Speaker 1: Welcome to Popcorn Psychology, the podcast where we watch blockbuster
movies and psychoanalyze them. My name is Brittany Brownfield and
I'm a child therapist and I'm joined by Ben Stover,
individual therapist, Hannah Espinozo, 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 and all forms.
Speaker 2: Please remember that, even though we are all licensed therapists,
we aren't your therapist.
Speaker 1: If you are struggling with mental health symptoms, please find
a local mental health provider. Welcome to our Valentine's Day episode.
This year, you all picked Bridget Jones Diary. I'm so
excited to chat about this because I've watched this movie
a thousand times. Bridget Jones Diary is a movie about
a woman and who's looking for a relationship and she
kind of ends up in one sort of and she
writes in her journal a lot the things that we
will be discussing what happens, you will be discussing you
guys are killing me here? How do you keep going?
We will be discussing authenticity, some environmental factors, and treatment
and final thoughts as always, So what do we have
to say about authenticity and Bridget? Well, I guess we
can say off the rip that Bridget is someone who
I don't even know if she knows who she is,
And if you don't know who you are, how can
you be authentic? Like, Bridget is definitely someone that we
see from the rip in this movie that is trying
to be a version of herself that other people will like,
specifically men, but also I think everybody. Yeah, I think
you're absolutely right. If she doesn't know who she is,
how can she It's like that thing where you're always
trying to judge what other people how other people see you,
and you're always trying to You're always in your head
about it, and so you can't be authentic because you're
always in your head about what other people.
Speaker 2: Think, which is a dangerous place to be because if
you don't know who you are, you're susceptible to be
told who you are or who you're supposed to be
to be good enough, which usually leads people like Hugh
grant to sniff you right out.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's an app description because he is he
does feel like a man sniffing you, and that he
is a little slimeball creep. Yeah, you can tell this
lime from like a mile away. It's that hair. Yeah,
one hundred percent, one hundred percent. But I think what
struck me a lot this movie for the podcast and
now also for the first time watching this movie as
someone who is older than Bridget because I think every
other time I've watched this movie, I was probably a
teenager or in my very early twenties, So this is
also the first time I've watched Yeah, I've watched her
now that I am not just her age but older
than her. And I think something that really struck me
is that she lives in a big city. She lives
in fucking London, one of the biggest cities on earth,
and she doesn't seem to have any hobbies. She's thirty two,
and all she seems to do when she's not out
with her friends or at her parents doing some sort
of like get together, she just lays around, gets shit faced,
watches TV, feel sorry for herself, writes about how fat
she is in her diary, which we can talk about
that later. And she doesn't seem to know who she
is when she's alone, which I think is a big
aspect of knowing yourself and being authentic is you. I mean,
it's corny to say that you have to be like
your on most friend, And she doesn't know how to
spend time by herself, and that's like a big part
of the beginning of the movie. You just see her
laying around with the energy, which is like kind of
the through line of the movie, unfortunately, which is that
if you're single, you're nobody. It's almost like you're not
allowed to She's not allowed to be anything else besides
a partner to a man, and she doesn't know how
to do anything on her own, really.
Speaker 2: Not outside of her group of friends. And don't forget
some of her other friends who she clearly doesn't see
very often, also remind her that if she doesn't have
a husband and be working towards children, she's no one.
Seems like a recurrent theme that she almost looks a
little sick every time people say something like that, or
just makes little faces of like h.
Speaker 1: But I think it just felt so telling that she
doesn't seem to have a life of her own. She
really seems very aimless, Like even at work, she's just
kind of going with the motion. She's not quite doing
what she wants to do. She kind of knows what
she wants to do with the television broadcasting, but she
has to have a big, like kind of catastrophe moment
for her to push her into that. So she just
feels like someone who kind of goes along with everything,
like you see in the very opening scene actually when
she goes to her parents and her mom says, don't
wear that or this like, and she just goes along
with it, like she just gets pushed around. She just
kind of very easily. She just very easily surrenders to
everyone else's opinion of her. And like I said, the
only way you can really armor yourself against that, because
people are gonna have opinions of you, that's just life,
is to have a solid sense of who you are.
And a lot of that, like when I talk to
clients is what do you like? What are you interested?
What are your hobbies? And she only seems to be
interested in how much she weighs, not smoking too many cigarettes,
getting a boyfriend, and does she mention anything else in
that diary of hers.
Speaker 2: Not watching sad movies and singing sad songs.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a start.
Speaker 3: If I was a therapist, I'd be like, that might
be a start.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Inundating yourself in other people's misery to keep you
suspended in your own is not a healthy use of time.
Allowing sad movies or are the things to be a
reflection of how you feel is very healthy. Using that
to help you process your own emotions is great, But
when it's keeping you stuck, not so much.
Speaker 1: And even just putting her in more precarious positions, which
is I feel like what keeps happening Like the fact
that she wears that outfit that her mother lays off
her is obscene. That outfit is disgusting. And the fact
that she doesn't seem to have enough sense of self
to even be like, I don't like this, I'm not
going to do that. I'm not gonna wear this, because again,
that means that she would have to know herself into
some capacity, and she just really doesn't know herself. I
feel like even when she's writing in the journal, it's
like she's just writing down what's happening versus what she's
feeling or what she thinks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly seems like it takes a while for
her to even find her own voice in writing and
accept it. I think she gets there, which of course
turns on her at the end, but I think early
on in it, yeah, she's just and this is what
happens today. And it's not very clear that she's or
it's very clear that she's not figured out who she
is yet. Just at that party, seem like talking about
with the dress. Not only did she put on that dress,
The first thing out of her mouth was, please, don't
introduce me to random men that I don't want to meet.
I'm sure you can, you know, find the exact dialogue
in your head, but basically, don't introduce me to random
divorced men or unmarried men who you find available for
me that are substandard. Please don't. And then what's the
first thing her mom does, but do here's divorce man.
I mean to have a new colin first, So I
guess you could do worse. But reindeer sweater intense.
Speaker 1: That's whatter is intense. And the fact that Bridget continues
to not respond right, like she's not responding to any
of these things happening. She's not looking at her mom
and saying, what the fuck she's not She's just going
along with the things that are happening to her because
at least she'll get a boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Or someone will talk to her. She won't be lonely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I would, even as we're talking about it,
I would even go farther to say, not only does
she not know who she is, I think actually she
thinks she knows who she is, and who she is
isn't likable. The only que I really wrote down from
the whole movie is her saying to Mark, I think
I already feel like an idiot most of the time,
Like the things that she focuses on, like the way
that she looks, and we see her when she's getting
ready for that event in the beginning, and she's trying
to like teach herself about world politics, she ture to
make herself interesting. I think it goes farther than I
don't know who I am. I think it goes more
into like, I know whatever is in me is not good,
not good enough. I'm too fat, which is crazy by
today's standards, so crazy. I'm too fat, I'm too stupid,
I'm kind of nothing, and she has to like build
herself because what is there is kind of flufy. Even
though like she does have a personality like you see
it with her friends. She has like a voice, she
likes to do those things with her but that's not
good enough. That's not enough to build a personality around.
And I would say, if you don't like yourself, or
if you think that yourself is bad, then you are
open to anyone telling you who you are, because it's
got to be better than who you think you are already.
So I would say even those moments like with her
mom and with the other people we see in the movie,
I bet you that's a part of it. It's like, fine,
how I dress is probably shit anyway, might as well
wear what you wear, what you told me to wear.
And so it's not even that I have nothing to
back off to, like challenge what you're saying. But you're
probably right, is also what she's probably thinking. And then
because she feels so bad about herself or so like
her sense of self is so negative, then it shows
up in the way that she acts right, Like it's
corny to say be yourself, but there's true to that.
Speaker 3: Like the more inauthentic.
Speaker 1: You are the weirder you can come off socially. I
know I've been in this situation when I first started
going to therapy. I remember told my therapists, I don't
even know how to like sit and be just sitting
relaxed in public, because I'm so self conscious of how
I look. And what really probably was happening is I
was so self conscious that I was sitting weird, not
because there's something wrong with me, and I'd find the
right way to sit to be not looking stupid. It
was me being in my head. And so I think,
then you see that with Bridget where then she has
all these awkward social interactions because she's so insecure, and
then that unfortunately proves to herself. See, I am a
fucking idiot, I'm a piece of shit. All I had
to do was introduce my boss at work, and I
fucked it up royally like she. I mean, I think
you could argue that she's because she's so insecure, like she's.
I wonder how much of this is like anxiety too,
Like she's so in her head that it makes her
act awkwardly, which then perpetuates her ideas about herself, which
then just feeds the beast.
Speaker 2: Well, it's clear it's a nifty or they have a
you know, the nifty little trick in the film to
let her play through the ridiculous way. She's going to
say something and then not say that, but a few
times she like, don't say the thing, and then ends
up saying the thing, which is a clear hallmark of
either ADHD or anxiety, sometimes both, But that, don't do
the thing, don't do that, don't be embarrassing, don't be embarrassing.
Everyone's looking at you, so don't be embarrassing. And then
because she's so intensely critical of herselfoop, we forget to
shut up, which is that's that's the worst thing. Like
I think it was Beck, the founder of CBT, that
had an experiment for people behavior. Experiment was the thing
he liked to do and have people walk a banana
down a leash in the middle of New York City.
See how many people actually look at you? See how
many people actually care what you were doing. When you're
doing something ridiculous, it's not going to be many. They're
going to look at you for maybe two seconds and
then they're gonna be like, yeah, think about what you
guys do if you saw somebody walking in banana down
at least in Chicago, how long would that have your attention?
Speaker 1: Well, in a city environment, I feel like like in
New York or Chicago. I don't know if it, but
I get what you're saying, But I feel like in
chic if I got on the train and someone just
had a banana, I'd be like walking banana and be
like that's fine, exactly. Yeah. Like it'd be really easy
to just be like huh okay, Which is.
Speaker 2: The point of the experiment, the behavior experiment of realizing
the voice that you hear inside of your head follows
you everywhere. It's been the same age your whole life,
and your inner critic is way more focused on you
than anybody else's and ever will be. It's way more
invested in your performance than other people ever will be.
Public speaking, perhaps none applicable here, but it's really important
to recognize that your perspective of how much other people
think about you is always cute totally.
Speaker 1: That's one of the There's a thing I always do
to myself when I start to get paranoid or start
to get like worried that like people are watching me
or like just like something that's just kind of random,
And I'll remind myself, are you doing that right now?
Are you looking at other people's windows? Are you like, like,
are you doing the things that you think other people
are doing? Because you're definitely not right right?
Speaker 2: How much space do you have in your day to
care about what someone else is.
Speaker 4: Doing exactly exactly be able to have busy adulting things
to do? Do you care that someone's front room looks
messy from the window as you go walk outside exactly?
Speaker 1: Do you even see it? Exactly?
Speaker 2: And if you see it, do you give a shit?
Speaker 1: Exactly? Like I wouldn't care, not one fucking bet if.
Speaker 2: Somebody walk by with the banana, only she'd be like,
all right, well I'm not sitting next to that. Not
that you do you boo boo.
Speaker 1: I do wonder with the ADHD, like I think with
someone like her, if I worked with her, I think
it would maybe take a while did they get to
the ADHD possibility, Like you'd have to piece away all
this other stuff like.
Speaker 3: If she was still because she does this, I'm with
you in Matt.
Speaker 1: I did write as one of her traits on my notes,
like she's impulsive like Eve and her going no when
he announces his engagement or when his partner announces their engagement,
which that still seems fuzzy to me. I don't really
understand that whole relationship in the movie. That whole thing
just feels like he's just going along in the same
way that Bridget is going along. Well the whole movie,
I'm like, are they together or they just work together?
And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden,
they're engaged, and it's like, what the fuck is that
He's kind of like pursuing Bridget or whatever, But like
everyone in this movie doesn't need to give a shit
if they're being cheated on. But that's neither here nor there.
There's more like two thousand one or something.
Speaker 2: British culture too, of like the higher class may have
more expectations about.
Speaker 1: Oh who marries what? It's more like almost arranged and shit.
I could see that it does kind of seem that
way because the definitely woman and the parents are very
like this is a good match, yes, good breeding energy.
Speaker 2: Right, especially with his family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every party.
Speaker 2: A little different, but his family at the big fancy
party at the big fancy estate, they went to their Yale.
I mean, come on, that's very high society stuff. So
it would make sense that in the context of British
culture that there may be something there we as Americans
aren't seeing because we don't operate that way. Really, thing's
for love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point because what I was telling
Hanna before star recording is it also has this vibe
which is very old school of it doesn't matter if
your man's cheating as long as you're the one that wins,
which is you're the one that got him in the end,
aka married him, like the Laura stuff et Daniel, like,
does she not care that this other woman's clearly busting
in on her and is like what the fuck? And
it's like, well, doesn't matter if you're the one that
the guy chooses in the long run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because now she just looks foolish and she's
standing there being proper and being like.
Speaker 1: But I would be curious because she does do so
many impulsive things, like you're saying, like her inner dialogue
is so loud, she gets so distracted so easily. She's
really clumsy. Oh, now that we're saying all this stuff,
this is interesting. And then she also does a lot
of drinking to either manage her social anxiety or mask
like deal with her ADHD, and also I think just
to deal period. You know, she also lives in a
big city, which I think you're more inclined to an
extended young adulthood with like partying and drinking and stuff.
Speaker 3: But she does it to an excess.
Speaker 1: But you see in all these party scenes, she's just
like picking up a drink, picking up every time she's
having a feeling or having a fumble, she grabs a drink.
And then that continues the cycle we're talking about, where
then you're more likely to do all these embarrassing things
and to stumble. Your ADHD's not gonna get better when
you're fucked up, and I would know I have ADHD
so and so then it perpetuates this idea that she
has of herself of being like a messy, fat bitch.
And I say that word fat as someone who is
way more wait than her. But I just feel like
the way that they keep talking about her. You said
she was thin, and I'm like, this bitch is thin?
Can I get can I it? Just? And then I'm like, well, no,
wonder I was insecure because I watched this movie when
I was probably like sixteen, and I definitely didn't even
weigh as much as as little as she weighed at
her horrible fat weight in the beginning of the movie.
That number one thirty two or whatever was like burned
to my brain as a teenager because I already didn't
weigh that much, like weigh more than that, and she
was like I needed to lose twenty pounds, and I'm like, well,
I guess I'll go walk off a cliff. But I
think like all this stuff that she does to deal
with how she thinks she is just makes it all worse.
It just is layering on layering on layering. Well, yeah,
because she's doing it out of all of the reactions
that she's having are all in this really high anxiety
spot or this really scattered place. I didn't really think
she had any kind of diagnosis. But again, as we're
talking about it, like, I think ADHD probably does make sense,
especially in terms of thinking about her drinking more as
coping versus just having like a straight up like drinking
problem like that. I mean, it's the same thing. I mean,
I think it's this. It both puts her down the
same route I mean she struggles with alcohol use in general.
Speaker 2: Well, let's you don't look at a very quick search
of what how ADHD presents in women internal restlessness check,
chronic disorganization, check, emotional dysregulation, and intense mental effort to
mask symptoms. Brittany's hiding her face.
Speaker 1: And if I leave this recording identifying too much with
Bridget Jones, you're gonna have to, like, I'll take care
you girl. You're gonna have to petition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can live in my basement. It's fun, there's
plenty of space.
Speaker 1: Feels more like Bridget Jones.
Speaker 2: But I mean only until you're ready to go. Yeah,
I'm not going to track you.
Speaker 1: You can just you know, stay, I'm trapped in Ben's basement.
Speaker 3: Everyone.
Speaker 2: I'll give you a microphone. You can just talk.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's a good point, which is
something I've had to work on a therapy. Fuck of
how when you go undiagnosed with ADHD, especially as a woman,
you do think you're a fucking idiot all the time,
You really really do, thing's wrong with you? Because I
will say that dinner she fucking makes towards the end
of the movie and say if that's not ADHD in
a scene format, truly, picking blue string, that's something I
would do, Like that'll work, That is, that is something
you would do. Not to not to throw any shade,
but that is definitely something you would do. I wouldn't
make everyone fucking eat it, though, No, you would not.
I would say pizza, y'all. Oh yeah, for sure, for
sure I would not subject to you guys.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I know enough now in my life to know that
all those things she tried to make, bitch please, But
also that's very ADHD thinking that all of a sudden,
from no cooking, you can cook like a three course
meal with all these elaborate fixings. Yeah, you've never ever
made before, and you don't even have half the ingredients.
Like that is some ADHD stuff, and probably why she
feels so bad about herself. Yeah, I mean I have
so I have a couple of clients right now who
are women who are one of them is sixty and
one of them is in their fifties, and they are
both one of them got an ADHD diagnosis when they
were fifty nine. And there's a book out there called
It All Makes Sense or something like that, and it's
about being diagnosed with ADHD a lot later in life
and the amount of stories and connection that these clients
are feeling now that they finally got diagnosed and they
can finally say this is what this is. It is
not that I don't have the smarts or the patients
or whatever the fuck. It's actually that you have ADHD
that hasn't been diagnosed because, surprise, surprise, historically women are
not because our symptoms don't look exactly the same as men's.
We are not diagnosed with things as often because nobody
looks at the differences between men and women and how
it might present different, and also because we're trained societally
to ignore how we feel. Yeah, big part of why
people aren't getting diagnosed in some ways. But it's really
is the field's fault. Oh yeah, I mean like there's
they're just now I don't know the stats in front
of me, but only very recently started, you know, like
researching when they do any research about anything, including women
in that research, like so much of our medical research
is based on men, and just like conflating it to
also apply to women, and which is very whack because
I think too, Like she displays a lot of the
behaviors like her even at the end going out in
her underwear, now that we're talking about this, fucking a
like her putting on shoes until she realizes she's in
the snow and I'm like, oh, fuck, I should put
on shoes, but not pants and not really grab a jacket.
Well she put them like a little.
Speaker 2: Sweater that yeah, but yeah, no it's not enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and bare legs, which was crazy considering that's snowy
right now outside. So I was really feeling and it's
cold in my apartment, so I was really feeling how
cold that would be.
Speaker 2: And London's pretty far north.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I So when we think of adhd we
typically think when we think of a hyperactive of the
way we think about it in like little boys, which
is you're running around, you can't shut the fuck up,
you're causing problems in class, you can't concentrate, does it?
That's it, Dove. But I think she's actually a really
good representation of how all that stuff applies to women
or girls, which is impulsivity in this very different way.
And even like her behaviors with Daniel, which I know
we're about to talk about, like a lot of that
I could attribute to ADHD too, like impulsiveness around decisions
she makes with him. And also, yeah, just the risk
taking she does and the behavior that she does that
we wouldn't typically think of it, like even like going
down the poll and up the pole, the way that
she's a newscaster. She's like, hey, oh, like a lot
of things that she does. And she's probably self medicating
with cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Too, stimulants. Yep. And I think the more I think
about it, when that was what I was thinking the
whole time I was watching move like she has ADHD
is watching her. In particular, we get at their contextual
clues from the work scenes that she has trouble focusing,
that her colleagues notice outside of her boss, but other
people notice that she has trouble focusing. And from Cleveland
clinic Brittany's going to hide in her shirt again. Sorry, Brittany,
she's already. I'm sorry. I'm not targeting your promise. ADHD.
In women, inattentive subtype, symptoms can be prone to losing
or misplacing things, problems staying focused and on task easily
just dicted routinely, forgetful or absent minded hyperactivity, impulsivity subtype
frequently fidgeting, difficulty sitting still or restlessness, conversational self restraint problems,
trouble being patient, Jesus fighting your turn.
Speaker 1: Well, what I was going to say, I'm glad that
you brought that up then, because what I was going
to say is that what I noticed most with these
older women that I work with is that they mostly
present as an attentive and an attentive is so different
from hyperactive.
Speaker 2: Yep, very different. People can't have both, or they can
have combined subtype, which I think Bridget does, although she
probably bends towards hyperactive, she's not still ever.
Speaker 1: That is true. Yeah, she is moving around those parties,
which I know is part of the movie of an
all right, Like she can't just be stationary. But she's moving,
she's chatting, she's talking like she puts her foot her
mouth constantly, constantly. But again I think if it's that
ADHD experience that she's having, where like she just can't
the words can't come out of her mouth the way
that she wants them to. And also because she's so
freaked out about what she's gonna say, it's like she's
just stuck in her head all the time. Well, it's
the combination of how the ADHD then breeds anxiety and security,
which then just amplifies the whole situation. And even I
think with her also, it's a good example of the impulsivity.
That's a little more subtle is when she goes to
talk at the event, introduce her boss, and she doesn't
even think to try to make the mic work. She
just starts talking louder. It's the thing where there isn't
really that beat between what's happening and then like making
a choice about what's happening.
Speaker 3: It's just you just go.
Speaker 1: And that's the more subtle version like internal ADHD and
like yeah, like I never really got in trouble fitt
school from aving, but you bet your ass I got
in trouble a lot for talking. Check on the board
for talking, member, name on the board, check on the board,
not kids of colors, but I used to get that
name and check on the board for yapping.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, certified, yeah for what since nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: And coming to you live since nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: I'm in a fucking podcast now I'm a therapist.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, I lost my voice recently because I was sick,
and I'm just thinking my voice is my money maker.
Speaker 3: So I had to go on vocal rest for whole
week and it was crazy. I literally could not speak.
Speaker 1: It was crazy.
Speaker 2: I have had to do that before, and it's very upsetting.
My voice is a little gravety today because I had
a show on Saturday, and I've been rehearsing a lot,
and i might have to go on vocal rest and
I'm dreading it for all the reasons. You probably hated
it because I probably also got some checks by my name,
Yeah for yapping. Yeah, I am sure this surprises no one. Yeah,
asked my wife. That's what the least favorite thing that
I do is there's a fifty to fifty chance she'll
shape talk or breathe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and also, and I will say too, I
bet you based on how she shows up for those
television presenter interviews that she didn't do well in school.
No offense to Bridget, but she does not do any
prep work. She only slightly alters her answers for each
interview to kind of hit the interview, but she clearly
didn't prep that much for it, and she was only
motivated to aspire to that because of the which is
also ADHD stuff, like you only feel motivated to do
something once you have a big dopamine rush from crisis,
like the drama of the Daniel stuff is what finally
gets her to move her ass about work.
Speaker 2: Or like going to buy cigarettes before the people who
you're supposed to enter.
Speaker 3: The interview of your career and your new job.
Speaker 2: I felt that one in my soul. And then the
cameraman like, I don't know, I was doing whatever he
was doing, like he was having.
Speaker 3: A slash, which I think means peeing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think watching her, seeing all this internal
noise that she has and she just can't turn off.
She's never still, and in particular, for one of the
reasons it presents so differently for women is because women
are expected to be still and focused and polite and quiet,
and men are allowed to be brash and obnoxious and
interrupt each other and just talk louder than the next one.
And that's really not what women are supposed to do
in society, which really makes it stand out if that's
what happens in your head, and why she stands out,
all these people are being super mindful and a super quiet,
polite society high society party and she's like, oh, and
we just got engaged. No, she has this idiocy symptoms
just present all over her life, and I think they're
super obvious to when we talk about it, that it's
such a struggle for her to focus in anywhere, but
this TV environment where it's just pure chaos, so it
doesn't matter what she does in the station director clearly
is just exploiting her chaos.
Speaker 1: Well, she's lucky in that she finds a job where,
like you're saying, it works for her, which sometimes just
happens for people and they can really go through a
lot of life not dealing with whatever might be actually
going on with them because they just stumble upon a
career or find themselves in a career that works for that.
I would say the last thing I want to say
is this kind of the art conversation kind of little
sort of recontextualizes also how is thinking about In the movie,
they show her reading all these self help books, and
at first they're all men centered, and then the other
ones are also men centered, but they're about like not
being male centered, but they're all about men's still, which
I'm sure is part of the joke, and that makes
me think of how because initially I was just thinking
of it about the way we started this conversation, which
is she doesn't know who she is and so she's
looking for herself and self help books and in my opinion,
self help books are a scam. You heard it here first,
like it's an industry. It's an industry that profits off
you not getting better. And also this like one size
fits all idea, Yeah, that I figured out something that
works for.
Speaker 2: Me and making you feel like you're perpetually not good
enough so that you buy more books.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I would say before.
Speaker 1: I was in the field, like before I decided to
do any of this stuff that I do now, I
read so many self help books. I mean a lot
of people do. I read so many self help books.
And really like when her the pile of books that
she gets rid of and the pile that she adds.
I've definitely read some books like excuse me. Yeah, And
now that we're talking about this differently, I think how
I can view that, Like I still viewed it very compassionately,
like I was like a bridget when I saw them,
But now that we're thinking about it, it does make
me wonder and maybe this is also why you read
some of my self help books, and I definitely read
a decent amount well, one because we're encouraged to read.
Speaker 3: Self help books in our culture.
Speaker 1: But two, I think it's that thing of I know
something's not quite right, and I'm trying to figure out
what's wrong with me, which isn't the wrong idea, but
it's the wrong question. I mean, it's a mean question,
but it's not the wrong idea. Like you're telling you
can tell that, like something's not quite right, and so
I'm looking for the answer. But for her, the answer
might just be you have ADHD. And also, as we're
about to talk about in a little bit, a lot
of horrible messaging around you that's also intensely consistently telling
you that something's wrong with you. So if you already
have that internally going on, and then it's externally being encouraged,
of course you're going to read things like self help
books and then they don't work, and then you're like
it must be because I don't I something is still
wrong with me. And also, if you've ADHD and you're
reading self help books, you know what you're not gonna
do be consistent with whatever habits you're picking up from
these books because you're not that person. Just from me
to you, all, y'all, that's not You can't like productivity
your way out of ADHD. It's like almost impossible.
Speaker 2: It's utterly impossible. You can learn executive functioning skills and
like schedule yourself better and have things to do, but
what you cannot do is correct a chemical imbalance in
your brain without a chemical correction. Just why people with
ADHD so proactively seek stimulants and other things that feel
like medicine to get more coffee, Like, ah, coffee makes
my brain work. This should be your first clue. But
people trying to like get caught in these books and
even worse, the fucking seminars.
Speaker 1: Well, now it's like fucking pot well podcasters, apologies, podcast YouTube,
red pill, pink pill, blank pill, shit.
Speaker 2: Tony Robbinson all this I've seen. I've had clients who
have gotten hooked into this crap, and then you just
see the predatory nature of this, perpetually making people feel
not good enough, and like, yeah, just give me seven
thousand dollars so you can come to this transformative experience
that's going to change everything about your life. And then
go ahead and come back for seven thousand dollars next
month too, because you're not going to be complete just yet.
There's never an end point where you're complete, where you're done,
where you finished that. And these books create this really
bad feeling of people that they're just perpetually not good
enough and they never get the chance to settle into
a sense of self and authentically accept who they are
and find success where they can, instead of making themself
fit in a place they do not well.
Speaker 1: On that note, we'll take our first break here and
be back in a minute. All right. So it is
o Valhan's episode, so I guess at some point we
should talk about her relationships, as this is technically a
rom com. Ben, did you pick up that this is
a version of prime prejudice.
Speaker 2: Seeing that the last name was Darcy and they used
the most famous mister Darcy. I did catch that this
was a version of pride and prejudice.
Speaker 1: I never caught up before, but this time now that
watching it fully knowing, and I'm way more down the
prime prejudice rabbit hole at this point in my life
than I was when I first watched it. The scene
where he comes down and like reads her to Felf,
I was like, well, this is the propos the first
proposal scene from Prime Prejudice. Never noticed before, but at
least in this movie she gives it back to his
ass later. But anyway, so in this movie she has
two big relationships love triangle stuff, and it's the mister
Darcy of the character mister Darcy and then the mister
Wickham character Daniel Handler Cleaver. I guess makes sense symbolically
and Daniel, as I said like, if you know anything
about Prime Prejudice, the Wickham character is usually a Rake type,
a scallywag, a Philander, a liar, liar pants on fire.
Ben just handed me Prime Prejudice and Zombies, which I've read,
and I liked the movie. The movie was better than
it needed to be. If you've never seen.
Speaker 2: It, it was glorious. The Undesirables. As soon as I
read that, I was like, I'm reading this entire book tomorrow.
It made me laugh so hard. So I got more
familiar with it from that because in high school I
absolutely Cliff noticed it.
Speaker 1: So we see her in these relationships with these men,
and obviously we meet Darcy first and they have that
big flat on the face situation where he's incredibly rude
and is a complete asshole. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she hears every word and she absolutely internalized
that immediate immediately and definitely did not bring that back
up at all later.
Speaker 1: Well, because she it's all stuff that she already thinks
about herself. So it's almost like, I'm sure for her,
it's like, well, how can I be mad at someone
who's telling the truth?
Speaker 3: Which is awful? Yeah to think, and then she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's super clear. It was like, oh, look, my
internal voice now has an external voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was cool, which is why she has that
more like passive awkward response to it. When you have
someone that we've been talking about who is really insecure,
and then a guy like Daniel rolls around who has power.
He is very conventionally attractive. He he he's rich, He
like kicks a lot of he ticks a lot of
the twice. Well, yeah, of course everyone of those movie's white. Yeah,
I'm just saying, yeah, I know what you mean. He
like he has all the power points. Yeah, and then
he shows interests in you, and you are the scum
of the earth in the mind of Bridget, Like how
intoxicating would that be, which is where's where I'm going
with that? Which is, like, what is so I guess
dangerous about being in the position bridget is or anyone
is who doesn't know themselves or doesn't think well of themselves.
Is that anyone's welcome then to tell you who you
are and you're looking externally for that sense of self
or that sense of worth, and guys like him will
slip right in who they can like I don't know,
guys like him, I feel like not to like be
a man hater, but they can like well, people like
him can like smell insecurity from like a mind. We said,
sniff it out right, And if we did sniff it
out right in the beginning.
Speaker 2: They it's I call it the creep tooid's playbook. They
just they just I don't know, they all share it
like they It must be in our biology of humans
somewhere that people who are more predatory and act like
this just sniff out prey and go right for those
insecurities and go you know who's probably wild in the sack,
the little weird one over there, because she'll do anything
I want if I just make her feel good about herself.
And they follow that same playbook all over, all over
the world, and that same manipulation over and over. I'm
just gonna use you for a while like my plaything,
and then when you catch real feelings deuces.
Speaker 1: Well, and he does the thing that a lot of
people like him will do, which is they test the waters,
like I send you a little message at work, and
I see how you respond, and then I keep going
like it's the pushing, pushing, pushing to see what they
can get away with, right, which is can be, which
can be fun and flirty at first in the way
that she's interpreting it, but then it's then it quickly
becomes what can I get away with in terms of
how I treat you? And then unfortunately for someone like Bridget,
because you don't think you're worth anything, then you will
be treated anyway, especially with someone like him that I'm
sure she's like, can't believe well, she acts like that
right in the movie, like I can't believe I got him.
So part of it is like being grateful by not
having any needs, and that was also a lot of
messaging of women at that time and in time. Memarium
pretty much is like, don't have any needs, don't be
a nag, don't be clingy, don't be too much, don't
make it obvious that you want to get married or
have kids because men, which is fuo ironic about what's
happening now socially that like women aren't wanting to get married,
and now like there's all this crisis where all these
people are like, how do we get these lonely men
access to women specifically? And it's like, but didn't you
guys for the longest time be like marriage is ball
and chain. So it's like, well, maybe there was more
of an equal advantages happening that we wanted to recognize.
But in this cultural well, in this time, she's also
put in that position where you're like, you're not supposed
to be any of these needy things. And so that,
in combination with already thinking she's too much, you make
yourself small and you let men get away.
Speaker 3: With a lot of horrible stuff.
Speaker 1: You just let yourself get mistreated, and you don't think
you can be treated nicely anyway. So when a guy
like him treats you like garbage, it just confirms what
you already believe is true. And there can be a
weird not satisfaction, but it just makes sense, So you're like, yeah, okay,
that makes sense. Whereas with her, which I think we
kind of see in the second movie, maybe you'll have
to refresh my memory as the resident Bridget Jones person,
Hannah that once she's in that relationship with Mark, you
don't necessarily feel better. Actually you can still be really
anxious because you're not used to being treated well. Yeah, absolutely,
And in the and one of the things that happens
in the second film is that she thinks that Mark
is cheating on her with his partner, with his skinny, tall, skinny, tall,
beautiful young person, and Bridget thinks that they are messing around.
Come to find out at the end of the at
the end of the movie, you find out that actually
the partner was into Bridget and not into Mark at all,
but was actually interesting. In Bridget Kisses, yeah, she does.
And again, and that's another example of like Bridget just
kind of like going along or it's imagining that someone
would like her, like genuinely like her, so she would
miss any cues even though like being gay, like twenty
years ago, especially if you're a woman, was a little
less obvious, especially in this in that movie where she's
so them presenting. Yeah, absolutely, but still like it going
right over Bridget's head. Yeah, and if you're just like me,
she's so confused.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the pressure to be the cool girl, fucking cool girl, bullshit,
cool girl's hot, cool.
Speaker 1: Girls doesn't care. A cool girl doesn't gain weight. But
you can only be a cool girl if you're thin. Yep,
you know all that stuff too. You can't be a
fat girl that likes to drink beer. And like the
whole speech that the pre cool girl cruel girl speech
was was the speech that and something about Mary where
she's like, I like regular bud not dogs, And I'm like, yeah,
if this was a fact girl saying this, would it
be like, wow, Mary's so cool and hip?
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I'd be immediately like and I see why
you aren't decized too. Yeah, it would be as fun.
Speaker 3: It'd be seen as like her being a sloppy, not
her being cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: Well anyway, pretty sure. Anyway hits at that right in
gung Girl, doesn't she? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I think she does say like cool girl has to
be thin and has to be hot.
Speaker 2: She say like I ate all that crap and stayed
of decize too. Yeah, yeah, yep, yeah, and then Bridget
is just beating herself up constantly because that's may not
be possible for her, not her body type. But now
she's pushing herself to be good enough, and this jackass
smells that from a mile.
Speaker 1: Away some of the things that she doesn't see, which
again makes a lot of sense in the way that
we're talking about her and having ADHD and all these
different pieces. But like the clearly made up story about
having to work on Sunday, like she kind of clocks it,
but then she let's it go right away, and then
she comes when she comes over to the house unexpectedly,
and the girl is up in the room and she
sees the sweater like he like he is just lying, lying,
lying about everything. Like the only reason why I thought,
the only reason why she took a second look is
because she noticed the purple pearl cardigan hanging up. And
that's the only reason why she actually goes and looks
for herself.
Speaker 2: I mean, she did look for herself, she just charged in,
but she didn't look very thoroughly, and she believed his bullshit.
Speaker 1: But I also think that's a great example of our
theory about her having ADHD, is that she does something
really impulsive in her mind, Like I go over to
his house and I act crazy and I bust through
his room and then I'm wrong again like I always am.
So then I get embarrassed, and so then I'm like,
must be me being a crazy, impulsive idiot, and so
I'm sorry, I'll back down. Yeah, And it is pretty
dopful for when she says that card again she busts
back fucking in there, because I could also see her,
even with seeing that, being like like just taking it on,
like just diluting herself, yeah, out of own self protection.
But I could see like, and it's a good through
line that we've been talking about about how stuff like
ADHD things like that it can that's how pervasive it
can be. Like it can lead you into these situations
where you don't trust yourself, you don't trust your intuition,
You doubt yourself all the time because you are a flake,
you are a crazy person. You are someone who makes
rash decisions that are usually wrong. And then when stuff
when you're actually right, it's hard to trust that you're
right because statistically in your history you're so often wrong.
Speaker 2: And that feeling of shame and guilt feels just ever
so familiar. Oh look, I fucked it up again. I
did it. I screwed it up, and you apologize immediately,
and she yielded because that shame said on her like
I'm totally right, I have to go through this right now,
and she does the impulsive thing and then reels back
like you said, and that like, oh look it's just
me again, an idiot being careless and just intruding and
doing the thing. And then oh nope, impulsive protective side
shows back again, and you're like, because the adhd of
like not leaving and not stopping talking when it's clear,
like please get out of my house. I'm trying to work,
I'm lying to you, but like, please please go away.
I've gotten away with something, and she just keeps yapping,
and that's when she notices that sweater, and all of
a sudden, now brain is confused with what to do,
because now we go back from oh no, it's the
familiar shame of being wrong, and now I need to
respond to that hit of like look what I just did. Anyway,
I'm so funny. I'm gonna see you later.
Speaker 1: But then even when she's right and she catches the
girl all at his place, she says silly bridget right,
like silly stupid bridget Yeah. In that she then still
goes back to shame right of like, which is I
think the same idea of I should have known. Why
wouldn't I think this? It's the same idea of that
when aner critic, it's the inner critic. And when you
have like I have undiagnosed ADHD until later on in
life you misunderstand your ADHD stuff for like just being
an idiot, like, well, I made that mistake and then
you overdo it. Where then I because what happens to
me and what I talk to clients now about because
I now know it's undiagnosed ADHD stuff is then you actually,
ironically like gain a higher expectation of yourself, Like you
gain this idea that like everyone else figures stuff out,
but I make all these fucking mistakes. And so whenever
something happens, even like this, you can internalize it in
the sense of I should have known that he was
cheating on me. I shouldn't have believed him. Someone who
was smarter would have caught on it soon. And so
no matter where you go, like, you can't win for
like you can't win for losing. Yeah, exactly. And that
happens the next day at the office when she comes
in to give her report and she starts asking questions
about the girl, and then he's like, Oh, I want
to let you know, like we're engaged, like that super
shitty thing that people do when they think that they
should tell the first person that they broke up with
about what their next relationship is going to be, which
is happens in movies and films. All you're doing them
a fucking favor by saying it to their fucking face,
which is outrageous. Keep it to your fucking self. Nobody asked.
And I feel like, and I'm thinking even about her
relationship with Mark in terms of like she automatically when
when he leaves to go buy her a new diary,
she automatically is zooms that he's leaving because she did
something wrong, right, that's her automatic assumption, is like, that's
what's happening. So even the way that she is looking
at the relationship with Mark, who's supposed to be the
you know, the good choice in the in this whole situation,
well because he's darcy whatever. So but like in that relationship.
She's also only viewing it from I don't deserve him,
Therefore something else is going to happen. That's why in
the second film she thinks he's fucking around like it's
all this from the point of view that she's coming
from because of her ADHD, the way that it's had
an impact in her life.
Speaker 2: You think you're one hundred percent right. It's that common
feeling of you're always losing your shit, You're never on time,
you cannot, for the life of you, complete a task
without being reminded or a deadline coming up, and even worse,
when you put something in a drawer that you're like
a bill that you're totally supposed to pay, and then
you shut that drawer and it disappears. It no hunger exists.
You do not have object permanence when it is out
of line of sight. With ADHD, and you really used
to screwing stuff up and having to scramble to cover.
So it's clear she's very familiar with this part of
herself she resents and it punishes her when she sucks up.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a good example of this in
that I think for another person they would have been
able to be like, why the fuck was he reading
my diary? Like that's you know, and also I read
I wrote that stuff earlier when he was being a dick.
You know, another person could more contextualize the situation instead
of jump automatically to I'm the bad person and I
ruined it when, like I said, like, honestly, she should
be like, well, you read my diary, so you know,
it sucks to be you that you read something. You
read my internal thoughts about you that you didn't need
to know. And so that's the punishment you get for
reading my diary, for going back in my diary to
when we were beefing. All right, let's take a break
care and we'll be right back. So one thing we
wanted to make sure to talk about, which we've already
mentioned here and there, is the environmental factors influences on Bridget,
because that's a lot of what the story is about, too.
Is it's actually a really great movie. It's almost like
a period piece. It's a great period piece movie in
terms of like getting a good sense of like the
time and place of how we viewed bodies and weight,
of how we viewed singleness and marriage and women and
sexual harassment and what was okay and not okay? And
it's crazy how different it is now only like twenty
five years later, where everything in the movie is still recognizable,
like fashion wise and stuff. How different, how almost like
shocking some of the aspects of this movie are. And
so we wanted to hit upon all the influences around
Bridget that have a great deal of impact.
Speaker 3: On why she is the way she is.
Speaker 1: Even if we stripped away the ADHD theory, we've been
running with all this other stuff we see in the
movie I think could lead her down this path even
without that that definitely exacerbates it and is weaved through it.
But as we're going to talk about, there's so much
in this movie that that signals to Bridget something's wrong
with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's this overarching theme that everyone reminds her except
her friends. Her friends seem to kind of accept her
and kind of want her to feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad she has such a good group of
friends that seem to be on her pace.
Speaker 2: And for better or where dar He you know, got
her was by telling you, telling her I like you
as you are.
Speaker 1: And for that to be such a heavy hitter, I
think that says so much about the societal factors of
this movie that that's mind blowing. Yeah, for someone to
tell you they like you how you are, and her
even her friend's like like you are, like you don't
need to change, you don't need to be thinner or whatever,
and she's like no, and everyone thinks it's like, like
he's really getting what do they say, like the bar
so low that if you aim higher than it, You're like, like,
he's really benefiting from how low the bar is?
Speaker 2: Darcy, yeah, versus you know the other ass bag who
makes a game of it and like plays with her
like a cat playing with a mouse, Like he just
toys with her and toys with that. Well, we're not
supposed to, but I really like you, But I'm gonna
exchange messages you in just a little flirty way that
gets you on the slippery slope, and then we can
do things outside of work, or you must go to
dinner with me. But I'm so handsome, it's just ridiculous
how handsome I am, and you're just going to have
to come with me. Uses his power, his privilege, all
these things to manipulate his confidence, Like no, but I'm
all these things and I like you, so you should
come out with me and abandon your guard.
Speaker 1: And he's benefiting off of what is so normalized at
this time and in this movie, which is that women
are to be sexualized.
Speaker 3: Like she is sexually.
Speaker 1: Harassed at work all the time, which is very socially acceptable.
She's sexually harassed by her uncle by marriage. I think
it's like.
Speaker 3: Her uncle who's not her own family friend, not her
own family friend.
Speaker 2: Okay, worse yeah, seeing that and just go like who
pats her ass?
Speaker 1: Uncle peely like she and everyone acts like it's including her,
like it's a joke, yep, even though you can tell
it really discussed her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and really, yeah, the bunny costume scene was.
Speaker 1: Uncomfortable. But how there's all this like bad behavior from men,
like and she talks about was the named flirt tits
pervert that she can't think it was real name, like
the fact that like it's a known thing that he'll
just like stare at your tits at work.
Speaker 3: Like there's just so much socially.
Speaker 1: Acceptable sexual harassment everywhere she goes. He also can't even
remember her fucking name. Oh yeah, cop calling her Brenda.
So like there's all this like dehumanizing sexual stuff happening
to her, and it's all played for laughs, right, It's
played for laughs and jokes. And I get that in
the movie, Like I'm not I'm not harping on the
movie for having this in that because that was just
how things were at that time, Like it's all he
ha ha. And I do think I can give them
a big credit though, that they do show how much
with the exception of Daniel, because that's someone she wants.
She isn't liking it. It's making her feel bad about herself,
like it's it's not she's pretending that she doesn't mind,
and all the women around her a pretending like they
don't mind, but they do.
Speaker 2: They make comments there when it's clearly like comedy lens
off reality lens on the uncle's wife, it calls her
out on that shit when she's wearing the bunny costume
at the party, all of it. As the movie starts
to change tone a little bit, and it's clear like
she's getting a leg up in the world and she's
getting more confident and sure, the other characters are juxtapositioned
into that, seeming to voice that, like the uncle's wife
going what the fuck and then the friends are toasting
her on her birthday as she is. There's a lot
of things that we start to see as the movie
changes to, like the last third where Bridget's skating confidence
and it's starting to be reflected by other people in
her life that she's not just the laughing stock of
Britain whose ass was shown on national TV on accident
by a boss who the first thing he told her
was nobody gets fired around here for sleeping their boss,
just just letting you know, which made me good. But
that was the last one that was tolerated. Yeah, the
others were all checked after that.
Speaker 1: And I think in the same vein is the theme
we see in this movie that you as a woman
is only as good as if you're able to catch
a man. And even even the woman whose name I
can't even think of, I'm sure she had a name
in the movie, Mark Darcy's partner slash fiance, Natasha Natasha, Yeah,
even she there's that scene where she's walking and she's
kind of walking away from Mark and she kind of
whispers to another woman like what does she say? She's like,
I'm working on give me time, Give me time. This
idea that even a woman like her that has so
much clout and like personal power is still like really
wrapped up in like tricking a man almost to be
with her, Like there's all the women in this movie
are so centered around men and like getting a husband
specific or getting a boyfriend, and even how excited she
is to possibly bring a boyfriend to a family get together,
to that Tartan Vicker's party, which actually is a pretty
funny theme, but even that, like how excited she is
to bring a boyfriend around, and just how she is
treated and a lot of the women in the movie
are treated like they're incomplete until they get the prize
of a man, and so then what does it do
for someone like Bridget, Like you are incomplete?
Speaker 3: And that's how she poisons herself in the beginning of
the movie.
Speaker 1: It's like I'm I'm broken until I can find someone.
Speaker 2: Which unfortunately is a common trope in rom coms in general,
and this pretty much follows it to a tea because
also it's not really until she catches the attention of
good old mister Darcy that we actually see the other
characters do the thing I was just talking about. It's
not until after he tells her she's good enough.
Speaker 3: A man tells her she's good enough.
Speaker 2: A man and tells her she's good enough.
Speaker 1: That's a good catch, Ben, that's a good catch. It
wasn't like her friends. It wasn't her friends, it wasn't herself.
It wasn't a character changing moment. Now, granted she did
like getting into television and telling Daniel to fuck off
was a her move. Darcy didn't have shit to do
with that. That was all her So we give her
credit there in the film, but it only lets that
sit for a second because after she did that, then
she gets accepted by a man, so then she's really
good enough, which, damn it almost Maybe that's why there
isn't as many like Wrong Comes nowadays, because it's kind
of like Frozen. He did that kind of switch where
it's not really about getting it the guy.
Speaker 2: It definitely changed the tropes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if they made this movie nowadays, I
wonder if the real, like actual turn of the story
would be when she like gets rid of the books
and she gets the job, but it wouldn't necessarily be
about finding another guy. Maybe it would be like they
find each other like way after the fact. But I
think nowadays the story would be she finds herself fully
and then which they kind of almost do hear, But
it's the time, I would say. A good example, a
good example of what that movie would look like is
How to Be Single, Oh okay, where she really learns
how to who she is and she learns more about
who she is and it's not about she doesn't end
up with someone at the end of the film. It's
about her figuring out who she is and less about
being valuable because she's connected to them. Man, yeah and yeah.
So it's interesting to watch it now. It made me
feel really grateful that I am who I am now
and not at this time period this movie took place
in which I could have been. I mean, it's not
that long ago, even where like she's going to the
couple's dinner and everyone is so fucking nasty.
Speaker 3: That is nasty, fucking work.
Speaker 1: The way that everyone looks at her and talks to
her with that fucking guy with that curly ass hair.
Now I'm just ranting when he was like bridgid ugh,
like that is such like brantisocial behavior. Why why are
there so many thirty some women I see them at
the office They have this whole little speech about how
why are there so many thirty thirty somethings who can't
find a man? It's basically what they said, and they
want her to answer that question. Yeah, unfucking believable. And
I remember being I in a lot of ways, I
was Bridget like I was. I drank well into my
life thirties, it actually got worse in my thirties and
had a lot of impulsive decisions that I would make
a lot of different So like when I saw this movie,
I really felt like, oh wow, okay, so like this
is what happens like it felt that much like I
felt that connected to the character at the time because
I was very much did not have a sense of
self very much in the same way that Bridget does.
And I think I remember that period of time when
that I mean when I was at a point where
I was old enough to be in relationships and stuff
where it only mattered that you had someone That's the
only thing that people get gave a shit about. And
they also only cared about if you're going to have kids,
Like those were the only things that people cared about
at that time. And being in these situations and so
also knowing that like Bridget is in this place where
women aren't given value or and also are not humanized
as people, and being in this constant experience of sexual harassment,
like all the time that was always happening, it was
always like this funny joke. And being in this kind
of experience, it's really hard to imagine or have time
and energy to think about who you are because the
way that society and her family, the way that her
family treats her introducing her to anyone, like the pressure
that they put on her to have a relationship, like
she's getting it from all sides, and then we have
this piece of her weight and how and like that
shit is bananas. It was exactly like that though, where
that's all that you worried about was how much you
weighed and what you look like and how attractive you
were to exactly God, exactly. So like it makes a
lot of sense that her experiences are what they are
because of the way culture and society and family we're
treating her. We're treating all women at this time. I mean,
one thing is clear in all those situations, when she's
at that dinner, when she's at her families for all
those family event things. No one's ever asking her, what
are you up to? What do you like? What's a hobby?
What are you reading? Everyone is just like, who are
you dating? And do you want to meet this guy?
It's like, so she's also not being encouraged by anyone
in these social settings too, that there's any value or
interest in what she likes, and it has also encouraged
her to develop those things, like she doesn't really have
to worry about having hobbies if no one's ever going
to ask her, who cares? You know?
Speaker 2: All right? I find myself as you guys are talking
about this, running a movie in my head of this
taking place nowadays like you were talking about, but also
the other one going in my head that just keeps
pop vump is intimacy versus what in the Ericsonian stages,
intimacy versus what, intimacy versus isolation.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's correct.
Speaker 2: Is the name of the stage and the central conflict
of that one, which usually is between like eighteen and
twenty six or something. But granted that was made in
the seventies, so a long time ago our sixties even possibly,
But I think it needs some updated language because it
doesn't necessarily reflect the modern world where it may be
common to see a thirty year old woman being quite
successful with lots of hobbies, having her friends around doing things,
and she didn't find someone to be with because some
of the options are trashbacks.
Speaker 1: Abysmal, absolutely fucking abysmal.
Speaker 2: And aren't worth her fucking time. And that instead of
looking at with shame, is encourage of like, girl, make
sure the man you give up, this life you built
for yourself if you want to, is worth it.
Speaker 1: And I think what's also a shame is that when
you think about the idea of intimacy, she has three
close friends that she sees all the time. Like to
have such a good core friend group in your thirties
especially then is so important and also not that easy
for a lot of people. And I think nowadays what's
different is there's more value on feeding into relationships that
genuinely feel like intimate and fulfilling, and that includes friendships,
and so a lot of people now, a lot of
women are finding what she actually already has, which is like,
I'm already getting all of my intimacy needs met emotionally
from my friends, and that feels valuable now and it's
treated by society is more valuable, and so then you
don't put up with bullshit from guys because you're getting
those needs met and unfor I mean, do her and
her friends talk about guys a lot. Yeah, but that's
also a product of the time. But still, like they're
out doing stuff. It's not like they're just sitting around
like a bunch of old maids, you know, like they're
out there having fun. They're getting into trouble. Did they
want to take her they want to take her to
Paris because she's having a bad time, Like she has
friends that care about her and they like her, and
like you were saying, Ben, I think where this movie
still stuck in time is that wasn't good enough. I
think nowadays that maybe would be how the movie goes. Yeah,
is that like she more appreciative of the life that's
already around her.
Speaker 2: And I think, quite frankly, it's starting to see some
shift because guys would typically be the ones still out
doing all the shit and that being seen as normal,
and I'm seeing that change. We're at least those of
us who are married in particular, looking at other guys
who are doing that shit and kind of being like,
you're still doing that really like grow up. It's kind
of what goes amongst the culture of other men to men,
and it's it seems like it's almost a polar reversal,
and that's interesting that times have changed so much. But
also when we see guys out there acting like trash
asses like that, a lot of us judge that pretty
fucking hard on each other, like fuck are you doing?
Grow up? Stop this shit, like you're just you're on
these apps. Come on, man, why you get bugs on
your nuts? And like what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's because well, this is kind of
like the stereotype, but I think there's truth to it
where when women go hang out or like queer people
are like fimp send people that it's or like we're
going out to do something together, like where it's like
more activity oriented and like spending time together, Whereas I
think the perception of when men go out, especially when
they go out later in age, is there like on
the prow and they're around like younger people.
Speaker 2: Some environments certainly okay, but a lot of times when
guys are hanging out together as a group, it's very
much doing things that we want to do with other
dudes and won't get judged for like play video games
and like do ridiculous things and wrestle each other and
other stupid shit.
Speaker 1: Like make fun of see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely the opposite of that. But the things we
do not want people who may view us as sexy
to ever see us do.
Speaker 3: Party to other's faces.
Speaker 2: We're having a Mario Kart tournament when we're forty. Yeah, Like,
don't judge me.
Speaker 3: Well, because I wouldn't because I wouldn't think poorly.
Speaker 1: Actually, I would be happy if I saw a bunch
of men like guy friends at like a pottery class
or like out doing anything together, like doing a hobby
as a group. And I think that's a lot of
what women do, is they go out as a group
to have fun together.
Speaker 3: And so like golf is yeah, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like, I so it sounds like when you're talking about
it's more like when guys go out to like party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean guys going out to party tell.
Speaker 1: A different vibe to it than if guys just having
a hobby with their friends as a group.
Speaker 2: Right, guy and guy, we get together and do stuff
all the time. It's most of what we do. But
there are you know, pockets of guys who are still
out there doing like the club scene, like douchebag shit,
and that's that's a very different thing than like guys
in a group getting together to hang out, and it's
I assume it's pretty similar of like people splitting off
and not you know, nobody here is viewing me as
a sexual object, so we don't have to front. We
can all just do whatever if we like. That's kind
of the same energy you're talking about it, like we're
going out to do a thing. We're gonna go read
witchy books. Like that's nobody hears doing this is a
sexual activity. This is we just like it and deal
with it the same stuff, you know. It just it's
remarkable how I think it's switching a little bit where
people are like looking at women who are like now
I'm not dealing with that shit, and people going like, yeah,
that makes sense why they.
Speaker 1: Have a lot of time to make up for you know,
that's fair.
Speaker 2: But I think it's interesting that like other guys are
looking at guys going like, you know, you're being the
guy that she's talking about when she says she's not
dating something, because you're like that, that's.
Speaker 1: Why get your friend you know what I mean, get
your front place place doc.
Speaker 2: That's why the are we dating the same guy exists?
You know.
Speaker 1: I've heard of those.
Speaker 2: One of my friends ended up on it and I
laughed for.
Speaker 1: Days because there's like one for every big city right
Facebook group basically or read it or whatever.
Speaker 2: I've had clients come back and see me because somebody
that they were involved in and like, just like you
sitting hear the story and like they're all hugrand It's
it's always the same shit. It's this. It's the cryptoid's playbook.
It's the manipulation, the lying, the constant line, the big lie,
just all of it. It's fucking shaggy. Wasn't me. I
haven't caught it on camera. Wasn't me. That's what it is.
It's like also a period of that time now people
like yet, no, dude, what the fuck stop it. That's
why women aren't sleeping with any euo it because you
act like this stop yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think it's like the difference between engaging in
your child self and like going and having fun and
going out, like dancing and having fun and like vibing
versus like Peter Pan syndrome, which is like, I don't
want to grow up. I don't want to be held accountable.
I don't want to be held accountable as an adult.
I just want to act like a teenager. I die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's the thing that gets the judgment from
groups of men to other men, particularly married men, because
we want everyone else to grow up, and like, can
can we be friends so you can be acceptable in
mixed company, and some people like nah, Like all right,
well then I can't hang out with you because you're
not acceptable to bring to dinner. I'm sorry, likely you know,
and it's it's just it's an interesting shift.
Speaker 1: Let's take a break care when we right back to
talk about bridgets parents. So the one thing we can't
be remiss to talk about as an influence on Bridget
is her parents, both her mom and her dad a
little bit before her mom. I hate to say it,
but I think watching the movie this time as a
much older person, so I probably haven't seen this movie
in like fifteen twenty years, So watching it now as
an adult and as a therapist, I was like, ooh,
her mom and her relationship with her mom is tough.
It's tough. And I know we've talked about her mom
as part of the bigger thing, like her mom, criticizing
how she dresses, her mom, introducing her to guys. But
there is like specifics about her mom and her relationship
to her mom and her parents relationship to each other
that I think is important for us to name in
regards to why Bridget is the way she is and
why she feels the way she does about relationships. You're
absolutely right about her mom, like I feel like the
relationship is really rough. I also feel like I'm also
glad when Bridget like hangs up on her. Yeah, that
was like tries to set a boundary or whatever. But
I think the other thing that I'm thinking about is
the engagement of her parents, right, Like her dad seems
pretty passive, oh yeah, and just go goes along. I
mean clearly, like he's just going along even though he's
watching her. He's watched her cheat on him basically and
like real time, and like real time like on TV,
everyone else sees it, and he talks about everybody else,
but their friends have had them around for dinner, like
it's all they just forgot about him, and they just
forgot about him. So I feel like some of Bridget's
lack of engagement is because that's how her dad is
in some ways, and how her dad and her mom
relate to each other. The dynamic between the three of
them sounds like Bridget and dad gang up on mom,
and it sounds like they gang up on her and
just kind of talk about her like she's a silly person.
So another but also another reinforcement for Bridget of how
silly and stupid and dumb women are. Well, isn't there
that it's just reinforcing it, isn't there that quote about
like the daughter aligns with the father to make fun
of the mother, not realizing that eventually she'll be the
mother or something like that. There's like a quote about
how you will align with your dad to make fun
of your silly ass mom, not realizing that like what
you're doing to yourself and also what you're graduating exactly.
And I could see that too, because since her dad
is the more passive one, he is more like I
don't want to say the word pathetic because that's the
word that's coming up, but he he is more help,
more health he's just passive, like she has to go
and take care of him, like she's to take care
of both her parents, but in very different ways. And
so with her dad, because he's so passive, he's the
one that stuff's happening too, and so I think he's
he's easier to have empathy for, sympathy for or that
he needs help, right, And so she goes to him
to clean up his house, she spends Christmas with him,
like she's taking sides with her dad. And I'm sure
part of that is her anger towards her mom and
because of their relationship absolute and unfortunately how she's probably
dealing with that or rationalizing that or whatever is by
siding with her dad, right because her mom. I get
why she feels the way she feels about her mom,
Like she is every right that's its own separate thing.
She's every right to feel a lot of feelings about
her mom that's well deserved by her mom. And I
think it all gets clumped together. Also bridges an only child, right, No,
she has a brother. She's a brother. Yeah, what the
fuck is he at? Yep? According to what in the books,
But in the movies, I think they do talk about
the brother. In one of the movies, readers write in
and tell us listen, I know I've seen I've watched
when I watched these movies, I watch all the movies. Though, No,
in the movies they have a discussion about a brother. Really, yes,
Hannah's telling us Ben was had just go take a break,
and now it Ben's back with us and Hannah just
told us that she is a brother. Bridget what because
I was just saying that was what I was gonna go,
But you blew up My point? Sorry? Is that is that?
Speaker 3: I think also this happens with only children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a relationship, is that they get adultified because
there's not there's less separation. I think organically of like
the kids are over here and the parents are over here,
like the adults out number the kid. Yeah, And so
I think sometimes organically the kid and not even from
a fault of the parents. Like I think we've talked
about only kids before, how the parent can just the
kid can just become a little bit more involved in
adult business and whatever, and not maybe as sheltered as
multiple children are. So I think like the stuff that
we see Bridget go through, I think can happen where
she's a bit more involved in her parents's life.
Speaker 3: But like we were saying, like her, that's so passive.
Speaker 1: But I think also what I was thinking when you're
saying that, is how that models for her that you
can be treated like fucking garbage. And even though they
kind of like frame it as a sweet thing that
her dad so easily takes her mom back, in the
context of like Bridget and what she's observing, I'm like,
e ish, Like she's thirty two, so that's different. But
if she was like sixteen and saw that, like what
that informs for her in terms of how you are
supposed to be treated, what you are supposed to accept
from a partner, that you can be humiliated and that's
okay because you don't deserve that person anyway. Like her
dad's whole vibe is I can't do better than you, so,
which is what he says, right Like when he takes
her back, he says he doesn't know that his life
doesn't work without her. That's what he says. Okay, So
that's that's different. I see, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he makes her sweat it for a second, but
then he just like immediately caves tells her I'm joking,
of course, my life doesn't work without you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And at least bridgencies that in the point in
the story when she's a lot more self actualized, because
that's it just makes a lot of more things make
sense in terms of what Bridget accepts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the moment we see Bridget form a
spine is one we don't see from her dad. He
starts to kind of get used to the idea of
being humiliated, but he just shrinks from it, whereas Fridget
kind of says nah and really publicly breaks up with
Daniel and then flames him in front of the entire office,
to the point that the other person, who can't actually
fire her because he thinks as a boss, says, even
if she doesn't quit, I'll fire her right now for
losing her nerve for whatever. But you see, I think
that is a moment where we start to see that
growth in her where she's trying to not be them,
but it's quite clear that her mom is just reverting
and having a midlife crisis.
Speaker 1: I feel like that just reinforces everything for Bridget in
a way that's so unhelpful, and the fact that they
just don't have any they just don't have any awareness
about it. And I feel like something that I talk
to clients about all the time. Is that when you
see a relationship one way for such a long time,
it's really hard to go out and have a different
kind of relationship. Yes, it's absolutely possible. That's absolutely something
that can happen. And it's going to take some work
to undo some of the things that you learned in
your family that were acceptable that are really are not
acceptable things. And so that's something that I have to
talk to couples about because if we talk a lot
about their families growing up, we talk a lot about
what did you see? Did you see affection? Did you
see kindness? Did you see flexibility? Like, did you see
any of these things? And if you haven't, it makes
sense that it's hard to have that for yourself in
your relationship. It it takes work, and it takes learning
more about yourself in order to I feel like, in
some ways have a more informed approach to how you
want to connect with someone else. And I wonder if
actually what works in Bridget's favor with what you were saying, Ben,
is that she's still single into her thirties, Whereas I
think what can be hard for I'm going to make
some assumptions about her parents, but like assuming they got
together when people would normally get together, which is like
the early twenties. If not younger, you don't know who
you are, like during those pivotal times in your late teens,
early twenties through to your thirties. Actually when you can
be going out in the world and figuring out who
you are as an individual, you get to know yourself
as an adult as a unit. And so I think
then what happens with her parents is that they go
through that sort of late teens, early twenties stage. So
that's what a mid life crisis is, right, You go
through that stage when you're a lot older. So it's
very awkward to watch because it doesn't match. The behavior
and the age don't match. The age you are don't match.
And so the things that she's doing are things that
you should do when you're younger, which is what kind
of bridge it's doing, right, Like date idiots, make chances,
like take chances, date the dude with the bad tan
who's a little too much, you know, act a little impulsive,
and YadA YadA, And her mom is doing is trying
to figure out who she is by doing that. And
then her dad also doesn't know who he is so
he just falls apart when he's by himself. And so
Bridget has two parents that also don't know who they are.
And her mom gives that speech to her about like
you don't like about how life sucks basically and if
she could go back in time, she wouldn't have kids
to Bridges as faith, which is crazy and I love
that they look like what yeah, and how Bridget just
rolls with it, which makes me assume that her mom
says shit like that to Bridget all the time. Like, well,
the way her mom calls her throughout the movie and
is like wants to talk about her sex life with
her dad, wants to talk about her sex life with
her new boyfriend, like really really pleads almost for Bridget
to be her friend and not her daughter. Yeah, which
means that her mom must have no friends, but she
can talk to you. And though she has all those
people that she's around and that she goes to things with,
but the fact that she her first it seems like
her first person to talk to when she's an emotional
crisis is her adult daughter about her relationship with her
dad is so inappropriate and so fucked for Bridget because
and this is something I think I might talk about
in treatment and people can come up with their hate.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: Is why even when you're both adults, like the child
and the parent are both adults, there should still be
some boundaries in terms of what is friendly parent parental
relationship versus friends and her mom. For whatever reason, probably
all of Bridget's life is like treating Bridget like a friend,
not even like a like John, teating her well as
a friend even but relying on her emotionally and crossing
out of boundaries, and so that it makes sense why
Bridget gets pulled in by someone like Daniel, because this
is what she knows, like no boundaries, emotional craziness, being
too emotional, saying I think I love you? Do you
love me? Maybe want to die inside? When that's scene
in bed, I was like, Bridget, don't it so soon?
It's just so soon? And also do you love me?
Like oh yeah, and and then being like take it
back the next day.
Speaker 2: That was the one that made my stomach.
Speaker 1: You're like, come on, girl, you're thirty two, you're not
twenty three. Yeah girl, yeah.
Speaker 2: Girl, You're feeling you were getting into him and feeling it.
Don't don't do that to yourself.
Speaker 1: But just like how emotionally all over the place she is,
Like her parents are emotionally over the place, Like her
parents are a mess. They don't try to protect her
from how emotionally messy they are. They throw it all,
they barf all over her in different ways. And so
I just wanted to like name that is like a
big influence on why she's the way she is too,
and that she kind of had uphill battle coming from
those parents to get to being a more self actualized, confident,
boundaried person.
Speaker 2: She sure did anything else on that topic before we
take the next break. Let's take a break and then
move into treatment Sole Treatment, our first treatment of season nine,
doing the individual side of things. Usually, I'm gonna go
ahead and take Bridget. Bridget is actually quite similar to
clients that I tend to attract, particularly at NOPE Everywhere.
Some of my colleagues jokingly call me a divorce whisperer
because I tend to attract people in this kind of spot.
But I think working with working with Bridget, I think
I would really want to work on identifying a sense
of self for her and helping her figure out who
she wants to be. Independent of who other people want
her to be. But I think she'd be a person
kind of like we've been alluding to. I would be
wanting to challenge with kind of some existential humanistic techniques
of figuring out what makes you feel like you, what
makes you feel good enough as you are. It's the
whole thing, that's the most humanistic thing that there could be.
What makes you feel good enough as you are? How
do you rise to be the best version of who
you can be, not who other people say you should be?
The very very different line, and I think we really
see a humanistic lens, which is not a theory. We've
talked about a whole lot, but we see a humanistic
lens to this movie. Bridget finds success when she stops
trying to sit at an office in a desk doing repetitive,
boring shit and pr and responding to stuff. She's out
being chaotic, and that's where she gets success because she
can just naturally be endearing and kind of be representative
of what people may want to hear a perspective from anyway,
because it's like having your goofy friend at the bar
who's like life is bananas, and you just go aga,
let's go on an adventure. That's a great job for
a newscaster to have because the impulse to just ask
the question, just say the thing, versus the lawyer who's like, no,
you never say the right things. You say the wrong
thing always perfect for that kind of news channel that
she's on. You never get ratings in your life if
you were the stuffy newscaster goes the research is that
we should only do a brop up, blrop up.
Speaker 1: Lah.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what happened. No, she allows herself to
find a chaotic job with equally chaotic people to work with,
who see her, who understand her. And I think helping
as a therapist is supporting. How does that work for you?
How does that allow you to find the best version
of you that exists? And how are you finding that successful?
How is that becoming a tool a cudgel for you
can beat the world into submission, be yourself. And I
think helping her encourage her to find that, to see that,
to be able to tell that in her critic voice,
to shut the fuck up every so often, that I'm
actually doing this and it's working for me. Anybody who's
ever in front of a camera has to learn to
do that. Anybody who performs and gets paid for it
has to learn that they will always be some opinion
for why you're not good enough, and it'll be yours first,
but you have to squelch out the other ones. And
I think for her that individuation away from her family
and differentiation becoming herself, separating out from everybody else's idea
of her and locking into this is what feels like
me and I'm okay with that. That's the support I
would want to give her. And rather than work on
all the reasons why I's wrong and all the times
her parents heard her and her mom telling her gay,
I just kind of wish you hadn't been BORNO. It's
clear that there's going to be some traumatic moments in
her life from all of this, But I think encouraging
her to find her is really the most critical, and
maybe not even encouraging her reinforcing because she's doing it.
I don't want that to be a thing that the
therapist ends up taking credit for. It's the reinforcement of
what she's doing for herself when she's free that I'd
want to highlight and maybe just maybe mention it is
okay to seek medication evaluation if you'd like to. If
this is working for you, it's okay, cool if. But
if you have ADHD and you're tired of like losing
your glasses and your wallet and your keys and putting
blue yarn, that turns your culinary disaster into an even
bigger disaster. You know there are ways we can work
with that. But I think, more than anything else, helping
her embrace who she is as she is is exactly
what I'd want to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to jump off from what you said there
because what you said earlier about how like individuating from
her family is. I think that something that could happen
with Bridget is as she gets more comfortable with herself
and therefore usually gets more boundaried than in situations that
it probably is going to strain her relationship with her mom,
probably more than her dad, definitely with her mom, And
so I was thinking about if I did family therapy
the two of them, if the mom can handle it.
I think a big, big component of how prognostically positive
the work together would be is if the mom could
take it. And I think a lot of the work
I'd want to do with the two of them is
re establishing what an actual healthy relationship between the two
of them would look like. I think in situations like
this it can be really hard. Like where I can
have hold like space for her mom is that I
can give her the benefit of doubt and that she
probably doesn't understand how messy her relationship is with Bridget.
And also because Bridge is thirty two, you know, like
it would be an easier conversation to understand if Bridget
was like sixteen, where I'm like, she is a kid,
you are the adult like boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, But I
think it gets slippery when adult children are our adults.
Because you can be friends with your parents. Some people
say that their parents are their best friends. What I
do always give my mom credit for is that she
was very vocal growing up that she is not my
friend because she has friends and I have friends and
I only have one mother, and so I really appreciate
that on my mom, and I think that helped me
get the sense of self because I was doing my
own thing, she was doing her own thing. I think
with someone like Bridget's mom, I think she's going to
have a hard time understanding Bridget's boundaries as not just estrangement, punishment, loneliness,
And so I think if her mom could handle it
and maintain a family therapy, I think would be a
lot of reframing what boundaries are, that they're not a
negative that you are going to feel the difference in
the relationship because a difference is happening and that's not
necessarily a bad thing. And also it would be a
lot of encouraging her mom to, like we've been talking
about bridget get her own sense of self.
Speaker 3: Where are your friends?
Speaker 1: But you sometimes with people like her mom, you really
have to spell out, like what is a conversation you
can have with your daughter versus a conversation you can
have with a friend, And with someone like her mom,
you might have to walk her through that, and you
might have to have a lot of situations where they
come into therapy and they're like this happened, and me,
as the therapist, kind of has to like ABC one,
two three, walk both of them through, potentially but definitely
the mom through, like Okay, so what happened? What boundary
got crossed? How can we how can we set boundaries
in the moment? Like is there a word we want
to use with each other of like hey, red, hey stop, hey,
you crossed it? And then can we tolerate boundaries when
they're set? And the only way she can tolerate those
boundaries off she's getting her needs met in another way.
And hopefully maybe this stuff with the affair and that
guy at like the home Shopping network and whatever, maybe
that it seems like she had a little bit of
an epiphany. Maybe with that, I don't know, I'd have
to see where she goes from there, but that I
could see also that could be a pushing factor that
might allow her mom to be a little bit more
open and flexible to the stuff that we'd have to
do in family therapy, which is just a lot of
supporting them having conversations and just kind of being there
as a coach almost where you jump in and you're like,
what are you hearing Bridget say? Bridget? What are you
hearing your mom say? What's okay? And what's not okay
in this relationship? But you really have to redraw the
boundary lines and maybe process stuff like this is also
where you would do maybe repair work as well, which
you can find a lot of repair work exercises online,
but that can be this is what you did, this
is how it made me feel, this is the story
I told myself about it, and this is what I
need moving forward. And Bridget might need repair like that
from her mom, and then it's if her mom can
A lot of that work too, is if you can
sit there and take it when you're being told these
things by the hurt party, that's sometimes all you need
to do to get to the other side of healing
this relationship. It's really just tolerating, tolerating getting this feedback,
and then just being down for whatever they're asking you
to do instead. And so I could see with Bridget
wanting to still have a relationship with her parents, but
just needing it to be different, because she does seem
like she wants to be around her parents. She spends
a lot of time with her parents, and I would
hope that her mom could tolerate that because I think
what also happens a lot, well can happen a lot,
is the one person changes the dynamics and the other
person can't tolerate it unless it's on their terms, and
then they don't they can't have any relationship, kind of
like we've talked about, like therapists don't actually recommend no
contact the way that we get blamed for it on
social media. It's a nuclear option, Like I only say
that it's to clients if they're really it's the last
last thing I'd ever bring up, And usually it's clients
that bring it up, and then I'm like, are you
sure you want to do that? Why do you want
to do that? And I think Bridget's kind of an
interesting example of where it doesn't have to be the way,
but it could in that if her mom can tolerate
these adjustments, then they can have a relationship that maybe
feels really good for both of them. But her mom
would have to take responsibility for what she's losing by
changing those dynamics with Bridget, and she would probably need
a lot of psychoed from someone like me, who hopefully
she'll respect to be an authority on what we're talking about.
Because also I think what's hard is if Bridget tries
to handle that herself, would her mom take her seriously?
So I think they would really benefit from family therapy,
and I think the mom could really use, like I said,
like an expert, unbiased party to kind of say the
things that maybe Bridget wants to say, but her mom
might not listen to it. That's a lot of times
why people go to family therapy too, is they just
need someone who's not involved to say the things so
that it will be heard without projecting bias onto it.
Speaker 3: So that's what I would do.
Speaker 1: What about for you, Hannah, Since both of you already
talked about bridget I figured that I would just talk
about journaling as like a coping skill in general. So
when I talk to people about journaling, what I really
the thing that I really point out is that making
sure we need to have different ways to get thoughts
and ideas and feelings out of our body and out
of our system, and sometimes a kind of easy way
to do that can be journaling, whether it's and journaling
can be anything you want it to be. I feel
like a lot of times when I bring up journaling
with clients, they'll be like, oh, like, but I don't
know what I would write or I don't know what
I would say it. I'm like, you can write a
list of words, you can draw a picture like, it
doesn't matter. The point is is that you are getting
your thoughts and feelings out in some way that can
help you process it. And so journaling. So like, I
journal what I'm supposed to be journaling every day. Oh
I'm not doing it every day but a lot, but
I do it a lot so And a part of
the reason why I do that is because I can
feel the physical relief of getting out the thoughts that
I'm just holding onto that are just circling in my
mind constantly. Right, Like, I feel like we put so
much pressure on ourselves to keep all of our thoughts
inside and to keep everything like spinning all the you know,
all the plates spinning at the same time, and sometimes
we just need to knock those fucking plates down and
leave them where they lie. Sometimes we just have to
get out how we're feeling. This is also why I
talk about writing a letter to someone and you don't
ever have to send the letter, but writing the letter
and getting all the things out that you really want
to say. Because in a lot of ways, I mean,
even though Brittany family therapy is a really good way
to get some of these repair experiences to have through processing, right,
but one way that you can do that for yourself
is just by journaling on a regular basis. Again, whether
it's once a week or once a day, or once
every other day, or just on Saturdays, whatever it is,
give yourself this space to just process something out. And
it can be as big as how you feel about
a parent, to as small as so you had a
weird interaction with somebody at the grocery store. Like, it
can be anything. There literally are no rules, and I
think that it will be something that you will find
gives you some automatic relief, Like is it going to
fix all your problems? No? Is it going to help
you feel more regulated in your body? Yeah, there's a
good chance that might happen. So just as I know,
journaling gets talked about in lots of different ways and
that there's junk journaling and there's a thousand different ways
to do it. But when I talk about it, what
I'm really talking about is just writing down things that
you're feeling and thinking, if only to get them out
of your head and out of your body for that
little bit of time, to give yourself a little bit
of relief.
Speaker 2: Matters so much. Once something gets triggered, it needs to
be responded to. It doesn't have to be responded to
in an unsuccessful manner, but you have to release it
or your body will keep trying to until you do,
and the more you try to not do it, the
more pressure builds.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take our last break here and be
back with final thoughts. I can go first. I've, like
I said, I've seen this movie. I feel like I
really love this movie. When it first came out, everybody did.
Everyone was a big Hugh grand Colin Firth freakazoid. I
was until like Prime Prejudice back in the day. I
have the I still have the DVD box set of
the BBC miniseries Don't Get Jealous, Don't Get Jealous, and
so I was a big callin firthhead.
Speaker 3: Hugh Grant obviously all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So I love this movie. I bought into a lot
of the bullshit, like I said, because I was a
teenager when this movie. I think I was like fifteen
when this movie came out, so I was in full
agreement with the wait stuff and the you gotta be
a better person than you are now Yike's stuff. So
watching it again, it was really actually comforting to see
how far we've come in such a short amount of
time culturally, Like how much stuff in that movie is
outrageous now by today's standards. And that was nice to see,
like all like the sexual harassment stuff, all the like
the couple's dinner thing, like all things that like I
don't really experience now in like my thirties. I'm about
to turn forty, but like I haven't really had a
lot of those experiences, Like no one and my family
ever asked me about dating or having a partner, and
now could I interpret that in a very negative way
for sure? And also I think it's because they asked
me about other things. They asked me about the podcast,
about my job, about living in Chicago, they asked me,
I get asked, I get treated like a like a
real full person. And so I feel very grateful watching
this movie, maybe very grateful for now, even though right
now is a lot to feel not grateful for. And
I don't I think i'd watch it again in passing.
It's a good movie to have on in the background,
but I don't know if i'd ever like seek it
out to sit down and watch it all the way through,
just because it feels unrelatable nowadays, even though it still
has like funny.
Speaker 3: Moments and moments that I like, but in a nostalgic way.
Speaker 2: I guess I can go next, because we'll let Hannah,
who has watched it two hundred times close it out
for us today. AnyWho, the movie I think is is great.
I found it to be really fun to watch it.
I think I've only watched it in passing before, so
it's not something that I was super familiar with how
the plot would go or what the beats were. But
I think it's a really good comedy. There's a lot
of really funny, witty things that make it really rewatchable.
I've surprised myself when I was like, I had to
probably watch the second one. Probably not a third one,
because that's usually a mistake, but just generally speaking, let.
Speaker 1: Me tell you what. He goes off the motherfucking rails.
Oh god, yeah, which I had no awareness of whatsoever.
I had no idea about that that there was some
TV show.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Goes off the rails. And then the last one is
like he died, Mark dies what Yeah? And Daniel and
also Daniel's still fucking around, still fucking but they're like friends.
It's a fucking mess. It's a mess. Okay, I'll stop
so you can finish.
Speaker 2: I'm here for it because it affirms the idea.
Speaker 1: But you should watch the second one. If you like
the first one, you should watch the second one. The
second one leans more into the comedy and buffoonery.
Speaker 2: Which I you know as somebody that was in a
sketch comedy group and rope skits and performed buffoonery and
is a bit of a buffoon himself. Sometimes I liked it.
I thought it was really smart, sharp writing, and it
was well acted, and I think this is gonna hold
up on time. For the nostalgic purposes, it does feel
very unrelatable because one of those things you watch and
just like, oh, like we were like that, weren't we. God,
we really needed to knock that shit off. Like there
is that air to it, which I think is you know,
good that creates more safety for people in the workplace
that their boss is gonna be like sup gross. But
the the movie itself, I think it was really fun
and I think I'd probably watch it again, and I'd
probably show my wife and like, tell me what you
think as her deal as a non clinician, because I
want to see given them we buotoom the DHDS of
how her reaction to that lens would be. And you know,
I kind of think that would be fun. And this
is exactly the kind of thing that despite she can't.
Speaker 5: Understand British accents because of the DHD, I think she
would have shed probably like it, because like this kind
of humor is like her, is just her.
Speaker 2: So I think this would be a fun date movie.
And probably lots of people have thought that it's one
of the ones like watch a rom com. Well it's
a comedy, like more comedy than romance, like easier self.
Speaker 1: Well, it won our poll pretty aggressively, sure, dude, So
for the reason I think you're bringing up that it
is a much beloved movie, and also because I think
the part the point of Bridget is that she's a mess,
and so I'm sure a lot of people are curious
about our thoughts about her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So I enjoyed this one. There's been something
I've watched like just grown the whole way through, particularly
the later of the uh what do we do? The
first time we did this, I left my brain the BDS. Yeah,
the Fifty Shades of Gray, Like the first one was tolerable,
the other two were garbage.
Speaker 1: The first one was tolerable.
Speaker 2: Barely barely tolerable, like the third one, I couldn't even
like sit through. I was like, I'm not I'm just
not so crazy. I'm just I'm not watching this, oh
my god. Yeah anyway, and cut out this ramble nonsense.
But like, I feel like, as opposed to some things
that people have thought that were date movies, such as
Fifty Shades of Gray, particularly the later ones, which are trash,
is that this one I think is easy sell because
everybody can kind of watch it and be like, this
is funny. Anyway, I liked it, Hannah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I read these books. I went and saw
the movies at the movie theater when they came out.
I think I was eighteen eighteen or nineteen when the
film came out. But I had already read the books
and really enjoyed and really enjoyed reading the books, and
the movies follow the books, uh, pretty well.
Speaker 2: As it turns out, sometimes it's better if you do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, your Game of Thrones. So I don't know
how much I haven't. It's been a while since I
watched Bridget jones Diary. Like usually I would say I
probably would watch it once a year, but I don't
really watch it like that anymore. But I feel like
I'm definitely I'm sure I'll watch it again at some
point and watch all the movies and put myself through
the whole gamut of nonsense. But yeah, but I yeah,
I like this movie. I've watched it a thousand times.
It's a way that I connected with my sisters at
some point. But also I saw a lot of my
self and Bridget and that kind of sucks to have
more awareness of that now, like of like how I
really felt about myself during that time. So so yeah,
so that makes so I feel like that makes a
lot of sense. But yeah, so I love this movie
and I'm sure I'll watch it again. Thank you again
everyone who voted in our valtin as they pull. We
always appreciate how many people interact with this pole every year.
Once again, you know you can always find us on Well,
it's kind of dwindling our social media presence to be real,
because the social media is getting more and more nefarious
in order to engage in. But you can still find
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Speaker 3: We're available everywhere.
Speaker 1: And I hope everyone out there can stay as safe
as they can and to show love where it's safe
to show love. And we will see you all soon
as we fully go into season nine