TV » This Or Prozac

Blairenda! Serblanda! Dasebla! I.E. Dan And Blair Make Out And Serena Sees Everything!

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Feb 152012

The Setup

On this week’s GOSSIP GIRL, Dan finally makes a move on former-nemesis-now-unrequited-love-interest Blair, which, despite her skinny-pregnancy, extremely complicated (and weirdly easily attainable) pre-nup, and looming problems with bruised and vengeful former boyfriend Chuck, Blair responds to. But then multi-hyphenate Serena (the multihyphenataion being Blair’s-best-friend-and-Dan’s-high-school-girlfriend-but-they-broke-up-and-got-back-together-a-bunch-of-times-and-now-Serena’s-into-him-again-but-Dan-isn’t-into-her) sees it all and uh oh!

What Serena Says

My BFF stole my not-BF – how could she?!?!

Back Up And Tell It Right

Whoa girl. Serena has a common view shared by many of us when strong feelings are involved, which is that we tend to view people as possessions and other people’s intrusions on those feelings as theft. But this sense of having had something stolen is a trap and here’s why. From Serena’s point of view, Blair has stolen from her since Blair knows about Serena’s feelings for Dan and, as a friend, should allow Serena’s feelings to take precedence. Serena’s trap – and one, I might add, that she falls into ALL THE TIME – is that of assuming her expectations of Blair’s behavior are valid. For example, Blair could make the equally logical argument that Serena knows she’s trapped in a loveless marriage (to a prince for a year, there was a video involved and some weird thing with a dowry – I can’t go into it right now) and that Dan’s been there for her so it’s Serena who needs to respect her need to reach for happiness and not the other way around.

In the same way that crime requires “mens rea” (a guilty mind), so does betrayal need an intent to betray. In the absence of that, there’s just your needs conflicting with someone else’s needs. A friend simply wanting the same thing you want is not a betrayal regardless of what your friend knows about your feelings. Instead of focusing on what you think the other person did to you and potentially destroying a strong friendship, focus on whether your exepctations of that person’s behavior was either fair or realistic, and, if not, work on your own feelings of sadness or disappointment. It may not feel good to have a friend chasing a guy you’re into, but it’s also not a stab in the back.

Which isn’t to say a lot of backstabbing isn’t exactly what I’m hoping for for Seblada in the upcoming months…

New Game: Spot the Kodependency

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Jan 262012

The Setup

After Kourtney’s babydaddy Scott punches his fist through a mirror right after a fight with Kourtney, Kourtney decides it’s time to put up some boundaries and move on… ish.

What Kourtney Says

I’ll let Kourtney speak for herself.

Back Up And Tell It Right

Here’s the game. There are two video clips, each of which contains moments of pure, unadulterated codependency. Can you spot them? Click the down arrow (

) below each video to see the ones I spotted.

Clip Setup: A day or so later, Scott tells Kourtney that he’s going to need surgery for his mirror-punching hand and that he’s all alone in Miami and would really like her to be there when he wakes up from surgery – not that he’s trying to guilt her into it or anything (heh heh) because, he says, he knows he’s totally blown it with her, that their relationship is over, and that he has no right to expect anything. After lots of assertive conversations about how she won’t be seeing Scott until he’s gotten help for himself (meaning rehab) because she has to put her baby, Mason, first, Kourtney flip-flops the morning of Scott’s surgery and heads out the door to visit him, telling sis Kim that she doesn’t want to hear any arguments about it, that this what she’s doing. Kim says fine but insists on coming along:

Oh Kourtney (sigh)

I’m going on record: Kim actually makes sense here. The fact that Scott doesn’t have anyone else isn’t Kourtney’s problem to resolve. However, like with much codependency, it’s easily justifiable and the logic sounds so reasonable. “I mean, sure, he’s been leaving me alone with the baby and partying until 6am and then, when I called him on it, he had a rage-out and punched his hand through a mirror – but come on, leaving him alone after surgery is WAY too cruel – that’s just taking things too far!”

The real issue here has nothing to do with whether or not Kourtney should forgive Scott or how she should treat him. Rather, it has to do with the fact that managing Scott’s feelings is the way she manages her own, as if she can’t feel good about herself in absence of making him feel good about himself. Her need to resolve Scott’s issues for him, in this case healing their rift rather than leaving it for him to heal, is, basically, the reason she got a spinoff.

Clip Setup: Though perhaps Kourtney’s codependency issues are more forgiveable in light of seeing their monstrous one-codpendency-to-rule-them-all source, momager Kris Kardashian. Kim flies home to LA and tells Kris bits and pieces of what went down with Kourtney and Scott, at which point Kris wings out to Miami, tells Kourtney how upset she is and all the things Kourtney needs to do (without actually bothering to ask Kourtney how she feels or what decisions she’s made), and then, behind Kourtney’s back, does the following in stripes and with men’s jacket button epaulets on her shoulders:

Show Me Kris' Kodependency

Aside from being both controlling AND kontrolling, Kris is super codependent as well – only with Kourtney, not with Scott. While the actual dialogue is with Scott, the real dialogue, the one that makes her the mother of all Kardashians and codependents (and there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference), is that this drama, these emotions, are her way of connecting with Kourtney. “Facts about the situation be damned (the primary fact being that the two of you seem to be working out your lives just fine without me) – I have feelings! If it’s painful for you, it’s even more painful for me. I’m you; you’re me! Mostly me! The way you’ll know I love you is by how much I feeeeeeeeeeel! I’m doing this for you, Kourtney (and I’m going to tell you all about it later so you’ll know how much I care).”

Non-codependent behavior would be, oh, expressing support for her daughter and letting her daughter feel her own feelings instead of joining in and subsuming them.

If you find yourself taking care of (read: controlling) the emotional issues of an adult in your life, if you can’t feel okay unless you’ve taken action to “make them feel” okay, you are likely in a codependent relationship with that person. The process from codependent to independent is ceasing taking action on behalf of that person’s bad feelings (Kourtney) and feeling good about yourself regardless of how that other person feels (Kris).

And to think, people have accused the Kardashians of being vapid time-wasters who offered nothing to the universe…

Hey Khloe, Why You All Up In Your Sister’s Relationship Kjunk?

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Jan 232012

The Setup

On KEEPING UP WITH THE KARDASHIANS (of whatever season or spinoff I’m currently watching), Khloe sure hates Scott.

What Khloe Says

He’s bad for my sister QED I hate him.

Back Up And Tell It Right

This is actually very typical. Someone you love winds up in a relationship with someone you hate primarily because you hate how miserable they seem to make the person you love, and, by extension, you. You hate them so much you don’t want to see them or talk to them. You can’t be in the same room with them. You can barely be polite to them. Here’s the deal: that outside hateful person – Scott in this case – isn’t the problem; rather, that person is merely a reflection of two other problems.

First problem: Pretend Khloe’s right for a moment (and, remember, you can never judge a relationship from the outside, even one you’re watching 24/7 on E!) and that Scott is a hateful, volatile, unreliable, destructive cow who’s pulling Kourtney away from her family. Even so, making Scott go away won’t solve the problem since the problem (if there is one) lies with Kourtney and not Scott. After all, she’s the one making the choice.

Second problem: When we get as upset about someone as Khloe gets about Scott, that’s generally because that person is reflecting something within ourselves that we dislike. Perhaps Khloe recognizes hateful pieces of herself within Scott and lashes out at him for having those characteristics she dislikes. Or perhaps she views Kourtney’s response to Scott as a horrible weakness because that’s how she would feel if she found herself staying in a relationship with someone who was volatile or self-centered. Or perhaps her father’s death felt like an abandonment and she’s mushing that in with Scott’s seeming unreliability toward her sister. Or whatever.

In other words, Khloe’s big angry feelings are hers, and their resolution doesn’t lie with Kourtney or Scott but rather with figuring out what that relationship is triggering within her and resolving that core issue instead.

Hey, Khloe, here’s hoping you work it by the time I get to Season Six…

“I’m Not Here To Make Friends!”

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Aug 032011

Reality-show villains – like Elise from HELL’S KITCHEN for example – sure have a hard time doing two things at once.

The Setup

Elise is a reality-show staple, the contestant who has gotten into fights with more or less everyone on her team but sees everyone else as the problem. Her main techinques are the classics, talking over rather than to other people, escalating arguments instead of resolving them, etc. Having been put up for elimination twice because her team finds her to be disruptive in the kitchen, she vows that, from here on out, she’s going to prove she’s a team player.

What Elise Says

But then, in previews for next week’s episode, Elise, during a confessional, says that she’s not here to make friends, she’s here to win!

Back Up And Tell It Right

Elise’s line which, in my completely unscientific survey, has been said on every single confessional-based competition reality-show ever produced, begs a very simple question: why do people have such a hard time both making friends AND winning? Why, for them, is it either one or the other but not both? Well, it’s not just reality-show contestants who find themselves unable to distinguish being nice from losing. Many people feel that conciliatory or kind gestures undercut their positions during conflict. If you’ve ever been in a fight with someone and told yourself that they need to call you first because you’re certainly not calling them, then you’ve experienced exactly this feeling, the notion that reaching out equates to giving something up. It doesn’t. Expressing a desire to resolve the conflict isn’t the same as sacrificing your core principles; admitting someone is important to you doesn’t mean you’ve just handed them all the power in the relationship. Real winning, on HELL’S KITCHEN or otherwise, means being able to integrate the various ways you interact with the world around you – being friendly AND winning – rather than feeling a need to compartmentalize them – being friendly OR winning.

Friends are good, Elise, though you might want to work on that rubbery lobster…

The Duchess Of MalMouthie

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Jul 062011

On the episode “My Fall From Grace,” I noticed Fergie (Duchess not pop star) continuously did this one thing that, IMHO, is going to keep her stuck in her groove unless she changes it.

The Setup

Despite her family’s money, Fergie had it pretty rough growing up. Her mom abandoned her at 12 to run off with an Argentinian polo player, and, like many children who went through similar things (albeit with fewer ponies), she blamed herself for her mother’s abandonment, thinking it must have been something she did. She still carries that self-loathing with her and is going on an Oprah-fueled reality TV journey – meaning visiting people like Dr. Phil, Suze Orman, etc. – on a quest for her self-worth.

What Fergie Says

Fergie talks about herself in negative terms all day long, right, left, and center. Throughout the episode, she refers to herself variously as “flawed,” “worthless,” “unloveable,” and self-sabotaging. In fact, unless I missed it, there wasn’t a single moment in the episodes where she presented herself as being anything other than hopeless and lost.

Back Up And Tell It Right

Words matter. Negative words, over time, become an unexamined shorthand that only serve to keep us stuck in our self-loathing stories. The simple-to-say/hard-to-do act of changing those words, of stopping ourselves in real time and re-editing our self-descriptions, can literally change the way we think about ourselves. In Fergie’s case, I would suggest that, for every negative word, she force herself to stop and recharacterize her self-description as a positive, e.g. go from “flawed” to “whole but working on believing in myself,” “worthless” and “unloveable” to “was a better mother to my children than my mother was to me so broke a potential abandonment cycle – thus I’m strong and loving” etc.

If you really want self-worth, Fergie, start by changing those words…

Oh, Tatum…

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Jul 022011

On the episode “A Home Coming,” Tatum really struggles with a key first step in rebuilding broken relationships.

The Setup

Tatum is returning home to LA to try to mend her relationship with her father, Ryan, which has been busted since he abandoned her for Farrah Fawcett when she was 16. The day before she arrives, she gets a call from her son, Sean, saying he and Ryan got into a fight in Ryan’s car and that Ryan tossed him out and left him by the side of the road.

What Tatum Says

Tatum is now freaked out about meeting up with her father for the first time in years and isn’t sure if she wants him to come to her birthday party that night. She says his out-of-control temper is exactly why she ended the relationship with her father, that he hasn’t changed a bit, that everything is exactly the same, and that she has a bleak view on their prospects for rebuilding their relationship.

Back Up And Tell It Right

Tatum is making a key, incorrect assumption that many people make when rebuilding broken relationships and which often becomes the excuse to halt the rebuilding process: that anything SHOULD be different. It’s important to enter these things knowing that, yes, the relationship is going to pick up in the exact same horrible spot it left off; no, no one is going seem different because you are viewing each other through the lens of past pain; yes, the personality characteristics that scared you or drove you nuts when you ended the relationship will have the same effect on you now. The key difference is what you’re planning to do with all of it.

In Tatum’s case, a good place for her to have started would’ve been with an assumption that of course her father still has a temper and that she’ll be triggered by old abandonment/fear issues, etc. – but that that’s all okay. The question she might have wanted to ask herself is: assuming not a single thing about Ryan has changed, what, if any, sort of relationship do I want with him and what do I need to do to keep true to who I am regardless of what he’s doing?

I’m keeping the faith, Tatum…