Analyze Scripts

Welcome back to Analyze Scripts, where a psychiatrist and a therapist analyze what Hollywood gets right and wrong about mental health. Today, we are joined by Dr. Jessi Gold to analyze season two of "Yellowjackets." In this episode we discuss cults, schizophrenia, catatonia and the ghastly depiction of ECT.  We see many different depictions of trauma responses in this season, some from psychological stressors and others from their worsening physical state. Were you as shocked as we were to learn the mouse is actually dead? Was that a hallucination due to starvation or psychological trauma, the answer is probably both. "Yellowjackets" keeps us guessing and cringing through all nine episodes this season, but we are ready for a break and hope the actors are practicing some self care!  We hope you enjoy!

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[00:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Hi, I'm Dr. Katrina Fury, a psychiatrist.

[00:12] Portia Pendleton: And I'm Portia Pendleton, a licensed clinical social worker.

[00:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: And this is Analyze Scripts, a podcast where two shrinks analyze the depiction of mental health in movies and TV shows.

[00:23] Portia Pendleton: Our hope is that you learn some legit info about mental health while feeling like you're chatting with your girlfriends.

[00:28] Dr. Katrina Furey: There is so much misinformation out there, and it drives us nuts.

[00:31] Portia Pendleton: And if someday we pay off our student loans or land a sponsorship, like.

[00:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: With a lay flat airline or a major beauty brand, even better.

[00:39] Portia Pendleton: So sit back, relax, grab some popcorn.

[00:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: And your DSM Five and enjoy. Back to another episode of Analyze scripts. We are so excited to once again be joined by Dr. Jesse Gold today to talk about the second season of Showtime's hit show Yellow Jackets. Thanks so much for coming back, Jesse.

[01:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Thanks for having me.

[01:13] Dr. Katrina Furey: I do have to say, this show is really messed up. I feel like season one was a lot, and then we sort of watched it really quick to record our first episode and then watch season two really quick. And I was like, I had to take some breaks, I'll be honest, along the way, because it got really intense really fast.

[01:34] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.

[01:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Maybe like a two out of ten on a scale of one to ten. So not like fully this season.

[01:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it was like last season, they were like, this is a show about cannibals, but you never saw it.

[01:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?

[01:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: This season was like, remember when you're walking?

[01:54] Dr. Katrina Furey: Here it is. Yeah, here it is.

[01:58] Dr. Jessi Gold: They danced around it in a way that was like, fine last season. And this season they were like, all.

[02:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right, here you go.

[02:06] Dr. Jessi Gold: And there are definitely parts where you're like, yeah, I can't watch it.

[02:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, I know. I told Portia when we were watching it, I stopped right around when Shauna was about to deliver the baby because I was so scared they were going to eat the baby. I was like, I can't watch that. And I think you actually had to tell me. They don't I looked up the spoiler.

[02:28] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, they post on their TikTok, right? Like, the cast being like, we do not eat the baby. You can watch it, I guess, trigger non warning. And I was like, we do a.

[02:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Lot of things, but that's where we draw the line. Gosh. So, I mean, I think we have to get started since this was really early in the first episode, ECT and the depiction of ECT. Right. Like, you probably felt as good about that as I did, which is not very good.

[02:57] Dr. Jessi Gold: It is the first time I was disappointed.

[03:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right.

[03:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: Last season, I was really excited about all of their mental health portrayals, and I thought they were really thoughtful, and their trauma portrayals were really thoughtful. So I was super excited for this season, despite yes, I'm not, like, a creepy show person, so it's not like surprising that that wouldn't be my genre of choice, but I really liked it for a lot of the reasons I was talking about health wise. And so watching that and seeing that so early on, I was like, oh no, taking such a wrong, unnecessary turn. And yeah, I think inherently if you came back from something catatonic possible, you got ECT, right?

[03:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[03:44] Dr. Jessi Gold: The actual treatment of choice for being like catatonic, I think who has schizophrenia or some version of a psychotic right, comes back catatonic. It seems we have like a tiny, tiny, tiny glimpse in that.

[03:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was going to ask you. I thought it was catatonia as well. Porsche, are you familiar with catatonia as much? How would you describe catatonia, Jesse, to someone who doesn't know what that word means, they're different forms.

[04:09] Dr. Jessi Gold: Some people have hyperactive, completely not moving.

[04:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Speaking kind of like Lottie, like Lottie.

[04:17] Dr. Jessi Gold: Looks like she had it can be a reaction to a lot of things, like medication, like psychosis, like some medical issues inside, internally, like a medical issue. I haven't seen it a ton of times, but I have seen it sometimes it amazingly responds to just like an act.

[04:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Have you ever seen that? Because that is amazing. So portia. Sometimes when you're catatonic, these people are usually brought to the Er and people are either like they're not moving or eating or they're going to the bathroom on themselves. They literally can't move from here to five inches away, or they're like they're being really bizarre and bouncing off the walls and making weird noises and just such a drastic change in behavior really acutely quickly, like for an unknown reason. And then eventually catatonia gets on the differential and you think, let's give them a little Addivan. And so you'll give them like a push of ivy. Addivan, wait a couple only like 2 hours and a lot of times they start to wake up. Then you give them another one if it's working. And that's one of the coolest things in psychiatry is you can see it work so fast. I feel like in mental health that's so rare. Maybe like Add and Stimulants, you see work really quick. But this is so drastic. Like, I remember one woman in the ICU, wasn't eating for days, couldn't move, had something called waxy flexibility where if you put their arm up, it stays. They never bring it down. Or you can position them in an odd position, they stay there. That's part of catatonia. That's one of the telltale diagnostic signs. We give her the Adavan, a couple of hours later she's eating. It's wild. Anyway, so I do think lottie was catatonic. I think that's what they were going for. And even if they weren't, they did.

[06:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: A good job in an offshoot. But I do think that as far as things you see in psychiatry, it's interesting, but I have heard from the perspective of a patient who was catatonic, that they understood everything that was going on but couldn't speak or function. And wow, sometimes when people were learning from them because they had certain symptoms, like there's this thing called echolalia where they eat everything that you're saying that they knew. They saw that and didn't like that but couldn't say anything. So after that, I've been hesitant sometimes to actually teach some of it, even though it's rare and interesting. And again, one of the few things you see really get better, which is really nice. But I would assume, who knows how long she wasn't speaking and functioning in the wilderness.

[06:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know now she's trapped like that. Can you imagine?

[06:59] Dr. Jessi Gold: And I would assume her parents were already thought she was dead, but on top of it, we're like, oh, gosh, she's been off meds for like two years. No, I think ECP is a treatment of choice for catatonia. ECT is a very successful medication or.

[07:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Like, treatment super successful, which is unfortunate.

[07:21] Dr. Jessi Gold: Psychiatry because everyone flew over the cuz nest, really. And I think that book and that movie and that portrayal have really continued so much that even, like, generationally people who have absolutely never read the book.

[07:38] Dr. Katrina Furey: Or true know about it.

[07:41] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.

[07:41] Dr. Jessi Gold: In that movie, I don't know if parents told them or what, because, you know, they didn't see some old school Jack Nickson movie.

[07:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[07:49] Dr. Jessi Gold: There's something where you mentioned ECT to people and their faces so concerned and they think it's the worst thing you can possibly tell them, but it's by far one of our most successful treatments, especially in situations like this. But in acute suspitality in pregnancy.

[08:06] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[08:06] Dr. Jessi Gold: Postpartum psychosis wouldn't imagine it's as good as it is. And that stigma that exists for a very long time, very much created by the media, to be honest, really has made it hard for us to sell it as a treatment, despite how successful it is. And so for this show, which is new, to bring it back into the fold. And bring it back into the fold. So almost like quickly flashes, but the flashes you get look really and it's not the ECP. Even in the what would that have been like the 90s, right?

[08:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Exactly. It wouldn't have been like that.

[08:47] Dr. Jessi Gold: Some of the things from what blew over the cuckoo sense is like, the technology was older, anesthesia wasn't as good. There's things where you can tell that things have evolved for sure since then. But even in the 90s, it didn't look like what they're showing. What they're showing looks like probably the equivalent of the fact that they still go clear with paddles in medical shows. Like these little pads that are stick.

[09:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: On and so dramatic and heavy going to hurt you.

[09:17] Dr. Jessi Gold: I know that Er doctors think that's ridiculous because they have most of them never even saw it ever done like that. I feel like what they show for ECT is like that version the OG when ECT was discovered version.

[09:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Also when they say seize, that's not what actually happens.

[09:40] Dr. Jessi Gold: The purpose is to induce a seizure in your brain. But it's like so minor and the only way you really even know there's.

[09:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: A seizure is like your toe brain.

[09:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: Activity or your tone. You would never see someone actually seize. If you did.

[09:56] Dr. Katrina Furey: We probably messed up, right.

[09:59] Dr. Jessi Gold: Only they test where to go based on just if your finger moves when they get there, they know where different parts of your brain are and they're.

[10:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Targeting a specific part. Right. You're never like lashing or thrashing around, rolling over like Lottie did. And it's also very rare these days to do bilateral ECT on both sides of the head. Usually you start with unilateral and it's been so long since I did or saw ECT, I can't even remember which side you usually start with. But that's also not super common to do bilateral. Sometimes you have to right.

[10:34] Dr. Jessi Gold: Then when one's not working as well, you add the other or you try the other and then you do bilateral.

[10:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. Oh, really? Like Barbaric bike guard, right?

[10:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like a bike guard. She has an aggressive actual seizure. As a viewer, you actually don't know what is going on because they don't say the name. They don't going on anyway. So all you see is like this barbaric looking psychiatric treatment. And don't get me wrong, we have screwed up over and over. We were doing treatment wise. But again, so did a lot of medicine that felt like bloodletting was a way to free spirits of stuff. Right. So we're not the only specialty who tried very dangerous things on people.

[11:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[11:15] Dr. Jessi Gold: We have a reputation for that and I think that has continued. NPT has basically been this, I don't know, representation of that in modern psychiatry.

[11:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[11:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Though it is so effective and I don't know, I wish there was more context to that. Even though I know it was sort of like intentionally vague. But I wish there was more context to it. I wish it was more thoughtful.

[11:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: I wish it was more updated and more accurate.

[11:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: It was more accurate. And with Lottie they have a lot of potential to talk about humane treatment.

[11:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: I know. And we see such bad mental health treatment with Lottie this whole season and that's like the only mental health treatment we see.

[12:00] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, I mean, I think I worry not to get too far ahead that next season too, that she's going to.

[12:07] Dr. Katrina Furey: Be inpatient, it's going to be awful. Let's show some good treatment that's struggling.

[12:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like this, you can go back to.

[12:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: Functioning and doing your work and your.

[12:16] Dr. Jessi Gold: Life, but this is maybe what you need. Sometimes this is impatient can look like and they have the opportunity to demystify destigmatize.

[12:26] Dr. Katrina Furey: It's just so far from what I saw in my training in what actual ECT is, which can be so quite literally life saving for so many patients. And it's just such a shame to have such yet another negative depiction of such a life saving treatment and of schizophrenia.

[12:47] Portia Pendleton: I mean, she's going to go inpatient one of the most interesting things in my graduate program was we had this I don't know, because you guys both interfaced with Yale. She was a lawyer, like down in New Haven, and she's an author and she has schizophrenia.

[13:02] Dr. Jessi Gold: It's called the center cannot hold with Elon Sack.

[13:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.

[13:05] Portia Pendleton: So she does a lot of talks about her experience with hallucinating, being on medication, not being on medication, how powerful medication is, and how you can really lead a wildly productive I mean, she went to law school. She's a very well known fighter and person lawyer. And that was just, I think, really helping too. I mean, the whole point is to destigmatize schizophrenia. So then we see Lottie here not doing a good job of that. And then we were just talking about future season predictions with maybe her being on inpatient unit and probably not looking so good.

[13:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. I do think as much as I was disappointed with the depiction of ECT, I do think this season had some good moments that I thought very, I guess, helpfully displayed the difference between hallucinations dissociation and like a dissociative fugue state. Right. I feel like those things are challenging to wrap your head around, challenging to educate people about, and then I would imagine even more challenging depicting in an accurate way. So when we say hallucination, what we mean by that is when someone is seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling something that isn't actually there in reality, so what other people around them aren't experiencing. The most common hallucinations are auditory and visual. So things that you see or hear, although other senses can be affected too. When we say dissociation, what we mean by that is it's psychologically when there's a separation of some aspects of cognitive mental functioning from your conscious awareness. So it's often a response to trauma. And it's like your mind's way of trying to protect yourself and disconnect from an extreme psychological distress. And then kind of even further than that is what we call a dissociative fugue state, which is another rare occurrence. I did see a couple of these in the Er in my training, and that's a temporary state where a person has amnesia for their personal autobiographical information and then travels to an unexpected place, kind of out of nowhere. So these people kind of show up in your Er, don't know who they are, don't know where they are, don't know why they're there. And it takes a while to figure out what exactly is going on. And you don't often jump to like, oh, it's a fugue state. You might think like, oh my God, is there something medical going on? And things like that. But sometimes these patients do end up creating a whole new identity so I thought this show did demonstrate these different aspects of psychological functioning in response to trauma in a really amazing way. I was thinking of Shauna and Jackie, like those hallucinations early on, lottie and her psychiatrist, which we'll get into, I'm sure, in a minute. With the Dissociating, we see that a lot. With Ty, we see that with Shauna kind of forgetting or dissociating about her baby being stillborn. And then the fugue we see with Ty sleepwalking all the way to Ohio and hitchhiking to see Van. So I don't know, what did you guys think about those different depictions?

[16:20] Portia Pendleton: I mean, the Dissociation one where Shauna is seeing Jackie, I feel like feels really to me like the most common potentially experience someone might have with, like, a loss, even.

[16:32] Dr. Katrina Furey: You mean dissociating or hallucinating?

[16:34] Portia Pendleton: Dissociating.

[16:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: So this is a great example of how confusing these different conditions can be. Right. Because so Jackie was dead by that point, but she's talking to her. She's seeing her Jackie's moving around. So I would call that, I guess, maybe a little both.

[16:48] Portia Pendleton: Okay.

[16:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: But definitely visual auditory hallucinations that aren't actually happening.

[16:53] Portia Pendleton: I mean, I'm just thinking of like I guess no one's really typical, but like a typical trauma patient who has dissociative features, usually I think, then just seeing them. Right. Like, you say you're like, outside your body or maybe you're in another place, but you're not seeing another person who then you would say isn't there.

[17:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. So I think of dissociation as like, having gaps in your memory for the traumatic event, forgetting certain things about it. Sometimes they do describe sort of like hovering above and sort of witnessing it rather than experiencing it. I think what you might be describing is, like, maybe someone who's even something not as severe as trauma, like grief, and you're walking around and you think you see the person, and then you realize, oh, no, that's not really them.

[17:39] Dr. Jessi Gold: These are so specific and very hard to know the difference. And they're all sort of in this spectrum of psychological responses that can feel like psychosis, but also are trauma.

[17:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, exactly. There's a big overlap.

[17:53] Dr. Jessi Gold: All of them were interestingly done. I think it's different people's responses to extreme stress, if you want to call it that, on sort of like the Wispy scale. Just a ton of trauma. I don't know how most people would react. And on top of it, also, they're starving.

[18:11] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes.

[18:12] Portia Pendleton: Right. I was interested in the medical.

[18:14] Dr. Jessi Gold: That part is also complicated. If they're, like, are they hallucinating? Are they struggling because they act Harding.

[18:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: And their brain is not functioning well?

[18:23] Portia Pendleton: Yes. The mouse, it's like you can convince.

[18:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yourself that that's real because you can't tell the difference. Or the coach very actively hallucinating, but they're sort of like vivid dreams that happen to be while he's awake because he's not really fully functioning, because he's not eating right. I think there's a lot of blurring. And I also think that they use that to the advantage of the show writing, to put in the mysticism. They don't know. They're all sort of broken from reality in some capacity, some more than others for other reasons. But what is real and what is not is confusing. And I think that's also confusing for viewers and purpose.

[19:05] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, right. And I wonder, like you're saying, if that how much of that was purposeful. Because as we're seeing them all cope with and respond to trauma and try to survive, they're also telling the story through a lot of flashbacks and flash forwards. And so you kind of are also off kilter, which might just kind of be like in parallel to what you could imagine the characters are experiencing.

[19:27] Portia Pendleton: I was thinking about just like I work with a lot of eating disorder patients, right? How important eating and nourishment is glucose, obviously, this is a pretty extreme example, but our brains need nutrition so badly.

[19:44] Dr. Katrina Furey: To perform well, to function.

[19:46] Portia Pendleton: And even, you know, if you're not starving in the wilderness with no food for weeks, living on soup made with mushrooms, I mean, you can tell. And that's where body disturbance comes in. People have a really hard time judging their body and comparing it and really do believe that they're in a larger body or a smaller body, et cetera. But I just thought what? Just like a little fun fact of how much we need food and how it can really change our experience with reality.

[20:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, 100%. And also how some of the dissociation can be protective. Right. When you're trying to survive in the winter in the woods with no idea if anyone's going to find you, it's probably protective to survival, to be disconnected to some degree. Right. Otherwise, like, God, what do you do?

[20:33] Portia Pendleton: Right? The mouse seemed really important to her and just like a little creature. Who she's talking to? I mean, I was really shocked when it was dead.

[20:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Me too.

[20:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: I'm not going to lie.

[20:43] Portia Pendleton: Of course it's alive.

[20:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: But then creature, did you wonder if she's going to eat it?

[20:48] Portia Pendleton: I think she did.

[20:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: Did she eat it?

[20:50] Dr. Jessi Gold: Maybe I'm thinking about the ear and was like, no.

[20:56] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, I'm thinking of the ear.

[20:58] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it was hard enough to even see the mouse situation change, but I think it's I don't know. It's a cool storytelling technique to use to be like, what's real, what's not? How do you know? And I think they use the same technique. I mean, with the baby situation, guys and the fans all were worried they ate the baby. Yeah, they have her basically hallucinate that people eat the baby and you believe it for a while, thought it could be a possible outcome. The writers knew it could be what people think is a possible outcome. And so they sort of play on that. I don't know, break from every like no one knows what's real and what's not. And I think as a viewer, it allows you to sort of maybe get more in the headspace of what it would be like to be doing that. And then I also think it makes things hard to follow. And you don't always trust the narrator. So interesting from a storytelling perspective. And I also think the food thing, it's like dissociation, if you want to use that term, being connected to your body that is not functioning and hungry and not eating. I understand all of that's. Protective, consciously dissociate. I mean, people who have had trauma sometimes can consciously dissociate as they get older because they learned it as a big skill, but they might not even realize they're doing it conscious, but they still don't even realize they're doing it. And so it's like an evolved coping skill to basically say, my body is not safe where my body is. Let's take a vacation from that, right? It's hard to picture, but it's a logical and important way.

[22:49] Portia Pendleton: Yeah.

[22:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I think, too, this show is doing a nice job demonstrating how like you were saying, Jesse, a lot of times when you're faced with trauma, let alone a chronic trauma, that's not letting up, especially in your early years. Like when you're a teenager or even younger, you develop these coping strategies like dissociation. Not consciously or intentionally, but then how that can persist into adulthood. And we see that with Ty, I think especially how when she's under the stress in season one of Running for Office, she's unconsciously reverting back to some of these coping strategies, like eating the dirt or setting up the altar and things like that. And how we see in season two as the stress keeps escalating, now she's maybe losing her family hallucinated. Sammy, it seems like before she got into that awful car accident where Simone got hurt. Then we see the dissociative few coming. And I think, again, that's a pretty intense depiction, but also really accurate. Like, I treat a lot of patients in adulthood who have a trauma history who find themselves dissociating or and that can be as simple as when faced with some reminder of what you went through, you all kind of feel like you're losing touch with your body. Sometimes I have patients describe it as like a zoom out or something. It can be as, quote unquote mild as something like that all the way to something as severe as, like, a fuke state. And you're right, I think, with the way they're telling the story and how smart is this? You do start to doubt. Like, I found myself wondering, was Misty's friend Crystal real until she died? And so thinking about lottie in the woods, but then also as an adult with her psychiatrist, I'm curious, Jesse, what your thoughts are about that whole depiction.

[24:42] Dr. Jessi Gold: Isn'T real. Yeah, again, that sort of was like, whoa. It was interesting to me because I was like, why don't you keep saying her psychiatrist is on vacation? I thought that was the weirdest addition to the conversation because it was irrelevant. I don't know. It's interesting because in a way, it's like she thinks she's asking for help and she wants to ask for help, but she's asking for help in her world, not real world, but then her help asking in the real world is like this very dangerous mysticism.

[25:15] Dr. Katrina Furey: And I thought it was so, like, before I realized the psychiatrist wasn't real at first, was like, I like the psychiatrist's office. Overall, I liked it. But then the psychiatrist said something like, when Lottie is coming and basically asking for medication or to go up on her medications because the hallucinations are coming back. And again, patients with that awareness of their psychotic disorder or their bipolar disorder with psychotic features or what have you can realize that and will come and seek help. And I think that's amazing when that happens. I was so disappointed when the fake psychiatrist said something to her, like, well, maybe you should listen to your hallucinations. I was like, no. And then when we realized she wasn't real, I was like, oh, Portia, I don't know. When did you catch on?

[26:00] Portia Pendleton: I didn't until now. And not that she wasn't real. The last time we see the psychiatrist, she like, disappears, right, from Lottie's home, our office, whatever it was. And so I was like, oh, that was a hallucination. But I thought that that was the.

[26:17] Dr. Katrina Furey: Only time she hallucinated her. But like, the other time she went, she actually went? Yes.

[26:21] Portia Pendleton: And she was just getting, like, unhelpful, unhelpful help.

[26:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, maybe. You know, oftentimes with psychosis, at least I learned in my training. And I think this tracks if I sort of, like, reflect back, it's the auditory hallucinations that are the most common. And then I remember, like, visual hallucinations are more common with, like you said, like a medical issue or like alcohol withdrawal, UTI, stuff like that. And it is more often like whispers or hearing a voice, but it might not even be that the voice is saying something that's really clear to understand, but it sounds threatening or scary or could be a command hallucination telling them to harm themselves in some way. But, yeah, the idea of a friend or this whole external person, I haven't seen as much in real life.

[27:15] Portia Pendleton: Well, I wanted to bring up just your article for the Slate. So just thinking about trauma, and we mentioned this like a couple of minutes ago. I think it's so important for people to know that if you're doing something like an EMDR or an art trauma treatment, you are opening the bag up, you are recalling really specific memories. And I like how you said you have to be prepared for that. And sometimes things get worse before they get better. And thinking about the characters on the show, it's like their trauma was so chronic and pervasive. And then continues at Post Wilderness that for treatment for them even thinking of Lottie, they need to be in really.

[28:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: Safe, really good care, really safe.

[28:02] Portia Pendleton: And environment providers really know what they're doing, who can hold them. And just thinking of all their dissociations as really, really coping, I mean, I don't know if it's safe for them to open the trauma jar altogether.

[28:18] Dr. Katrina Furey: Especially, I think we see what happens, right, how the hunt happens again near the end of the season.

[28:24] Portia Pendleton: And you can see Shauna and Misty being so shocked that Ty and Van did not end up or they called off lottie getting taken at that point. And they really started in the fear that Wright comes up for Shauna and Misty again with, like, Van and Ty allowing the hunt to happen. I don't know. I mean, I think just trauma, oh, there's great trauma treatments now and everyone should work on their trauma.

[28:47] Dr. Katrina Furey: Sure.

[28:47] Portia Pendleton: But you have to be safe to do it.

[28:50] Dr. Katrina Furey: And you do need to be with a very skilled provider who knows what they're doing and knows how to handle when dissociative features might come up or when a panic attack might come up, and help you sort of stay present and feel safe is like the most important thing.

[29:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: I think it's important for people to know that if you seek out trauma therapy, you're not going to dive immediately into it too, and you don't like this fear that you're going to say, Hi, nice to meet you. Tell me about that time in the wilderness when you're like, we don't do that.

[29:20] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right?

[29:20] Dr. Jessi Gold: Like, if you're trained in it, if you see the right kind of people, you get used into it. You will have those conversations. That's why you chose to have that therapy. But the purpose is not just to expose you and make you feel miserable. And so knowing that, I think, is important.

[29:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: Some forms of trauma therapy now, like CPT, cognitive processing therapy without the trauma narrative, where you don't have to recall and detail the whole trauma narrative to do the therapy, how that's also been shown to be equally as effective as the version with the narrative. And I think that's really helpful for patients to hear because I think that is a big barrier to seeking it out is this fear that you're going to have to retell it and relive it over and over and over and over and that isn't always the case.

[30:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, there's a lot of fear in them telling their story, which you can tell even probably one of the better scenes is all of them as adults, kind of like talking about how messed up their lives actually are, listening to music and dancing and drinking yeah. Around the fire and it's kind of fun, but you're also like they're just like, telling each other how bad their lives are, but they don't tell anybody. Else. They don't trust anybody else. It's like a weird, sort of, like, peer support system that protected them for a long time. It has made them all really safe.

[30:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right. And the only time they could connect in that way again is when they're, like, out in the wilderness around a fire, which is so similar to the time they were stuck.

[30:50] Portia Pendleton: It just feels re traumatizing.

[30:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah.

[30:55] Portia Pendleton: And I didn't like watching it the whole last episode. I felt nervous when they started doing.

[31:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: The stuff with the cards and then lottie's like, the Russian roulette with the poison, and I was just like, oh, no. But I did think it was amazing storytelling to have that going on in parallel to when they started doing that in the wilderness and how you could see again. You think of the coping skills you develop to survive in such a traumatic situation like that, and how they're sort of bubbling up again now in adulthood.

[31:27] Portia Pendleton: And Natalie, is substance use certainly a coping skill? A way for her to kind of detach and then just her arc? I was sad to see spoiler alert. I had to see her go.

[31:40] Dr. Jessi Gold: I'm really excited about hoping that they tell the future, too. Is this, like, sort of passing on of trauma to the next generation?

[31:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yes, with Callie, because there's, like, something.

[31:52] Dr. Jessi Gold: Where she's known her mom is not okay for a very long time, but her mom won't talk to her about it. And you see in her mom's interview with the cops and stuff that she didn't really think she should be a mom. Not really worthy of it, not really able to do it correctly. You grow up and you know there's something there when you get older and you're able to have more of a sense of things. And they don't talk about it. The parents aren't talking about it. They disagree a lot, or they're not getting along. Well, you see that, too. And then she just wanted to be let in. She's been waiting to be let into the story her whole life. And I feel like she's been defensive and protective of her mom in ways that she wouldn't have been otherwise. But she's clearly been traumatized from the whole thing, too. I know. Even the stuff she thinks of doing for the cop and all that stuff, manipulative and whatever, but it's like, I.

[32:48] Dr. Katrina Furey: Guess this is what we do, right? Yeah. Gosh. And I think a lot of people can probably relate to that, hopefully in a different way. But when you yourself have grown up with some sort of trauma or something, how and when do you share that with your kids in a way that keeps them feeling safe, but also promotes connection rather than this vibe that we don't talk about hard things? I have no idea. But this show, I think, depicts that like you're saying in a really intense way. Jesse, again, getting back to your article. What did you think about the depiction of Lottie's, what seems like a cult, and yet it didn't seem like Lottie had, like, a nefarious intent. Right. That I feel like a lot of cult leaders, there's usually a nefarious, selfish intent there.

[33:36] Dr. Jessi Gold: I mean, it's a cold article for Slate on that, and part of it was because I was very curious about what the draw for people with mental illness and trauma is of colts. Yes, there's a lot of draw. The support and the understanding and that somebody listening to you. The acceptance attempt at finding a solution, which I think happens for a lot of our patients. And they turn to supplements and they turn to things that maybe feel quicker because somebody maybe gave them an answer, CBD something. And there's not a lot of great treatment or fast treatment for some of this. And it's nice to think there could be. I think there's some version of Lottie who is like her purpose in her mind is to help the wounded souls of the world without realizing that there's negative to what she's doing. And that's a lack of insight. Some of I don't know how much is purposefully hurtful as much as it is what she believes is right, but what she believes is right is unfortunately not really right. So you kind of have to say maybe her insight into right and wrong is not 100% there.

[34:58] Dr. Katrina Furey: And again, why would it be, given what she went through? Right.

[35:00] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah. I mean, given, like, that she wants to kill someone for the wilderness or give it blood.

[35:07] Portia Pendleton: Right. And if she were to die, who then takes care of her? Right. Who then leads her people followers?

[35:16] Dr. Katrina Furey: If she drinks the cyanide, what happens? Maybe it's Lisa. That girl. I don't know.

[35:22] Portia Pendleton: I think it's definitely the lack of insight and just not I think she's ultimately that demonstrates to me selfishness because you're not thinking about all these people who you have living in this commune, taught to be here, where they're kind of surrounding you and your ideas. It's like, well, if I'm gone, you're not thinking about them.

[35:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah. No, that's a good point. I think I was comparing her this time to Keith Ranieri of the nexium cult. I don't know if you watch The Vow, but how they're again, clearly it's a cult. Right. They're not communicating with the outside world, even though they could. They all just choose not to. Right. They're all wearing purple. They're all doing sort of these woo woo things she holds onto the files. Yeah. And, like, the info. Right. So maybe there was more to it than we saw about what's she getting.

[36:12] Dr. Jessi Gold: Out of it, being each other's family.

[36:14] Dr. Katrina Furey: This is what works, and maybe that's enough for her. Maybe that's what she gets out of it, that community and belonging and sense of importance.

[36:22] Portia Pendleton: And then it's for her, right?

[36:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: For her rather than for everyone else. I did think it was interesting as we start wrapping up the way that the show and it seems like the characters maybe led by Lottie, but then they all kind of accept it to some degree, keep talking about the darkness within each of them and then the role of the wilderness or that mysticism role. And it made me think of is this how they're trying to externalize in some way these dark parts of themselves that they ended up using or relying on to survive? And I think we just sort of see that unfold as they grow into adulthood and as they all get back together and kind of redo another hunt at Lottie's psychotic urging. Quite frankly, at that point, I think she's like, fully psychotic.

[37:21] Portia Pendleton: And I think it's just interesting. They all name it, though, right?

[37:25] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, they all have the same name.

[37:27] Portia Pendleton: Misty and Shauna all decide prehunt that they are going to go along with Lottie and her really psychotic ideas about.

[37:36] Dr. Katrina Furey: One very dangerous yeah, very dangerous.

[37:38] Portia Pendleton: And then I think it's so, like, why Ty and Van?

[37:43] Dr. Katrina Furey: I was shocked.

[37:44] Portia Pendleton: Van seems terminal.

[37:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's a terminal illness.

[37:48] Portia Pendleton: So is that her way you said before, of trying to be saved by Lottie?

[37:52] Dr. Katrina Furey: Because it seems like Lottie has, like, quote unquote, saved Van in the past, or the wilderness has saved Van from all the time she should have died in the woods but didn't. And so I was stumped as to why they would call off the emergency medical personnel to take Lottie into treatment or traditional psychiatric treatment. And that was the only thing I could really come up with, was like, did Van think in some way Lottie could once again save her? I don't know. What do you think, Jesse, about all that?

[38:22] Dr. Jessi Gold: I don't know. Or I feel like Van thought she would be chosen to sacrifice herself for people. I don't know. It's too obvious, too just like she would be the one to go and.

[38:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: She was like, okay with it because she had a terminal illness or something.

[38:38] Dr. Jessi Gold: It felt like a chicken thing that they all failed at stopping. Okay, someone's going to stop this, right? And maybe they thought Lottie would, because it's hard to see, like, in what we know about the past, we don't know how much Lottie is involved in the like, they start that game, like that game. I know people with card game. It's hard to know how much of that takes a life of its own, and it's not actually Lottie's life. And so maybe they were like, this isn't really what Lottie like, Lottie is going to be like, this is a bad idea. I don't know. And so it felt like to me, either Van was ready to self sacrifice or that they were all playing a game of chicken, that they were hoping someone would stop, and nobody did. And it felt like that as kids, a little bit too right. Someone's not going to kill Natalie. Right? And then they were like, oh, he fell in.

[39:42] Dr. Katrina Furey: Oh, my God. Right.

[39:43] Dr. Jessi Gold: Super traumatic and very parallel to that.

[39:46] Dr. Katrina Furey: Moose, the white moose.

[39:49] Portia Pendleton: Yes.

[39:49] Dr. Katrina Furey: I also wondered if that was real, that white moose or hallucination.

[39:54] Dr. Jessi Gold: It's hard to know that if they thought it would actually go through. It's pretty clear. Shauna didn't.

[40:00] Dr. Katrina Furey: She's like, oh.

[40:01] Dr. Jessi Gold: She was like, what the serious?

[40:03] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are you really seriously, guys?

[40:05] Dr. Jessi Gold: Yeah, this is what's going on. And turn around and I don't know.

[40:12] Portia Pendleton: And Ben's refusal. We talked about him really briefly before with his hallucinations.

[40:19] Dr. Katrina Furey: At first I thought that was a.

[40:20] Portia Pendleton: Flash forward and he made it home.

[40:22] Dr. Katrina Furey: And he was with his boyfriend and it was all beautiful. And then I was like, oh, no. The season ends with Natalie's death at Misty's hand. We didn't get into Misty and Elijah Wood, but I just loved that pairing and their little caligula dance when she was in the sensory deprivation tank. So just shout out to that. But then we also see Ben burn down the house and it's still winter. Right? Aren't you terrified for like, oh, no, what are they going to do now? You know? It's got to be worse than what we've already seen because they survive. So, yeah. I'm just very nervous about this show.

[41:01] Portia Pendleton: And time wise, I feel like someone has definitely figured it out on TikTok. I want to know when season two ends. How far are they into the 19 months?

[41:12] Dr. Katrina Furey: Are we only like a third of the way in?

[41:14] Portia Pendleton: Is this soon?

[41:15] Dr. Jessi Gold: There are things that in this very meta, writers shout out to writers on.

[41:21] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[41:21] Dr. Jessi Gold: But in this very meta, very awesome way of writing, the reason we don't know what's real or not is because they don't want us to, because the people don't. And the reason they have not given us any time clues except for seasons changing, is that's all they know, too?

[41:38] Portia Pendleton: Yeah, that's a great point, and I.

[41:41] Dr. Katrina Furey: Appreciate that about this show. The way they're telling the story and how the way they tell the story is so mirroring, I think their own traumatic experiences, like we're talking about with the hallucinations, the dissociating, the difficulty figuring out what's reality, what's not, I think that is exactly where they all are. But I'm, like, so scared of how are they going to survive without shelter now?

[42:05] Portia Pendleton: And the season we had mentioned even last time is going to be delayed.

[42:10] Dr. Katrina Furey: Right.

[42:11] Portia Pendleton: Season three, because of the writer strike. And I think prior we said that last time. I don't know how we knew that if the writer strike was happening, but it's going to be a while, I think, until I feel like I need.

[42:23] Dr. Katrina Furey: A pause because it's so intense.

[42:26] Dr. Jessi Gold: Bonus episode again, I stay off the fan theories, but the showrunner confirmed it, so they have some bonus episode for the season that like Jason Ritterson that they will give release at some point, given that their showrunners very into the strike. I think she rightfully so.

[42:45] Dr. Katrina Furey: Rightfully so.

[42:49] Dr. Jessi Gold: Out of respect. I also think they only got, like, one writer's room for season three or something before this strike. So, yeah, I will get a break.

[42:57] Dr. Katrina Furey: But yeah, these shows and the writing is just so astounding the way that they get it, right.

[43:01] Portia Pendleton: Like, so much content to talk about. I mean, we feel what they feel, right? We feel anxious, we feel joy. And I think that's just like that's because there's these amazing, talented people working on all these shows, and that's why we're talking about them.

[43:13] Dr. Jessi Gold: Right. I really hope that young Shauna gets some awards. Yeah, that's one thing I've been thinking about. Another thing I've been thinking about is how hard it must be to do that role.

[43:29] Dr. Katrina Furey: We talk a lot about how I hope there's a therapist on set for the actors, for everyone who is part of this. Because even acting or pretending or assuming the role has got to be traumatic in its own way, right.

[43:44] Dr. Jessi Gold: I mean, it has, right? To be basically like you're living wherever he gets filmed in Canada. I think you're taking the content in and embodying it. And some of that content is like I mean, all of that content is horrible. Right. They're all disturbing traumatized and starving or whatever. But, like, the people who have these really horrific storylines and need, like, extreme emotions, like, Shauna goes through, like, she beats the **** out of audience. Her emotions are very regulated in a way that somebody's actively experiencing trauma and years later experiencing trauma, we experience and embodying that in such a visceral way as, like, I don't know, she's in her 20s. Right, right.

[44:34] Dr. Katrina Furey: Where can they pull that from?

[44:35] Dr. Jessi Gold: Sitting apart, because you have your own story, your family has their own story. Whatever. You could have never gotten help for it before, and you're just doing the role and you need help later, but you just see that stuff and you're like, this is hard enough to watch.

[44:51] Dr. Katrina Furey: Yeah, definitely.

[44:53] Dr. Jessi Gold: How many takes do they have to do? I don't know. I think that's just really hard. I do hope that they realize that that's okay. Right.

[45:04] Dr. Katrina Furey: Well, Jesse, thank you so much for joining us once again as our Yellow Jackets correspondent in the field. We really appreciate it. Can you tell everyone where they can find you?

[45:16] Dr. Jessi Gold: Sure. At Dr. Jessebold on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, or Dr. Jessebold.com works too.

[45:24] Dr. Katrina Furey: Awesome. And you can find us at Analyze Scripts on Instagram and Analyze Scripts podcasts on TikTok. And we will see you next Monday. Yeah, thank you. Bye.

[45:39] Dr. Katrina Furey: This podcast and its contents are a copyright of Analyzed Scripts, all rights reserved. Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited. Unless you want to share it with.

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[45:55] Dr. Katrina Furey: All stories and characters discussed are fictional in nature. No identification with actual persons, living or deceased places, buildings or products is intended or should be inferred. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The podcast and its contents do not constitute professional mental health or medical advice. Listeners might consider consulting a mental health provider if they need assistance with any mental health problems or concerns. As always, please call 911 or go directly to your nearest emergency room for any psychiatric emergencies. Thanks for listening and see you next time.

[46:39] Dr. Jessi Gold: Our channel.