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Today’s topic on the blog is going to be tough. Please don’t click on the video below until you read the blog, and then decide for yourself whether you should watch it. The clip is a scene at a Christmas dinner in the incredibly well-acted Hulu television streaming series, The Bear. The scene, featuring the extremely talented actress, Jamie Lee Curtis, contains a lot of profanity, and it could be triggering for some of you, or at the very least, a spoiler for those who are in the midst of watching The Bear.

Emotional abuse is every bit as real as physical abuse and sexual abuse. Often abusers use more than one form of abuse, but emotional abuse by itself is every bit as damaging as physical abuse and sexual abuse, often because it is harder to describe and to explain. There are no physical marks with emotional abuse. No one’s body has been violated. (although emotional abuse tends to go deeper – it penetrates the soul.) Victims are often disbelieved or discounted as being “sensitive” because there is “no proof.” And abusers aren’t always abusing. Physical abusers aren’t pounding their fists on to people 24/7. Sexual abusers typically spend a great deal more time on grooming their victims and everyone else around them, than they actually do perpetrating their vile acts. And most abusers tend to be some of the most charming, interesting people you might meet on any given day. This is part of the abuse. It’s a constant bait and switch, or as some people call it – “the mindf#ck.” It’s known in psychology circles as “the intermittent chicken effect” which is based on a experiment with chickens. Renee Linnell explains it perfectly:

“In a child psychology class I took in college, I learned about intermittent reinforcement. In an experiment, chickens were taught to push a button with their beaks. In one group, each time the chicken pushed the button, a food pellet appeared. The chickens would peck at the button until they were full, then they would stop. In the second group, the chickens got rewarded with food at first but then consistently got nothing when they pushed the button. These chickens pushed the button a few times after the food stopped but soon grew bored and quit. In the third group, the chickens sometimes got a food pellet and sometimes did not. It was random. These chickens pecked the button until their beaks bled . . . and kept on pecking, never knowing if just one more push of the button would reward them with food. The result of the experiment: To strengthen behavior of any kind, use intermittent reinforcement.”

The scene below shows Jamie Lee Curtis’s character, “Donna”, holding everyone in the room hostage to her extreme moods. The entire afternoon, the show portrays how everyone around Donna is tip-toeing, doing everything that they can to keep her “even”. Donna’s friends and particularly her family are walking on eggshells, trying desperately not to set off the bomb of Donna’s extreme mood swings. They are all in a state of constant “fight or flight”, also known as hypervigilance. Their nervous systems have been on high alert all day. When someone has an emotional abuser as part of their everyday life, their nervous systems are usually a wreck because they are always “reading the room”, as if they were in a constant state of a high stakes, emergency situation. This becomes the usual state of being for victims of emotional abusers, particularly for their children, because their children have no choice otherwise. Abusers’ children rely solely on their abusers for their needs to be met. And so they learn to adapt the best ways that they can to manage their precarious situation.

Now when you watch this particular scene (or the whole episode), you can’t help but feel compassion for Donna. Donna is clearly a very sick and sad individual. She seems to have some mental disorders that she self-medicates with alcohol. It’s highly likely that she was a victim of abuse or trauma, herself. Abuse, mental disorders and addiction often go hand-in-hand. The real problem is that Donna doesn’t see herself as the problem. She sees everyone else as the problem, and she views herself as the victim. This is also common of abusers. However, when we excuse the behaviors of abusers, and we allow it to continue in our own lives by pretending it isn’t happening, nothing changes. The cycle of abuse goes on and on, and that’s why the same types of abuse and addictions are often perpetuated continually, throughout many generations of individual families. In the ideal world, Donna would submit to her problems, and get the help that she needs for her mental disorders and for her addiction to alcohol, and her family would get the help that they need for the coping mechanisms (such as codependence, acting out in rebellion, denial, their own addictions etc.) which they created for themselves, in order to deal with Donna’s unhealthy, damaging behaviors. But often it doesn’t go that way. Many abusers don’t believe that they have a problem. Many abusers can’t see that they are the problem. And many families choose to push things under the rug, and go along with the abuser’s illusion that there are no real problems (or that the victims themselves are the real problem), out of fear and sadness and guilt and shame and misguided “love and loyalty”.

I’m grateful for (as vivid and disturbing and upsetting as it can be), The Bear‘s honest portrayal of what many families experience when they have an abuser in the mix. It validates victims of emotional abuse, and with the popularity of the show, it seems obvious that this kind of abuse is more prevalent and relatable than we would like it to be. But by bringing this situation to the forefront, this show creates an opportunity for discussions and awakenings which can lead to healing for many people, and for many families. Long-running abusive cycles can be broken for future generations. Victims of abuse can be victorious cycle-breakers. And in the end, isn’t that a big part of what we are doing here on this Earth – trying to guide and to heal ourselves and each other, on to something better and more hopeful and more wonderful than has ever existed before?

Victims of abuse, I see you. I validate you. I care. You can prevail and be the change.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.