower and train and provide access for members of
a community to become competent healers and able to provide those services two members of
their own community, because then there's investment in it. And it doesn't feel
like this guy's out here to get the ihs loan repayment and then he's going
to dip. Yeah, and he's or he's going to stay out there and
just resent everything because he's not able to have the life he wants because he
can't connect to people, even people he finds attractive, because they're all other
colleagues are clients and he's the only doctor. And that's not healthy for him,
let alone healthy for any of the people around. Because he's also when
I have a life, but everybody's his client or his patient. That's a
problem. And when you look at what system that sets up, even the
ones that we have worked in, the most chronic patients and clients get seen
by the least qualified providers, and that makes no fucking sense. We all
started our careers working in community mental health, working with people with chronic mental
illnesses we barely understood from grad school because grad school barely covers and it covers
it. People who are working there are base level competent to do it,
but these specific skills it takes to really invest and learn how to work with
people that are actively hallucinating and how to help them get their needs men and
to realize that you need to adjust your expectations. That they're never going to
get better, but that doesn't mean there can't be okay, and that they
can't get better from where they are now, and you can facilitate that.
But new career clinicians often want to come out with the same egocentrism we see
these teenagers have in this show, thinking that they can change the world,
and seeing what little change you can have and the restrictions on it and the
amount of paperwork you must do to have any impact at all, you can
even help these people keep access to these basic services, and how much of
your time that consumes eats your soul and crushes that right out of you.
And why you see so many people early clinicians or the career even medical folks
leave from these environments because they feel so restricted and hopeless on helping people.
And it creates these systemic barriers to getting care for people that really need it.
And one of the ways that I would love to see that dealt with
is that even more effort is and pathways are provided to getting people education so
they can serve their own community and do it in ways that are culturally appropriate.
That like we've talked about many times, clients don't want to explain their
entire culture to you. They want to have somebody that just fucking gets it.
What's so funny about you saying that? As I watched an interview with
the creator Sterlin Harjoe, and he specifically hired all native writer because he said
that almost exact thing. He goes, I didn't want to try to explain
Native culture to my writer's room, so he goes, I needed writers who
just knew, so we weren't wasting time doing that? Right? And why
is this funny? Or why you know, like why is calling people should
as so funny? Or not being able to look at it now? All
those little nuances right, all those little things. But the other thing that
I think is important to look at is with these systemic barriers, is that
one of the things that I've seen be useful is to build off what you're
saying, Brity. Instead of having counselors available, is mandated where you can.
And that is something that I have seen make a tremendous difference because the
way that things are dealt with with police stations that do it and populations of
first responders that have the resources put in place to do this and have been
under consent decrease to do so, is stop this nonsense. If you have
a bunch of therapists show up and just sit down, you know who's going
to come talk to them. Not a lot of folks. They're gonna be
like, oh doope. But if you mandate it, if you normalize it,
everyone has to go. Everyone had this trauma and everyone has to sit
down in a room together and talk about it, and everyone has to process
it. You get some of the magic that comes from group that's been known
for a long time that is lost to insurance billing and people working multiple jobs
and people just struggling that when you get some of these niche populations, in
order to break the stigma, you must normalize it, and sometimes normalizing must
be done through mandate. That's true that it is not something everyone can go
to. It's something everyone is going to. And well, you probably can't
do it with the adults. They can start it when the schools. Yeah,
and everyone is going and we're going to break out into groups. In
your classroom today is going to be a processing group. And that's it.
And when you see that stuff start to happen when it's not optional, it
starts to break the stigma because everyone starts feeling those things that we see Willie,
jack and her dad go through that we see happen with Laura and the
coach and even Laura and Jackie where they see each other and understand that they
are not connected the same, They are not the same as everybody else,
and no one else gets them because it's true they have a connection to other
people do not. And part of dealing with those kinds of things is normalization
through homogenization of services. Everyone goes, everyone goes to the doctor, everyone
goes to this everyone like everyone gets a debrief And I think I would have
liked to see that have happened with these kids, and had I had any
role in it, that would be exactly the system I'd implement. Is not
negotiable. You're going well. Actually, in the next season, they have
a sort of like not group therapy, but sort of like a day where
they make all the teenagers go to the the community hall and like learn about
their culture and like do some icebreakery, cun team building things. Then they
do have to bribe them with gift certificates, so it probably would look like
that, like if you go to the counselors, you have to, but
also if you go, you'll get five dollars. I think they get a
five dollars sonic card when they go. And they all go though, and
they all go, and there's also cultural pressure to go because the only way
that their culture will survive is if they are given the opportunity to learn about
it. And I don't see why we should do mental health any different than
that that we incorporate that same kind of methodology of like, we need to
make this an expectation that people get mental health services they need, and then
we can also work on how we pay providers and how we motivate providers because
we'll be simultaneously creating healers from within a community to heal their own community because
they'll be in vested. But also we can work on solving this problem that
we stop having people with the most chronic need get inadequate healthcare because the people
that are doing it have the least skills because they've been They're only going to
do it for as long as they have to, and then they're going to
dip. So that's where my thoughts go as far as treatment. One thing
I want to say in reference to what you brought up and then I'll throw
it a Hannah, is that there is a way and I'm going to find
it and put it in our description for this episode to sponsor BIPOC counselors or
like people who are trying to become counselors. You can sponsor them that will
somewhat cover training and continuing training and that kind of thing. So I will
I used to have the information for that, and I don't know how it
accessible to me right now. But I will sign it and I will put
that like I said in our description, but with that, I will throw
it to you, Hannah. There are a couple of different things that I
thought about in terms of what I would talk about intrigue, and one of
them just kind of came to me while we were discussing everything is that I've
worked with I've worked with clients who are chronically suicidal, which is kind of
what we've all talked about, but also I've worked with clients who have lost
someone to complete a suicide, and that the grief that happens when someone experienced
that can I feel like sometimes be harder I don't want to say harder than
something else. But in terms of all the different things that we've talked about
today about the complicated I feel like it often results in complicated grief when someone's
completed suicide, and that the difference with complicated grief is that it kind of
means that it's connected in more than one way to different parts of your life.
Also is connected to general loss that you've experienced in your life, whether
or not it's been able to be processed or not. And a part of
what we've been talking about this whole episode is that there is there's generational trauma
all over the place, and so a part of that is is that losing
so many different things, losing so many different people as it can have a
big impact about how you deal with grief in general. And that a part
of what I do when I work with people who have who either are chronically
suicidal or who have survived someone's suicide is we talk a lot about which is
not a surprise making meaning with them, and I focus on a lot is
allowing them to be sad, is really giving them the space because I think
there's so because there's that part of us that wants to know what we could
have done better and how we could have changed it. Which is something we've
been talking about the whole episode, is that when our mind goes there,
it can be really hard to allow ourselves to express the true sadness that we
feel losing this person and helping them. And a part of what I do
is talking about doing different kinds of rituals, kind of what we see the
group do when they have their own memorial service for Daniel, in order to
help them release thoughts and feelings and parts of the experience as much as they
can, because nobody's kind of showing them how, But that that's a part
of what I do when I work with somebody, and that it is so
important to help them find so important to allow them to have a space to
just be sad instead of trying to figure out some magical puzzle that they're never
going to be able to figure out. And how in my experience when I
help people with this specific thing, that of allowing them to have that space,
allowing people to be sad when some of they've lost someone instead of trying
to figure out what should they do or what are all the other pieces?
Allowing somebody to have that space is just really important and something that I think
we all could think more about, just in terms of friends and family in
general. The other thing I want to talk about is vulnerability. You know,
one of the things that we see demonstrated in this episode is a lot
of really beautiful vulnerability, mostly with the mostly from the teenagers to the adults
for lots of different reasons. So as American family therapist, one of the
goals that I'm trying to help with couples and families and siblings is essentially to
be vulnerable with each other. The Couple's dialogue something that I talk about have
talked about in previous episodes, and the whole idea of the couple's dialogue is
that it breaks down the regular pattern of discussions or communication because what we want
so a part of the reason why couple's dialogue breaks up those regular conversations that
people have is that it gives them a chance to be in the moment.
It gives them a chance to be authentic when I'm showing you a different way
to communicate. That means you're not going to be able to have a whole
spiel of what you normally say. And what I'm really hoping they'll do is
be able to be vulnerable. People are not always ready for that. I
get a lot of pushback about the Couple's dialogue and with lots of different reasons
about but this isn't a problem, though, this isn't solving a problem,
and why isn't getting it to the problem, And it's because that's not what
we're doing here ready to help you be vulnerable. Some of the barriers that
people have is not feeling safe in terms of being able to be vulnerable.
That's also something we've been talking about. Not being able to trust other people
is both valid and unhelpful. At the same time, there's a base level
of trust that we can extend to others while keeping personal things safe, and
a part of it I'm going to talk about that I think. I think
that when we are all in some level of flight, fight, freeze,
hide, or fawn, it can be impossible to trust other people, but
we still want to be heard, we still want to be connected to other
people. In order to connect, we must calm our central nervous system.
First. We have to calm it so we can decide how and what and
how we want to communicate it. True connecting is trusting ourselves to be honest
and thoughtful with our communication. Being vulnerable is not trusting other people as much
as it is trusting ourself. We can only control how we react to feelings
and thoughts. Trusting that you can decreases the anxiety of the unknown of what
can happen, And so A part of so kind of what my essential point
is is that as much as much as we make vulnerability seem like it's that
you have to be able to trust the people that you're with. It's more
that you have to trust yourself to be honest and to be open and to
give someone a chance. And that's something that is demonstrated very beautifully in the
show, and that in order to be truly vulnerable, you must be able
to trust yourself that you have everything you need to recover from the moments where
it gets really hard without breaking. That breaking down is not breaking permanently,
that the hard moments are never as long as you think they are, that
you can get through them, and you rightfully are afraid of them, but
you don't need to avoid them. The amount of times that I tell clients
that it's we only need ten seconds. We only need that ten seconds of
giving either giving yourself to ten seconds that you need before you communicate something that
might be hard, or that it's ten seconds of being uncomfortable. It doesn't
take longer than that to say something that feels like it feels like it we
have to have everything in place in order to say it the right way,
but that really it's only ten or fifteen seconds that we really have to be
great. In most experiences with people that I've worked with, once they have
decided to be vulnerable with someone that it often can go well, not always,
because sometimes we have a hard time choosing people that we want to start
being vulnerable with. Yeah, I tell people, like a lot of times,
vulnerability begets more vulnerability. Everyone's waiting for someone to be vulnerable, and
so that's what I said, Like with the Willie Jack's speech, it'll be
interesting what vulnerability comes with that. I think also in the season two episode
where Cheese is in the group home, you see he has a lot of
vulnerability that then gets more vulnerability from the people he's around. And you're right,
and that it is I tell clients when we are vulnerable, and when
we communicate authentically people, we're not in control of the people. They might
really not take it well. And we like you exactly what you said,
Hannah. We have to trust that we are doing the right thing and that
it was the right decision to be vulnerable. And that's really hard, and
that if nothing else, we can sit in the fulfillment of knowing that we
did our best. But yeah, we really want to have like a perfect
scenario when we say something to other, especially if it's a really hard discussion.
So with that, we will take one last break and the new final
thoughts. All right, final thoughts. I'm curious. I want to know
your final thoughts been for my own selfish reason. Oh okay, well,
I'm going to start with I can't begin to tell you how excited I was
when the episode would Cheese and Big ended and they're talking about Batman and how
this would be like Batman except that nobody's rich and nobody has any money and
all that. It was like, Wow, this is an episode where I
didn't even have to creatively force I think I almost try to. I try
to tape it, like record that and send it to you, but I
couldn't make it work. But beyond that, I think that this show is
excellent. It's an excellent immersion into a culture that it just takes you on
the ride, which FX is really good at. It's going like, hey,
you're coming into this culture. It doesn't matter whether you know anything about
it. You're going to learn, and we're going to go about it from
the point of view of people in the culture, and we're going to be
unashamed one unabashed about that, and we will pull no punches. I do
notice that whatever branding they've decided to do internally with FX where they've gone fearless.
I think it started with Sons of Anarchy when they went like exactly the
same model of we're getting into a culture and we're going to go with everything
from the standpoint of that culture, and we're going to show the good,
the bad, and the ugly, but we're going right for the juggular.
And this show built on that. Although you know, this has some of
the Taiko Watiti style ridiculousness to it, which I also enjoyed, like the
spirit every time that dude was on the screen and I was laughing because he's
so good and he's just he also but he unabashedly is like, hey,
I am a Native American and we are gonna go right for all of our
cultural things because he that actor, is actually a cultural guide. He works
on helping people learn about their culture, and the yells and the way he
phrases things is just amazing. And I think beyond all of those things that
I think are really important with shows is that we established that this is the
world we're in and this is the standpoint of the people in that world.
Because those are the kinds of shows that are gonna pull me in. Is
I want to be immersed into whatever it is I don't want. I cannot
stand shows that are like, hey, look at these people that are a
hot mess, that are just really beautiful and we're going to watch them.
Yeah, we're just gonna do all this crazy shit. I can't stand in
my life gets so mad at me when shows like that come out and are
just like, this is the same bullshit of like, we're gonna watch terrible
people do terrible things for no reason, and I'm not here for it.
She's been watching in the dark, and that's pretty much exactly that. Like
it's just not I hate it, but all those kinds of things. This
is none of that is here's a real story about real people from real perspective.
And what we're going to do is tell that story with heart, and
we're going to confront the hard things and we're going to help people see that
there is a lot more to any story, and we're going to uncover it
piece by piece, and we're going to look at how this central event shaped
these people's lives. And they did it wonderfully, and they took care of
mental health, they took care of culture, they took care of society,
They covered all the angles that impact these people and made you feel it,
and they did a great job, and I think it's great. Great.
I can go next as I mean, if you couldn't tell by the fact
that I cried twice just talking about this show on this episode of the podcast,
is I love this show. I think what you're saying men exactly is
it just drops you in to an experience, to a culture, and it
doesn't really cater to white people. You know, it's not trying to like
exposition dump constantly so that white people watching can feel comfortable. And I would
say anyone, I think part of why I wanted to do this show on
our podcast is because I want people to watch it. And I think that
I don't want people to be discouraged that they can't get into it because it's
not anything they understand or they know anything about. Like it's really easy to
drop into because it's very human. It's so much the show is very heartwarming
and wholesome and vulnerable and gut wrenching, but in ways that are I mean
the show. I think I can find it difficult to watch sometimes because it
is emotional for me and it's never like it's not trauma, porn or any
of that stuff where it's like unrelenting, like, look at these people over
here who are suffering so much. And I think that says a lot about
the fact that it is like being supported by Taiko Watiti. But it's not
really his show, you know, it's the creator Sterling Hard. Joe is
native, and all the writers are, and all the actors are. And
it's not like Twilight where where Taylor Lautner is not a spec native American And
even like the actress who play with the Laura, she actually is a writer
now for the show, and she writes a lot of season two, and
so it really is a communal experience. And I think it's one of my
favorite shows ever. And I hope everyone listening is if you haven't watched it,
that you're really encouraged to watch it no matter where you come from,
because we all have tragedies in our lives. We all have you know,
people if you go one generation up, no matter where you're from, nobody's
talking about the hard stuff. Nobody's talking about mental health, no one's talking
about secrets and sadness. And so I think there's so much to be taken
from this show, and this show as a therapist, it's well on my
top ten in terms of, like as a therapist, what I would recommend
other people watch. So that's my big old stamp. Annah. I love
this show. It's really beautiful and oftentimes when I'm crying when I'm watching it,
it feels it feels hopeful and it feels genuine in a different way.
And so I really enjoy this show and I'm really excited to continue to watch
the newest episodes that they come out with. But I think it's just something
that's done really beautifully in a very meaningful way, and that when you get
a show like that, it's really hard to dismiss it, and that you
really should try the first couple episodes. Also, what's really nice is it's
like thirty minutes. So we did all of season one because it really was
about as long as Lord of the Ruings one movie, so part of what
we just had to do it. But I love the show. I love
the characters. Uh yeah, and I'll I'm probably gonna rewatch season two because
I just had to because I just rewatched season one. I know, I
kind of want to watch season two again as well. So for clarity,
Hannah will watch it again. Absolutely, there's a rare stamp of approval,
ladies and gentlemen, that's on your beingle board. You've got a Bengo bit
agreed. All right, Well with that three for three recommending this, we
will end there so, like as always, you can find us on Facebook,
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At Popcorn Underscore psych don't fire. We're dating it, but it's yeah,
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all the best with you and also with you. I guess I can put that out