Off Campus Ep 7 - Therapist Reaction

[00:00:00]Golly, they got me again. All right, that was the most powerful scene I've ever seen on television when Hannah's crying on the phone to her mom and she's spiraling and mom asks a genius question and it immediately snaps Hannah out of her spiral because Hannah's going on and on about how I ruined your lives and I'm the reason y'all don't have money and on and on about just the shame and self-lame. And Hannah's mom just calmly asked the genius question, "Hannah, what did you do wrong?

[00:00:29]just brilliant because here's what's happening under the surface. Hannah was in a shame spiral where she was hearing all these lies in her head about how everything's her fault and it's all terrible because of who she is and not anything specific about actions. Shame is going to convict you of how terrible of a person overall you are. Nothing specific. Just like blaming everything on you. And shame can't be persuaded.

[00:00:54]Somebody who's hearing that can't be like, "Oh, no, no, no. You're wrong. let me tell you why. And you can't turn into this argument because those voices in the head, those internal thoughts are way more powerful than what somebody else might be trying to say to you from the outside. So from therapeutic standpoint, Hannah's mom is like already a great therapist. I don't even know what she does for a living, but when she says, "Hey, what did you do wrong?" It just it asks somebody to interrupt the script that's running in their head and then gently asks them to maybe look at other evidence because it feels so true when those thoughts are just flooding around. But when somebody gently says, "Hey, could we look at maybe a different angle here?" It is it is brilliant. Now look, shame also it has to be confronted ourselves. So Hannah's mom was not going to be able to talk her out of it. She just asked a question that helped Hannah talk herself out of it and really unlocked the truth because usually shame is built upon lies. And this whole episode is actually dealing with the lies that we don't even believe. All these characters are dealing with lies in their own head that they're fairly certain, I'm fairly certain that they don't know is going on in there. So, let's flip over for a second to Phil and Garrett. All right. Phil with this devilish smile on his face where I just he's got the most punchable face. That actor does a really good job, but I I just Oh, it infuriated me because he says he tells Garrett, "Hey, you're already like me." This is right after Garrett was trying to tell me, "I don't I don't want to be anything like you."

[00:02:27]Phil says, "Oh, no. You're already like me." And you would think that would be fiction. You would think that would never happen. But I can tell you without giving details away, I had a client in the past whose father was that word a starting with AB and mistreated his mother, mistreated him in violent ways.

[00:02:47]And one day the son stood up to him and says, "I'm never going to be like you."

[00:02:50]The dad literally says, "You're definitely going to be like me. I guarantee it." And oh my gosh, when he came into the office and told me that, you know, therapists were supposed to try to remain objective, but when I hear something like that, especially from a father to a son, I I I couldn't keep it in. So, this scene in this show, like it it kind of triggered me back to my my empathy and pain for that client back in the day. So, what's happening with Garrett under the surface is he's hearing these lies in his head already before Phil even said this particular sentence. But you can tell he's hearing the lies in his head because when Hannah said, "Hey, it scares me when you say that you'll risk everything for me when that's not what I want." That's what she said. But Garrett heard something different than what she said. And that's how these lies work. Somebody can say something to us, but these lies are going to filter it. They're going to translate it, and it's going to be something that they didn't actually say.

[00:03:46]It'll be a twisted version of it. So he actually heard he thought Hannah said, "You scare me. You Garrett scare me."

[00:03:54]She did not say that. But all the pain, all the past trauma, all those lies he's been believing in his head. When she says, "Hey, it scares me when you say I'll risk everything for you when that's not what I want." That's what scared her. He heard, "Oh, I scare Hannah." In other words, back to that shame thing.

[00:04:12]I'm broken. There's something totally wrong with me. And that is such a false sense of who he is. And that shows how strong that lie is. That lie that he's violent, that this is how he's programmed, that he's never going to escape it. Like that kind of belief that happens a lot in people and they just they think, well, if I let people close enough to me, I'm going to hurt them eventually. So, I just need to keep people from getting close to me. And when they do start getting close, I need to back away. That's actually how a lot of avoidant personality types are.

[00:04:41]Avoidant, sorry, avoidant attachment.

[00:04:44]uh style people are. It's that they really don't want to hurt somebody and so they keep themselves at a distance in order to not hurt that person. And they have these lies going on under the surface and they're not even aware of it. So that's one that's that's Garrett's lie. Now we're look we're flipping back over to Hannah because her trigger I'm glad the show showed this.

[00:05:06]Her trigger is writing. All right. And that's why she has writer's block. I had a feeling that maybe what was going on, but until they actually showed what the dis what the uh disconnect was, I wasn't for sure. But the fact that she had to write out her story of what happened to her at the hands of that douchebag Delaney, that shows right there that your nervous system doesn't know time.

[00:05:28]So if that if this in in that moment when she was having to write out the story for the police, that was also a traumatic moment. obviously not nearly as traumatic as to what Delaney did to her, but her brain stamped that as part of the painful experience. So, anything in the future that reminds the nervous system of that moment from the past, it's going to trigger her and it's going to cause her to shut down in the moment involuntarily. It's not like she can do something about it in the moment. But again, the nervous system doesn't know time. So, she knows that she's years past it now. She's older, but her body thinks that it's still happening concurrently, and it's going to shut her down because it's trying to keep her safe. So, any kind of writing like that now, it makes perfect sense why she can't fully write that song. And it's interesting that they had Garrett and Hannah triggered right before the game.

[00:06:20]Triggered for different reasons, of course, but triggered right before that game, building up to this. Okay, let's flip it over to Cindy. Now, she has serious shame on her face. That actress did a great job of showing the the embarrassment and the the the shame on her face of like, "Yeah, I didn't leave Phil like you told me to." And Garrett, you could see it's it's he's frustrated with her. He's mad. But there is a such a thing as healthy shame. And in this kind of situation where somebody needs to leave an environment or leave a person that's bad for them and especially that's dangerous for them, healthy shame actually can move someone into action. You don't need to withhold that kind of shame from people. You don't need to try to uh rescue them from that kind of shame because what's happening is the truth is trying to settle in on them and it's trying to fully sink in that they do need to leave but all these other rationalizations start fighting that other thought and that shame if it actually could win then they would take the action and realize I'm worth more than this and by staying around I'm disrespecting myself and I'm canceling out my future. So in that kind of situation where Cindy was feeling that the healthy shame was actually I I was agreeing in that moment with them showing that shame. That's not something I as a therapist would try to alleviate from somebody. I would try to help them see what the what the healthy decision would be for them. All right. Now let's flip it to Ally. More lies being believed in somebody's head where they don't realize it. Poor Ally. She's trying to convince herself that she can be single and she she's just not able to because it it's not being single that really bothers her. It's not even being alone that really bothers her. What's really bothering her and what's really scaring her are the thoughts and the emotions that come flooding to the surface when she's alone. All right?

[00:08:10]It's most people aren't afraid of being alone. They think that's what the issue is. But the root issue is it's all those thoughts and emotions that they keep stuffing and they keep trying to stay busy so that they don't have to deal with. And the minute they get by themselves and the minute things get quiet, all that stuff comes flooding up because it's it's literally asking to come out, the only way it comes out is through being processed. And and it's uncomfortable, but it's more uncomfortable to keep having to shove it down, which is what poor Ally is is trying to do. So, I hope they show something about how she's going to deal with some of the internal stuff she's running from. Joanna's advice. Okay, she says something to the effect of, "The best way to not be a relationship girl is to have no strings hookups." All right, I don't know if that was I'm sure that wasn't the exact quote, but that was the gist of Joanna's advice. That seems right until you think about it for maybe five seconds. All right, because I'm going to paraphrase it. The best way to rewire your brain and train it to avoid relationships and to close your heart off is to hook up. Because think about it, a relationship is when you open your heart up and you focus in on one person and you form deep attachments and you get vulnerable and you know that person deeply and it's it's not safe.

[00:09:23]It's it's real connection. It's real intimacy. So if that's what you ultimately want is a relationship, then why would you train your brain to want something that's the total opposite of all of that? Because that's what hookups are. They're just surface level and transactional. And so that that advice of like the best way to not be a relationship girl is to avoid relationships and and hook up like well yeah if you want to be permanently not a relationship person then yeah go ahead and follow that advice. Again a lot of this stuff it seems right to somebody but in the end it leads to death inside your soul. So her words are are classic temptation words. It's like oh yeah you got the rest of your life to do what's best for you. Don't you want to know what this feels like right now? And I'll tell you why that really actually works on a lot of people is that we have this thing called a reptilian part of our brain. It's like the the old school caveman part of us that's it's really just the reptile in us that wants to get the immediate pleasure in the short term moment and it's not even capable of thinking in the long term. And so yeah, that advice of like, yeah, you got later to do what's right for you. Do what feels good right now. That does sound right in the moment, but those end up being the decisions that we regret.

[00:10:37]And so I love that the show is is addressing this stuff. Again, I don't know how they're going to uh play all this out by showing maybe the uh the after effects of these decisions, but up to this point, the pattern has been show the lie, show them falling for the lie, like whether it's a hookup or something else, and then show the fallout and the the damage that gets done because of that decision. So, I assume that's what's going to happen in this next episode. And this is the the next one, the last one coming up. I've had so much fun talking about this stuff. So, I can't wait for the the next season to come out. But also before that, I can't wait for this uh episode 8 to for me to watch that and for me to talk to you guys about it. Hey, again, hit me with whatever comments, whatever questions, anything you disagree with. I I love the back and forth and we can be tight and agree or disagree no matter what. This is fun stuff. Thanks for being here and I'll see you next