Podcasts, Popcorn, and Processing Trauma

After my divorce, I finally realized why I gravitated toward certain movies and tv shows

I started watching the show “Homeland” in the Year That My Marriage Was Falling Apart. It’s funny that I even call it that, because it was falling apart from the moment it started, I just didn’t know it. But what I mean is, 2018, the Year when it became too obvious to ignore, the Year I went to therapy, the Year I started recording my husband, the Year when I finally had enough courage to stand up for myself.

In Homeland, the main character—Carrie—often isn’t sure of what is reality, if she’s crazy, who is telling the truth and who is lying, who is her friend and who is her enemy. It’s funny how our subconscious realizes things before we ever acknowledge it consciously.

Many years before, I fell in love with a Tyler Perry movie called “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” I didn’t know why I liked that movie, but I ended up watching many Tyler Perry movies after that, laughing with my kids over Madea’s antics, even later watching, “Why Did I Get Married?” with my then husband.

In the Year of My Divorce, a.k.a. 2019, I was lying in the middle of my king-sized bed that only six months prior I’d been sharing with someone, when I changed the channel to find “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” playing on the TV. I wasn’t ten minutes into the movie when it hit me. While I was not a black woman and clearly could not identify with certain aspects of her life, the main character was also a woman who just tried to love her husband and be a good wife. Meanwhile, he was intimidating, condescending, demeaning, and deceitful. He gaslit her that his affairs were her fault. He pointed out that he earned the money and her efforts weren’t anywhere near as valuable to their life.

Click.

How did I love that movie for so many years without seeing it?

Photo by Callum Shaw on Unsplash

Mental Health and Abuse

Last Friday, I talked about the intersection of mental health and abuse, noting that PTSD, depression, and anxiety are common in those suffering and recovering from abuse. In my recent talk at the Restore Conference, I also noted how common suicidal ideation is in those dealing with abuse and its aftermath.

The impact of abuse on mental health can be severe and long-lasting. Survivors can suffer for decades without knowing that their mental anguish and challenges are often attributable to the harm of abuse and the changes that it wrought within their mental and emotional and often spiritual processing.

Awareness about abuse and its impact is one step in helping survivors move toward healing. Access to services like therapy, support groups, and an understanding support system are so helpful. But what do you do if you don’t have these resources? Or sometimes even if you do, how else can we actively work to process our experiences and heal?

My Cult and Abuse Documentary Era

In my talk at Restore, I referenced the fact that for about two years after my divorce was final in December 2019, I watched cult and abuse documentaries to try to make sense of my experience of emotional and narcissistic abuse, as well as the institutional bullying and spiritual abuse from my ex-husband’s employer.¹

Something Was Wrong

The first piece of media I remember that struck me like a tidal wave was the podcast, “Something Was Wrong.”² The first season was told through the host, Tiffany Reese, in her interview with a woman who had been in a relationship where the man could gaslight like he had a PhD in it. It sounds so mild, right? Gaslighting? But the series puts you into this relationship, and if you’ve been there, or hopefully if you haven’t, you can experience why you believe this person, how they draw you in, the confusion and mind-f*cking you experience the deeper you go into this relationship, the harm that is enough to make you question all of reality and your sanity.

Inevitably, the subject of the podcast, aptly named “Dick” in the series (not his real name) was doxed. While I’m not a proponent of doxing, the benefit to those of us who had experienced similar relationships was that we could go watch this guy online and see another example of how they operate in the real world, how difficult it can be to see it from the outside.

I say that, but when I watched a video of him being interviewed, I found it easier and easier to see these micro-expressions of contempt and self-satisfaction that I’ve come to recognize in many other narcissists and abusers.

Amidst the untangling how we can end up in such a relationship, there were a few eye popping moments where Dick refers to Dave Ramsey as “a phenomenal person, a wonderful friend”³ and later Dick goes on to interview for a job at Ramsey Solutions but is rejected as “unhealthy” or “toxic”.⁴