Therapist Reacts to Adolescence, Episode 1

I started watching the new Netflix series, Adolescence, and after just 10 minutes, I could see why it had gotten and has gotten so much attention. So I thought it would be interesting to watch it fresh, going through the series, all four of the episodes, and pause from time to time and share my own comments and reflections along the way, in case they're useful for you. It's important to appreciate that this is, of course, fiction. It's a work of fiction, the creative imagination. I love fiction. I don't understand my friends who don't watch movies or ever read a novel. I think it impoverishes the imagination, and humans throughout history, and I'm sure long before history began, the written record, told stories. So it's a story, and like any story, it's about particular situations which have implications for larger contexts. I'm no expert on some of the themes I understand will be explored in this show, law and justice, criminology, gender. I'm no expert at all. I'm going to be watching this show, probably like you're watching it, as a regular person, touched by what it's exploring, and also, certainly, with my own background as a psychologist and a clinical therapist, that'll be in the mix as well. See what's useful for you, and feel free to leave the rest. Here we go. Wow, just the opening image of the main character, who I know already is being accused of a very serious crime. The main character as a young boy, and I'm sure there could have been a picture of him as an even younger boy, and it just reminds me of something I try to keep in mind as a therapist, and try to keep in mind also in other situations as well, if possible, that deep down inside everyone is a little kid, and deep down inside everybody is a fundamentally sweet, innocent, well-intended, innermost being, which then sometimes gets expressed or manifested in problematic ways. The challenge, of course, is to keep in mind both of these truths, both the deepest, innermost layer in other people, and a clarity about their actual behavior. I'm sure those two aspects will be running through the show as we keep on going here. It struck me that the boy calls out for his father. He's obviously young, seems like a really young teenager. It's his father he calls out for, and you wonder about that. Young kids often will call it for their mother when they're really upset. We have gender in the mix already here, and I wonder about his seeing of his father as a strong force who can protect him against these powerful strangers bursting into his home, and also perhaps as someone that he identifies with in particular as a young male teenager. The interesting thing, of course, is that we need powerful forces who can protect us, but if they're powerful enough to protect us, they can sometimes also be powerful enough to harm us. You can see that theme sometimes playing out in families and also sometimes playing out in relationships between people. The custody sergeant is going to ask you whether you want to keep Derek on or whether you want someone else, or you can even have one of your parents. It'll just be for your searches, bloods, anytime you're talking to your solicitor, that sort of thing, okay? Won't prejudice your case, whatever you decide, mate. All right? Wow. The boy is so upset, and we don't know what he's done or has not done. Whatever he has done, even, he's a really upset person. He's suffering a lot, and the question comes up then, of course, can we have compassion for people who are suffering even if, fill in the blank, even if we don't like them, even if they've harmed us, even if they've harmed others? Can we still have empathy for their suffering and a wish that they not suffer while in parallel with that potentially having moral judgment and pursuing justice with consequences potentially? Can both be true? In principle, compassion is independent of moral judgment. In practice, though, a lot of research shows that in general, it's harder to have compassion for those we don't like or disapprove of. We feel are the source of their own suffering. This is an area for potential personal practice with benefits that we find over time as we expand our circle of compassion to include people who are not like ourselves and people, in fact, that we potentially oppose. It actually helps us. It strengthens us and calms us and centers us and helps us be more skillful with those others, including if we are pursuing forms of asserting ourselves. And it can be really freaking hard to do. I'm going to suggest something. When asked, you ask for a solicitor, okay? And you can speak to your parents about it when you get to the station. It won't make you seem more guilty. Just for your best interest, all right? So here with good intentions, the police officer is giving Jamie a lot of information. He's talking at him. And maybe he needs to be doing that at that moment in the police process. On the other hand, Jamie is totally flooded, unable really to process this stream of information coming at him. And that's often the case. We get so triggered. We're so flooded. Our capacity to process complicated language and information and sequences and abstractions and just words, words, words, you know, just push it away. We just can't handle it. I recall times when I was in therapy, myself and my therapist, very skillful, well-intended person would be saying things to me to help me. And I could hardly understand what she was saying. So one of the takeaways here is to be aware of this with other people. And if they're too flooded to give the person time to settle down and flip it around when we ourselves are so flooded that it's just hard to process to by ourselves a few minutes, maybe a few hours, even a few days to come kind of back down to earth again, regroup, gather ourselves, still maybe upset, but not overwhelmed by it all. It's so wrenching to see a child suffer. He's a child. He's 13. Whatever actions he's done and also he's a child. There's something really primal in us as a primate species, mammalian species, to see a child suffer. And that's what I'm feeling here. Jamie has asked whether you will be his appropriate adult. Of course not. Will you be in his interviews with him? Any bloods taken by the nurse? That sort of stuff. How do you feel about that? Okay, yeah. Yeah, all right. So again, Jamie is picking his father as his protector, you know, which of course he can. And in terms of, you know, the nurturing role, it's often carried a lot by the mother. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just noting it as really common. Even she is surprised and wondering why is Jamie picking his father? So we're seeing again a closeness with the father emotionally for whatever reasons. And also to some extent maybe an identification with him and perhaps even a sense of him as having, you know, the ability to support him, to support Jamie in this setting. I'm not sure of what it all means, but I'm just noticing it. And it does come, it does stand out. I can't help myself from observing all this in part through the lens of gender. And that's pretty fraught territory, particularly these days. That said, I'm just... Therapists rush in where angels are to tread. So I'm just aware of my comments about Jamie reaching out to his father as a protector, nurturer in this time, not his mother. I'm observing the dynamic there. I find myself wondering about the sister, Jamie who's accused of killing someone, a young girl. How does his sister start to process that? And as I watch the police detective here, I'm just aware of his physicality, big, strong. And I'm also aware of the police sergeant, a woman, very determined, powerful person. And the ways in which these images shape our views around gender and the dynamics between people. Someone who's big and powerful and strong can help a lot and can also hurt. So how do we hold both of those together? How do we appreciate strength, including physical strength, including in the history of males and females over the many thousands of years? How do we react to that kind of strength? And how do we use that strength in ways that are good? Fundamental question, which applies, of course, to both genders and to those who don't identify with either gender or transgender, which certainly is... a fraction of the population that matters. So I'm in the mess of it right here, right now, thoroughly gripped and really feeling for Jamie and really feeling for, whoa, who he potentially may have killed. Jamie's super upset here, wanting reassurance from his father, and his father does not touch him. No physical soothing, no affection, doesn't put his arm around him, doesn't hug him. We haven't seen any of that so far. And just noting that, the way that some fathers certainly and some sons are with each other. And remembering, of course, that this is one child, one parent. And I'm not trying to generalize from what I'm seeing. And I think it's important to be aware that there are many, many, many individual differences. But what we are seeing here, and it's interesting, is a closeness, a protectiveness from the father toward the son, but given who he is and his own background, culturally and otherwise, and Britain at the time, he's certainly not very lovey-dovey with his son. I don't mean that critically, I just mean I'm noticing it. And the boy doesn't reach for him either. I have definitely seen that kind of gulf between fathers and sons in particular. They love each other, but there's this vast gulf between them that you can feel there's an aching in them in some ways to reach across. But the habits are too deep, and maybe the vulnerability that's involved in reaching out or reaching across is just too great. And they can't do it so far. When a violent death is taking place, that's sometimes the name of the game. The question is whether or not that was proportionate. And we'll look at that later. It's interesting that the lawyer, the solicitor here, has mentioned a violent death. And there's no reaction from the parents. So it makes me wonder, have they heard in the news that there's been a violent death? But otherwise, it's curious that they're not following up on that. The father is really nurturing. And he's showing it a lot through actions and supportive advice, like encouraging Jamie to eat his cornflakes, even though he wasn't touching him physically. He wasn't physically affectionate. And here, he's also being really nurturing and supportive and encouraging to him. You know, I'm a father, and I have a son. And my wife and I have a daughter and son. And oh, my God, what a nightmare. You can just get a sense of how wrenching this is for the father. He wants to protect his son, and he can't in this setting. He can't. As parents, sometimes that's the absolute worst. You want to protect your kids, and you can't. Or things have happened to them, and you can't change what happened to them. Really tough. The best thing for you to do is to raise that channel, be the good dad, and suck it up. Gender, again. And gender, of course, has its biological aspects. And it also has massively its cultural and psychological aspects. So right here, we have two men talking. And the father, a parent, is upset and bereft. And the advice from the lawyer, potentially related to being a male lawyer, maybe not, is that the dad should get his chin up and suck it up. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just remarking on the significant ways that we live in cultures in which there's an ongoing messaging. There's kind of an ongoing scripting and training and maintaining of certain aspects of gender-associated roles. And because it's the water we swim in, we can often be unaware of it. It's only when we step outside of it that sometimes we can become really aware of it. And so I'm just commenting on it here. So I've been wondering, through the story, what the woman detective is thinking and feeling. She seems tougher, less supportive, more suspicious, related to Jamie. They know, as police officers, that the evidence is already quite strong. Otherwise, they wouldn't have arrested him in the way they did. And as people from their experience, they know that people who can seem very nice can still do terrible things. And the victim here is a young girl. So it makes me wonder what it's like for this woman here. I'm not any kind of an expert in this territory. I do believe it's a case that by the time someone gets to be, let's say, the age of the detective here, a significant percentage, depending on how these things are categorized, a woman has been on the receiving end of some kind of sexual assault. There's a spectrum, of course, of sexual assault. And the percentages really rise in terms of unwanted sexual advances that have not yet become violent. It's just a fact. And that cannot not be an awareness here. Even if most boys and most men, most, do not engage in any kind of sexually assaultive behavior. And even if most boys and most men would find it repugnant, as I do, and feel that's disgusting, including when it involves just exploiting their physical advantages, terrible. Even though that's true, most men and most boys do not have to live with the possibility that they could be targeted. And most girls and women do. Both of these things can be true. As we try to have empathy for people who are not like ourselves, or people who are like ourselves. And as we try to take into account what other people have to take into account. I really like the definition of privilege from Ta-Nehisi Coates. Essentially, privilege means not having to take something into account. And one of the things that we can do is take into account what other people have to take into account that we don't have to take into account. Why? It's really compelling to imagine what it's like to be each of the five people in that room. The police sergeant, the inspector, the attorney, the father, and Jamie. And also, especially, my feelings and thinking go to Kate and to her mother and her family. Kate, young girl, life ahead of her, stands up for herself, pushes Jamie away, and he attacks her, and in a rage. Again, and again, and again. Poor Kate. Wow. And what's it like to know that there's a chance, not impossible, that you could be Kate? How do you live with that? How do you carry that? And my own experience is that most teenage boys and most men don't carry with them some sense of what that weight is like for girls and women. Many do, I don't know the exact number, but in my personal experience, many don't. They understand it maybe even intellectually, like, oh yeah, I don't have to worry about walking down a dark alley. And my daughter, my girlfriend, my sister, my wife, my mother, they have to. But it's pretty distant. It's not really taking into account what other people have to take into account. The show is carrying us into learning some of what other people have to take into account that we don't have to take into account. And I hope that in the next episode or two, we learn more about what Jamie has had to take into account. That's been in the mix for him, too.