Episode 242: The Bear: Trauma, Personality, and Attachment with Dr. Eric Bender and Dr. David Puder
Neither of the presenters have any conflicts of interest.
Transcript editing: Al-Baab Khan, Joanie Burns
Footnotes by: Joanie Burns
Access Blog with Footnotes here.
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This episode covers topics related to addiction, which may include sensitive content or discussions of substance use. The views expressed are for informational purposes only and do not constitute medical or professional advice. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please seek help from a qualified healthcare provider or reach out to trusted support organizations. Your experience matters—help is available.
Puder:
Welcome back to the podcast. I am joined today with Eric Bender. He's a repeat guest and was previously on the Shrink Next Door and then Inside Out 2. He does a lot of YouTube breakdown videos of different movie themes. He's done some work with Facebook on their most recent Batman VR video game, and he's a psychiatrist in San Francisco. He is trained in child adolescent psychiatry and forensic psychiatry.
Bender:
Thanks, David. It's great to be here again.
Puder:
And a lot of what you do is psychotherapy in your practice.
Bender:
Yes. Psychotherapy based psychodynamic is really the method I use, but adding in elements of CBT and psychoanalytic things and just trying to do what helps my patients.
Puder:
Awesome. And today we are going to be talking about The Bear, which is a TV series. How do you want to begin?
Bender:
Sure. I think it's probably good for your audience if I give a summary in case anybody's not familiar with the show. It's a show on FX that tells the story of Carmen Berzatto, or ‘Carmy,’ who has inherited his family's restaurant from his brother, who had died by suicide. And so the first season – and we're largely discussing the first season, and then an episode in the second season, some of the second season – and I know the third season happened, but we'll probably focus, from my understanding, more on the first two. The first season shows what it's like as Carmy comes in and tries to elevate this restaurant from an Italian beef joint that's a hole in the wall and dangerous to something that's much more elevated, and tells the story of that – but also the people that are involved, and how they react and their own psychological makeup.
Puder:
Yeah. And so we thought we would kind of break down some of the character types of things that are going on, the personality types. We talk about the representation of a lot of psychological themes in this show.
Bender:
Yeah. I think it's almost like a psychotherapist's dream. The whole show opens up with this scene of Carmy, the main character, hearing these growling noises and going up to a cage and seeing what's in this cage and wondering what's in there. So I think right off the bat, you have this fodder for interpretation of what is that? And throughout the season, and we'll be giving spoilers here, so if you haven't watched the show and wanna watch it, you should probably watch it on your own. But we are shown that there's a bear in there. And what does that bear represent in part? It's his last name, Berzatto, which in Italian, is Bear. But what else does that represent? So there's so much here to talk about just right off the bat.
The Bear in the Freezer: How Carmy Struggles with Work, Obsessions, and Emotional Loss (00:02:54)
Puder:
Maybe let's talk about Carmy as a character and all the kind of things that we know about him that have led him to be who he is. Because he's an interesting character to me. He's deep. It's not like a simple, straightforward character.
Bender:
No, he’s not. And what I love about this show is that there are such rich backgrounds to each of the characters, and they are products of where they came from, just like people not in the TV world. So Carmy was very close to his brother, Mike, who died by suicide and was also addicted to painkillers. And he really didn't even know much about that part of his brother's life. So he's here carrying on this tradition of his family. It was his parents' restaurant. His brother then had it. So he sees his brother having been there. His brother never let him work there in the years that his brother was alive. And he always felt some distance. And I think in some ways this is Carmy connecting with his brother, but there's this huge pressure to make the restaurant succeed when it's already in jeopardy.
Puder:
It's in jeopardy in many ways, right?
Bender:
Yeah. This great line in the second episode where Uncle Jimmy, who had given Mike, when Mike was alive, a lot of money to help him survive. He says, “You know, Carmen, you gotta get outta here. You gotta get outta this place. You can't start it fucked.” And that's really what people say is that this restaurant is a mess. There's health violations, all kinds of things. But I love that line because all of our patients, I feel like, come in feeling like they are fucked when they're first starting therapy. At least a large number of patients that I see will come in feeling that way. And that is where we start, that's where we start asking for help when we feel that way.
Puder:
There was a kind of a nice thing that you mentioned that this is a good show because it's not about some billionaire, it's not about some unobtainable level of success that most people will never touch, but we can fantasize about it. But-
Bender:
Yeah, it's not the White Lotus. It's not your friends and neighbors. It's not Succession. It's not about these ultra billionaires. It's about people that are working. And I think that draws people to the show. They want to understand. Not that they just wanna understand, they wanna see themselves on the screen. That's when people gravitate towards shows when they can relate to it. And who cannot relate to working hard or seeing things that look insurmountable and being angry. The amount of f-bombs and anger in the show. We were talking about it, it kind of blows you away.
Puder:
It's jarring. I binged on this the last couple days, and it was exhausting. And the noises. There's always noises. There's always chaos. There's fire alarms going off. It's like there's scenes that are quiet and peaceful and you're like, oh, thank God. And then there's these moments where everyone's yelling, everyone's upset, you know, but it's kind of realistic at the same time. Like, this is what life is like. Right?
Bender:
It is. And I think people in the restaurant business have commented that there's something the show captures just about that noise, that craziness, that everything, and for this character, I think he's so used to living in chaos, which we learn about later. His upbringing, his family. I wonder sometimes if he's gravitated towards chaos, if he, if he needs that chaos almost.
Puder:
Yeah. So, before he comes back to try to take over this dying beef joint, he's at some of the top restaurants in the world. Under some of the top chefs who seem very sort of psychopathic almost.
Bender:
Yes. The boss that's portrayed, his boss, David Fields, the chef in the show tells him, “You're useless. Faster. You should be dead.” I mean, these kinds of comments are in his ear. Literally, the chef stands over him and says these things as he is plating, as he's trying to just serve in the restaurant. And it's jarring to hear, it's really upsetting to hear. But this is the kind of noise that's always in his head. And I think he's internalized it in the show, really feeling badly about himself.
Puder:
He's internalized it, and it repeats at the most dire moments. There's this one moment where there's a fire right in front of him. Right? The stove catches on fire and he freezes and he just dissociates and he goes blank. And everyone else is rushing to save this thing. Do you remember that?
Bender:
Yeah. I remember that scene. And it harkens back to another scene. He had told the chef, Marcus, the pastry chef in his restaurant, “Hey, you made a mistake today. I made a mistake once there was a grease fire I created. And I just watched it and thought maybe if it burns, everything will burn, including my anxiety. Everything will just go up.” And I think that scene where there's this fire in front of him, part of him was probably going back to that space. Like, maybe if this all goes up, my worries will go away too.
Puder:
Hmm. Yeah. It's almost like for me, when I saw that, I was like, oh, he's dissociating. Like, people cope in different ways and you really are rooting for these characters, right? You're really like, oh, I want him to succeed. But it's like they have these defenses, right?
Bender:
Yeah, they do. And I think you're right. I think it was a dissociative moment. Not that he's actively thinking maybe it'll all go up in smoke at that moment, but I'm sure he probably felt like, oh, there's some distance. There's something between me and what's going on right now.
Puder:
Right. Or, you know, sometimes people make sense of the dissociation afterwards. Like after trauma, they may have dissociated during the trauma, they may have gone limp, they may have not been able to move, and then afterwards they try to make sense of it. And they may put words to it. May be accurate, may not be accurate.
Bender:
Yeah. But I think in here we'd be remiss not to say that, given his upbringing with his mother, and we see a clear picture of the mother during the episode Fishes, in the second season [episode 6]. The Christmas dinner where she's cooked seven fish, the mother's played by Jamie Lee Curtis. We get a sense of this chaos that Carmy was involved in in his life, the way his mother acts. And we could talk about her in a bit, but there's some trauma from there. There's some trauma from the chef that's been in his ear, his boss. There's been so much trauma. I think he has a complex PTSD here as well, along with some obsessive and very rigid features to his personality, wanting things to be perfectionistic. Being a workaholic. There's lots here.
Puder:
Yeah. The obsessive compulsive personality style is definitely there with just his gravitation towards work. And it's interesting because I feel like in that world that is celebrated almost like this perfection, right?
Bender:
Yeah. Yeah. That's why Syd wants to work there, because Carmy is so good. She can learn from him. And people want this to be perfect. At least he does. And I think the thing that I recently saw summarizing Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder [OCPD] versus OCD, which I thought was interesting applying to this character, is with OCD you have those intrusive thoughts and you get anxious when those obsessions are there. With OCPD, when you try to do things your way and people don't do things your way, it's not anxiety you necessarily feel, it's anger. And I think there was a lot of anger that this character expressed too. And to go back to where he started, I think that bear he's unleashing is actually himself. Like what would happen if he were just himself? I think he would be so angry. So angry, like a bear, literally. And he has the anger towards how he grew up. He has the anger towards his brother's death. He has anger towards people he works with. He's got anger towards his boss. There's so much anger there.
Puder:
Yeah, with that sort of anger and the obsessiveness and the workaholism, that's kind of like keeping that under wraps. Sometimes with patients, I'll see where they can't work any longer or it's like the obsession or the ability to control stops, right? Maybe they get a medical illness, maybe something happens, they can't control it anymore, and then their life immediately unravels, right? And so, just like with someone with borderline personality disorder, when they have a chaotic interpersonal relationship that falls apart. Someone who's narcissistic the image of themself falls apart. Someone who's obsessive, if they can't work, if they can't control their environment, if that falls apart, they can go into these more dissociated rages, more like chaotic places.
Bender:
Yes. And you brought this up, the scene where Carmy ends up blocking himself in the freezer on the night of his restaurant opening, you mentioned about being dissociative or that he was a bit dissociative or dissociating in some way. And I think in that moment, like he says, “I don't need to amuse people. I don't need to entertain people.” It's almost like he's dissociating and separating himself from everything, literally. And also, I don't think he knows how to connect with people. I don't know that he does.
Puder:
This is one of the saddest moments in my mind because his girlfriend is hearing this and he doesn't know his girlfriend is hearing this. And so he's kind of like been in this cold environment, right? He's stuck. It's like in a freezer, it's metaphorical, you're in a cage, right? And it's cold. It's reducing his sensorium. I mean, when you're hours in a freezer, it's gonna do something to you psychologically. And so he's hearing the voices of his old mentor. They're tormenting him. And he's starting to blame himself, which is kind of a depressive personality feature maybe. And so part of that blaming himself is there's a little bit of a masochistic tone to it of, “I've been enjoying life, and because I've been enjoying life, I'm now suffering.”
And so, therefore, I shouldn't enjoy life. And so in the midst of this trauma slash dissociative moment where he is hearing punitive voices from his past, he's in this freezer and he's starting to talk out loud. His girlfriend at the time, Claire, hears him, who's a lovely person, right? Who's not like the chaotic mother who's kind of like the Winicott dream. This loving, empathic person, right? And she hears this and she says a couple words, and she just leaves and she thinks it's over, right?
Bender:
Yeah. The whole thing is very heartbreaking to watch. And I think what's also heartbreaking is that Carmy really believes that about himself. I think the experiences he had, he wasn't allowed to think about himself. If he didn't think about his mother, something was gonna go wrong. And we see that played out with his sister and his brother when there are flashbacks, when his brother is alive, how they look after their mother to make sure she doesn't collapse. So he wasn't able to ever really think about himself. And when he did, he would dream of having this restaurant called ‘The Bear’ with his brother, who ends up dying. And the brother also cuts him off from even working in a restaurant with him. So, I think he has felt he should not be thinking about himself. And when he does, he's gonna be punished. But at the same time, he doesn't realize how much he's thinking it needs to be done his way, and he's pushing people away.
Puder:
It's a mixture because his brother saved money for him. And his dying words were, “Make this spaghetti sauce.” And in the spaghetti sauce was the cash, right? To build your restaurant. And so I think his brother didn't want him to work in this place because he knew his talent would be obfuscated. It wouldn't be manifest. And so I think his brother kept him at a distance for a reason, and plus his brother was doing like selling cocaine in the back, you know? Like, I think his brother didn't want him to have any of that.
Bender:
I think you're right. I also think the message that somebody like Carmy would get from that though is, “I don't love you. I don't want you.”
Puder:
He was getting from it in the midst of going through it. I think it angered him. It drove him to be better, more obsessive. To master the craft even more.
Donna, the Family, and the Seven Fishes Reveal a Portrait of Borderline Chaos and Primitive Defenses (00:15:19)
Bender:
Yeah. And I agree. I think this brings up an overarching theme of what I've watched in The Bear, or a message I've seen is this idea of so many people are yelling at each other and angry. But what I see in real life, I also see in the show, which is that kindness breeds confidence. And when these characters actually are confident, things start to change. So the character, Tina, she's so mean in the beginning to Carmy and to Syd. And when she actually learns how to cook potatoes, and Syd gives her a compliment, she starts to brighten up. She's kinder. So there's this idea of being confident and then learning. And then Carmy felt, I agree with you, so angry at his brother, he goes off. It's like, I'm gonna be the best in the world and do this better than anybody else. And as he gets that confidence, he can actually move forward with his life. But he's still stuck with a lot of this psychological trauma from his past.
Puder:
So, let's go back to the Fishes episode, season two. So it's this glimpse five years before, and they're at this family dinner and their mom is making the seven fishes meal, which is a big day-long ordeal for her. So she's cooking in there and she's drinking some alcohol. I saw that- I think Sugar, one of the daughters, is dumping vodka down the-
Bender:
Yeah, the daughter's actively trying to dump out vodka and dump out alcohol when she finds it.
Puder:
And she's kind of like the glue of the family, you know? But she gets beat up by her mother, psychologically blamed. Her and Carmy kind of get this treatment from the mom. And the mom is like one minute, she's very self-deprecating, very hostile towards herself. And then the next, she's just in this absolute rage. And she's like, back and forth, back and forth.
Bender:
I think she really embodies a lot of the borderline traits. There's this unstable sense of self. There's this fear of abandonment. Her telling Carmen, “I had to beg you to come home. Why didn't you wanna come home?” When she feels abandoned by anybody, she really feels terrible about herself. There are these suicidal gestures, including driving her car through the house. Now it's arguable whether she wanted to kill herself or just make a point that she was angry at anybody. But that rage that comes out of her too. I think a lot of these fit borderline traits and for the kids to grow up this way, it was really hard. Sugar even makes a comment, “I'm left to deal with this because you guys,” she's telling her brothers, “You guys are the way you are. I'm the one that has to make sure that everything's all right.” And that's really interesting because her brothers keep saying to her, do not ask, “Mom, are you okay?” Don't ask her if she is okay. But that was her job. And even her name, Sugar, comes from her adding a cup of sugar instead of a quarter cup to the sauce recipe. And that's why they call her Sugar because it was so overly sweet. But that's funny because that was her trying to do something good. And she's just known by that name, by that moniker.
Puder:
Interesting. Yeah. I recently had Kernberg on the episode and we talked about borderline level of functioning. And Donna definitely meets that, right? The borderline level of functioning. So there's the identity diffusion, you know, what is her identity? Is it mother? Is it nurture? Is it victim? Is it martyr? Is it the person that everyone hates? Is it the person that hates herself, right? And then there's the primitive defenses of splitting. So this is going to be the perfect dinner, I am the greatest host, right? And then I ruin everything.
Bender:
Yeah. I should just take a gun and go shoot myself right now, she says.
Puder:
Back and forth, back and forth, right? So there's splitting of herself. There's splitting of other people as well. Like her son. You know, “Oh, you have abandoned me. You won't come back once a year.” And part of that is not really seeing him and empathizing with his experience of this.
Bender:
Yeah. And that's what I find really interesting. It isn't seeing him, he wasn't allowed to be seen. He had to make sure the mom was okay. And then he is getting that message at work as he is training from his terrible boss, telling him you're nothing. You don't mean anything. And then there's the scene in that Fishes episode where the older brother, Michael, is being told by a family relative, someone who's not really family, but they call him uncle, “You're nothing. You're nothing. You're nothing.” He's getting that repeated. And then Sugar's essentially gotten that message too, that she's nothing. She's there to take care of the mom. So everybody has this idea that they don't matter. And that's what I was talking about in terms of kindness and confidence when you could start to feel like you matter. Maybe some of those things aren't as painful or you can move forward. But all those things you just mentioned are there that identity diffusion, all of that is there with this mother character. But she's impacted her kids too, in ways she can't see.
Puder:
Yeah. And it's not just like one incident between her and her son. It's like hundreds of incidents. Thousands of incidents. And the way he interacts with her is reminiscent of so many situations I've seen where it's like you have this image of the chaotic, impulsive, aggressive mother, and then he's calm and it doesn't look like he's lying, you know? I think he has been avoiding coming home to some degree. I think there is some truth in that. But he's like, “Mom, I'm here. I love you, mom. You did a great meal today.” You know, like, he's calming. “You don't love me.” And then one little thing said wrong, just sets her off. And it's almost like there's a misinterpretation in the midst of that as well.
Bender:
Yeah. I think the way the mother hears things in her state, which is fueled by alcohol as well at this point, it all comes in so negatively to her. And it's really painful for people around her to see, it's painful for them to have to take care of her, to have to make sure she's okay. It's a really, really awful scene. I've actually had some patients react to that episode, come and say, “That reminded me of a lot of things in my family, or that reminded me of the relationship I had with family members.” So it really did resonate with a lot of people because it's so ugly. And it's so hard to watch sometimes.
Puder:
Yeah. And it's interesting in this kind of family tension, you see spouses that didn't really have this, you know? And they're just like watching it, but it's like newer for them. But a couple of them are more like the passive acquiescing, like not wanting to worsen the situation, you know? Or like, maybe slightly making a mistake. Like this one guy brought an extra fish.
Bender:
Sugar’s husband, Pete, brings this tuna casserole and everybody starts getting furious. And it's funny because I think they're trying to make sure they don't- that the mom doesn't see it because she would get set off, but they end up getting set off very much like the mother. They all have those same kind of reactions to that fish.
Puder:
They know how painful it is for the mother to go from seven fishes to eight. And, and just even imagining that for them makes them like irate, right? And protecting, like, no throw it away. They throw it away. It's like, and he's just like, “Oh, I was just trying to do something nice”, you know? But it's this idea that they've been trained to try to not make her volatile.
Bender:
Yes. And if you think about it for our patients that go through that, or someone who's a child of a parent like that, it is really, really painful. And you have to be hypervigilant about life. You have to look over your shoulder all the time, make sure everything's okay. If that's the role you have, that breeds anxiety. It breeds an inability to think about what one wants in life because you're constantly thinking about something else. Everything is dangerous. Things can be flipped at any moment. It's really awful to watch that and to think about this as being maybe a series of hours in their life. But as you said, how many thousands of episodes or incidents happened before this episode?
Puder:
Since talking a lot about the personality styles on the podcast, people are like, well it seems like this is a trauma response or everything's a trauma response. I think we're talking about almost two different things there. Because even though there's a set of coping strategies that different people might have to specific types of traumas and specific types of situations, and different people can have different responses—like a depressive personality, they take all of the guilt on themself. Maybe the obsessive compulsive personality takes that anger and they drive it into productivity and they drive it into controlling their environment and being obsessive. And yet underneath it maybe some common threads, right? Like, how are they dealing with this awfulness?
Bender:
Yeah. And I think you're right to split it up that way by looking at the personality style in Kernberg's way, and then also looking at the reaction to that and what that that breeds in people. And I think it can be very traumatic. It really can be. I see that in real life, talking to people who played a role in their life very much the way Sugar did, or people who have distanced themselves from the family either willingly or not and what that's like. Also knowing that being away from your family might be healthier for you. I really liked, in that episode of Christmas, the Fishes episode, where the cousin Michelle stops Carmy and pulls him over to the side, saying, “I've been wanting to talk to you. I see what's going on here. You need to come to New York and stay with me for some time. I have some restaurants. It's better for you.” It was really heartening to say, “Wow, somebody sees this is a mess.” He needed a family ectomy at that point.
Puder:
And I thought, what a gift as well. Like, I'm gonna take you to some really good restaurants. I'm gonna help you get back in touch with this love of food because I see that in you. I see your giftedness and I wanna help you in that passion of yours. That was beautiful, and then she was like, “You're gonna come.” And she was like, she knew that he probably wouldn't come as well.
Bender:
She said, “I'm gonna hold you to this.” And there have been countless times where I'm with patients and they wished they had had somebody do that for them when they were younger. They told me, “If just somebody could have seen this or said something to me”, or they'll be in therapy and they'll feel like they're making progress and said, “Why couldn't I have had a space like this when I was younger?” And cousin Michelle offers him that space.
Puder:
I think when it comes to- I would say the patient- but the main character, it's like when he starts dating Claire, we're like, oh, he's getting that space. He has this person. At first I almost was like, is she too good to be true? And they were even joking around with him about it five years prior at this, like this seven fish meal. Like, she's too good for him. You know, and so there's this feeling of oh, he's found something really loving and really good. And he's waiting for the shoe to drop. I have patients who get into these loving attachment relationships, but they're so primed to chaos that it's almost hard to even just settle themselves into it, you know?
Bender:
Yeah. I think so. And what stuck out to me when you said that phrase prime for chaos, what I've found people react to sometimes is they'll say, “Oh, The Bear's too chaotic. It's too crazy. I don't wanna watch it.” But I think they've done a really good job of conveying the chaos these people live in, whether that's in their head or in their life, or both. And I think they do that really well with Carmy.
Puder:
Yeah. I think getting back to the mom, because I feel like there's a lot there that we could go through. Some of it is also in the sort of borderline level of functioning, the primitive defense of projective identification where she accuses others, like Carmy and Sugar, of rejecting her, right? But it's clear that this is her own self-hatred that's being projected outward and then, potentially, these people are gonna grab onto it and start to behave towards her, right?
Bender:
Exactly.
Puder:
And that would be the projective identification if they start to identify with the projection, which can often happen to people who are living in this kind of primitive defense. But instead, often they're calm, but they also do move away. They do kind of give her more and more space.
Bender:
They do. And what the brothers kept saying to Sugar not to say is, “Are you okay?” And at one point Sugar ends up asking, “Are you okay?” And she says, “Do I not look okay?” And Michelle says, “No, you don't.” And I think that's an example of what you're saying. That people are picking up on this, people are feeling something and they just can't reflect it back to her what they feel, otherwise she goes unhinged.
Puder:
Yeah. Another defense is idealization devaluation. So she (the mother) has this fantasy of this closeness with her kids. So she kind of has this ideal of, “I'm gonna be this great mother. I'm gonna cook this meal. I'm gonna have this closeness.” But then when they have any boundaries or they assert themselves, she'll rapidly devalue them right? Or she'll also, like, she shows up to the opening night of the restaurant, The Bear. And then she's like, “Oh, I'll destroy it.” So she devalues herself. So it's like this kind of back and forth, which it's painful to watch. Painful.
Bender:
Yeah. And I think sometimes we can see people do that too. See patients go devalue themselves and then back and forth, back and forth. And it's really hard to watch knowing that that's real. I think that's one reason why people might gravitate towards this show and also want to get away from it. There are real things that happen and people really do go through that.
Puder:
Yeah. I think there were times where I wanted to stop watching.
Bender:
Yeah. There are shows that I watch where people ask me, “Oh, can you take a look at this?” I'm like, “That's too much like work. I just don't want to do that.”
Puder:
That's happened a number of times between us. I'm like, let's watch, let's do this biography. And actually through this experience, I'm like, “I'm done. I want time off.”
Bender:
Yeah. You'd asked me about doing nonfiction. And my answer is the same to a lot of people as I feel like I've lived so much nonfiction with people. It's such a privilege to sit through their non-fictional lives. That at the end of the day I want something fictional, but when there is this crossover, it's an interesting thing to talk about. It's an interesting thing to understand my own reaction to.
Puder:
I can resonate with that though. I've been reading some Kafka and he wrote this letter to his father, and it's really sad though. It's really sad. And so sometimes I'm like, why is this so hard to get through? And it's because every line or every paragraph it's like I kind of know what this is like, you know, and this is a real story.
Bender:
Yeah.
Puder :
And so I could see why you would want some distance from like, okay, if it's fiction, if it's a story, it gives you some, it's like a little bit different for you.
Bender:
Yeah. And I really like the psychological depth that shows today seem to have, this being one of them. And then having a chance to add that depth to say characters doing some of the consulting I do. That's really rewarding because people want real characters and sometimes it just feels like it's too real. And some of the scenes here, it's like, “Oh, that reminds me of this or this”, or having seen this in a patient or in my own personal experience or whatever it is.
Puder:
Yeah. Absolutely. I think there's kind of a new wave of film and movies where people want that, like psychological depth in the depth that maybe we see in therapy. I had a patient today who was like, “You know, they say that real life is crazier than a story,” because she was telling me this story of her real life, and she's imagining me listening to this and that is kind of true, right? And so I feel like sometimes novelists or writers are only as good as their experience and their collective experience.
Bender:
And I felt like somebody in this show, somewhere in the writer's room—producers, directors, somebody—had a lot of experience with mental health or treatment or something. Because there are hidden lines where it's like, oh, is that aimed at a psychiatrist or a therapist? For instance, in one of the last episodes of season one, Fak is trying to fix the game, the ball breaker game, which is supposed to be this clone of Mortal Kombat. And he's looking at the game and he goes, “Do you ever get sad?” And the guy goes, “Of course I do, Neil, but I never let it out because I use all of that to beat the shit outta people.” So it's just, there's something there, like somebody understood that there are levels to emotions and what people do with them and how they respond to them. And you're right. It's coming out in shows. And I love that it even was mentioned here.
Puder:
I was like, “Oh, is this guy schizophrenic?” Because sometimes people with schizophrenia, they'll hear messages from their TV or, you know, they're hearing music references. They'll feel like the message is directed at them. And so I was like, oh, are they trying to portray kind of a pseudo of what that would be like? And I don't think it would look exactly like that, having had schizophrenic patients. But are they attempting to know?
Bender:
Yeah. I think it's just, again, part of this, okay, what are people doing with their emotions? Sometimes they're just holding them inside and it's causing all kinds of problems. It comes out in other ways. And that's what I often tell people is if you try to cut off your anger, it's gonna come off in ways that just don't serve you well. If you try not to feel sadness, it's gonna come out in another way. And, so that, I just had to laugh at that scene because it's kind of ridiculous. But it's also so true to hear that about people: I don't talk about my emotions. I just hold it inside and it comes out another way.
Puder:
Yeah. Okay. Going back to Donna because I feel like there's more to tease out.
Bender:
There’s a lot there, right? I know we're jumping around, but that's the way the show works too.
Puder:
Yeah. It's the way life works. The normal conversation jumps around. So I think it's really helpful to get into the different personality styles. So there's the obsessive, we talked about more of the depressive, and there's also a histrionic style. Which is kind of Donna—this volatile, emotional, excessive, dramatic, theatrical way of interacting where they need to be seen, admired, appreciated. They can sometimes be seductive or dependent. When it's healthy, there's this warmth or charm. And when it's pathological, there's this manipulative, shallow, prickly, especially when attention is withdrawn. So did you see that at all in Donna?
Bender:
I absolutely saw that. I think she said, “I make this beautiful meal and nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares about it at all.” And nobody's really asking for that meal. I'm sure people just want to come over and have pizza. That would be fine. But, yes, she has to be the center. There's this aspect of everybody needs to pay homage to her and attention: “Oh, this looks so beautiful, this looks great. This is amazing. You spent days on this.” But it's still not enough for her. But she absolutely needs to be the center of attention. And I don't know if you notice too, but she'll be in the kitchen and on the ground, and then she gets up and she'll take a few minutes and the next scene, like, her hair is perfect again. I don't think it's just a makeup thing. I think it was actually like she took time to make sure she looked nice again. It was very interesting when you think about the histrionic style.
Puder:
And going back to this freezer scene. Carmy’s in there, he just said the thing to Claire, Claire's walking away. His family member—
Bender:
A cousin, Richie. Yeah.
Puder:
Cousin Richie sees Claire walking away crying. He knows something's up. He knows the pattern of it, of what's going on. So he goes to the freezer and he's like, “What did you say?” And he calls Carmy what?
Bender:
He's like, “Okay, Donna”, calling Carmy his mother's name. Like, you've turned into your mom right now. You've totally sabotaged it. She can't let anything nice happen to you. You can't let anything good happen. And I caught it. I'm like, oh, wow. He knows. Richie, even though he is not a blood relative, he was the best friend of Mikey. He's been around the family long enough to know there's something wrong here with the way she goes about life and Carmy’s showing signs of it.
Puder:
Yeah. It's kind of a more masochistic self-defeating style of interacting with the world, right? To feel guilty from receiving help or being happy.
Bender:
Yeah. And what's really fascinating in that scene is there is exactly that response you described. And as Richie's yelling at him, “Can't you let anything good happen? Why do you have to sabotage this stuff?” Then he says, “I love you.” He can't even hear that. Carmy can't even hear that. He just continues to feel terrible about himself and also starts hurling insults at Richie too. So it's this really dysfunctional piece that just gets illustrated in this horrible moment.
Puder:
It's so painful to watch people being nasty to each other too. I'm like, “Oh guys. Oh, oh man.”
Bender:
Yeah. I feel thankful when there are scenes of, okay, this is how many forks we have and this is how much the napkin bin should be, or whatever it is. It just, it feels like, okay, that's a break from just chaos sometimes.
Puder:
And isn't that interesting? Is that there's that obsessive component. That's sort of spruced in the order. Like, I want that order in the kitchen. I don't want everyone to be yelling. I want everyone to be doing their specific job, right? I want more order. So I'm wanting the obsessiveness.
Childhood Role Reversal and Emotional Neglect Disrupt the Capacity for Genuine Adult Connection (00:38:26)
Bender:
Yeah. And I found, sometimes, the people who have that kind of obsessiveness. I'm not sure about your experience, but as a therapist, something often was so chaotic and so out of control in individual's lives that something obsessive helps them feel like, “Okay, I can get through this.” Or if they really focus on this or they put their energies into this, or it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be perfect. It takes them away from chaos that they're experiencing and they funnel everything into this thing. They know how it should go. It's predictable.
Puder:
Yeah. And I think there are clinicians with high functioning forms of this style, right? So once again, I don't see these as disorders either. They're styles of how we interact. They're groupings of defenses. They're, at a higher level of functioning of that, in business, in practice, you can have very organized systems that allow you to accomplish great things for patients. And so you can have places like a kitchen that are just thriving, but the interpersonal life when that obsessiveness gets turned on romantic relationships that's when it becomes difficult.
Bender:
Yes. Yeah. It totally does. And you can't control somebody else. And you shouldn't try.
Puder:
Or because the vulnerability, which is like underneath the obsessiveness or the real emotion is hidden, right? So, underneath the working, underneath the obsession, is the real person, which is hidden. And so the partner gets this more intellectual version of you. They get more of the reaction formation. Like they get you human doing, not human being. It's harder to connect with. And then when they try to push through that, it can feel very destabilizing.
Bender:
Absolutely. Yeah. And are there any characters you're thinking of in particular where you see that or were you-
Puder:
I'm just thinking more from my clinical practice in regards to this, but I imagine this is kind of when Carmy had the obsessive structures of his kitchen disturbed, right? This is when he's psychologically unraveling. And so if I were Claire with all that I know as a psychiatrist in the midst of this, I would be like, “Hey, you know, your structure and your desire for control of the kitchen is phenomenal. And I fully embrace that. And at the same time, it's really hurtful to diminish what's going on between us. And I think that this is like one of the most peak stressful moments of your life. And so I think we need to kind of like, just have some grace for each other, get through this, realizing that this may be coming out of more than just our dynamic because you're stuck in a freezer. You're cold. You're tormented by the voices of your ex boss; of your mom. And so you're in this traumatic state. And it makes sense that you're in a place where you wanna push away.”
Bender:
Yeah. And that's what he's doing. He does push her away and she does want to go away. And I think that's very much something he saw with his mother. She wanted people close, but she pushes them away. And that's his reaction in this horrible moment to do the same thing. And it's probably not a conscious thing, but that's just what happens.
Puder:
And, and for him, like having an more avoidant attachment style was adaptive with his mother. Because he needed to show no emotion. He needed to dissociate in that dinner. Like he needed to go flat faced in order to try to help regulate her. And so having that more avoidant attachment style was actually adaptive.
Bender:
Yep. And I don't know about you, but I see that a lot more people will have either an avoidant attachment style where they'll have other things, behaviors, ways of thinking about things that serve them well when they were just trying to survive something pretty traumatic. And then later on it doesn't serve them well anymore. It's not helping, it's actually hurting. So that's where a lot of the work is. As you said, the way you described it, Claire would almost be like a therapist to say, “Hey, you're going through this right now and we should think about where else this is coming from.” But that's not her role. She's the girlfriend. But that is what a therapist would be able to do with him just to say, “Hey, look, this is pretty amazing, this control you have here. I wonder if that's serving you well in the rest of your life.”
Puder:
Right. If it was a good EFT therapist and he's frustrated that he feels out of control, eventually the EFT therapist is going to get him to voice some deeper emotions. Sadness. Loneliness. This feeling of powerlessness, maybe. And then when she hears that, the EFT therapist may then turn to her and say, “I heard that you heard the anger, but have you heard the sadness? Have you heard the loneliness? Is that new to you?”
“Yes, it's new.”
And then she probably would have an emotional reaction of like mutual sadness or mutual, like maybe some empathy for him and how his defenses have led to him needing to be like this. And then she would turn to him and maybe voice, “As I hear this, I feel distraught for you. You went through a lot as a kid. And of course it makes sense that you would want to push away.” So when, when we talk about avoidant or anxious attachment, it's like, do they move towards the other person in distress or do they move away. And he's the type that in the midst of the distress, he moves away. There are some people that move towards.
Bender:
Yeah. I also think, as I've mentioned earlier, he doesn't know how to attach largely because he had to be detached from his mother. We don't know much about his father. Maybe that will come up in season four when it starts at the end of this month. But we don't know why his father's not present. We don't know exactly all of this information, but we do know it's really hard for him to connect. And it was probably safer for him not to.
Puder:
There are moments where he's got this softer, gentler side towards different employees, or Sydney, and his connection with her, right? And then he goes into more anger. The outbursts. Interestingly, I posted this on X before, to get what people's takes were. And this one person thought he was narcissistic, which I tended to not think of because usually there's an emptiness in there. Whereas, more of the depressive personality has a lot of the negative voices in their head. Whereas, the more narcissistic, it's like there's a void. There's a nothingness in the core of that psychological sort of thing, you know? And then also with the more narcissistic, the vulnerable narcissist, you get more of the desire to protect your image. Which I don't really necessarily see that much.
Bender:
Yeah, well, I think he was concerned about his image, but only so much as it would impact his restaurants. And that's why in the third season he's eagerly anticipating this review of the restaurant. But I agree. I don't see as much narcissism. Maybe it seems like he is not empathic, but I think it's more obsessive. And I think he is more angry when things don't go his way. And there are moments, like you said, where he does tend to connect with an individual in the restaurant when he is encouraging Marcus, or in the first season, he's encouraging Syd. There's those moments but it doesn't seem to last. My suspicion is that he ends up feeling so terrible about himself and so bad and so awful that that disrupts any kind of connection he has. Like he doesn't deserve it, which is what he's saying in the freezer. I don't, I can't have this.
Puder:
Yeah. It's like that sort of masochistic depressive type of features of his personality that keeps him from seeing reality. Because with all of these things there's gaps in the reflective function. There's specific gaps within each personality style in how they're going to accurately see other people. And so it essentially brings the focus back into him a little bit and doesn't allow him to see other people and their unique experiences idiosyncratic and attune to them because he's kind of internally beating himself up too much.
Bender:
Yeah. I always- I shouldn't say always- I often will say to people, “It's hard to give to someone which you didn't get.” And I think with a lot of work and therapy, people can start to understand those things and then they can be a better friend, parent, spouse, partner, whatever it is. But it is really hard for him to do that, I think because it wasn't really modeled for him. He did feel like he had his brother there supporting him for a long time, but then it stopped. So, I think it's been really hard for him to do this consistently.
The Depth of Addiction, Guilt, and Powerlessness in Mikey’s Life (00:47:41)
Puder:
And his brother's own issues created a lot of that disconnect. His brother's addiction to opiates. Maybe other drugs. We don't really know. His brother's a little bit more hotheaded, it seemed. He's a little bit more prone to anger. At the fishes meal he almost gets into a full fist match with this other guy.
Bender:
Yeah. He's throwing a fork at his, again, not a familial uncle, but a close family friend. He does that a few times. But that's worth talking about, too. There's the addiction. We don't know a ton, but this show depicts Carmy going to Al-Anon. Actually, Molly Ringwald is someone, an actress, who's portraying someone talking about what it's like to blame oneself for the addiction issues. And when she was with someone who had an addiction issue. So we see real life Al-Anon meetings, or what are supposed to be, are very accurate. And then Carmy shares what his experience was. So I really like that they do delve into that. It's really helpful, I think, for people because even though we're talking about fiction, people get ideas from fictional shows. So it's good that it's being done accurately.
Puder:
There's this moment in the Fishes episode where they're having an exchange, his brother. And externally he looks like he's doing pretty good, but there's this moment of kind of introspection where you see him and his face kind of goes downcast. And that's where I was like, oh, sometimes with patients they'll have this social veneer. They put off this, “I'm doing great.” But then they have these moments where you're like, oh, I feel their deep despondency or depression or I know what's coming ahead. I know I'm not going to want to live, you know, type of thing.
Bender:
Yeah. And I'm not sure if you're referring to this one scene where Carmy is at home for Christmas and talks to Mike, his brother. And this is a flashback before Mike has died and Carmy says, “Oh, I have something for you”; and he gives him a Christmas present. The present is a framed picture of what their restaurant, The Bear, could look like. And Carmen gets called away because he has to bring crackers to his mom. But you see Mike just cry, just crying. And maybe it's because he doesn't know how this is possibly gonna happen. He can't imagine it. Or he's actually feeling the love and admiration his brother has for him and feeling a connection that he probably hasn't had other than with his brother. So, there's a lot of powerful emotions in that scene. And in that episode.
Puder:
Maybe he's in the throes of his addiction and he knows he can't escape it fully, right? And it's consuming him in ways he didn't intend it to be consumed.
Bender:
Yeah. I think that's right. The uncle that he does get in a fight with later says, “Whatever haze you got going on right now. I don't know what you're on. If you could see through that.” So there were clearly signs that he was having problems and maybe he realizes, “I'm too far in to actually ever see this realized. This picture is the closest I'm gonna get to seeing this thing happen.”
Puder:
It's tragic. I feel like I have a bunch of patients who have relatives or people close to them that ended up dying from their own choices or from their own struggles. Maybe it's an overdose. Maybe it's a suicide. It's truly tragic.
Bender:
Yeah. It's one of the hardest things I see. And I have a colleague that specializes in addiction psychiatry, and I'll refer families to that person if that's an issue. But it is really tragic.
Puder:
It's kind of like the grief never ends completely, right? There's waves of grief that just kind of continue.
Bender:
And actively mourning somebody when they're alive, but are in the throes of addiction because that relationship you had doesn't feel like it's ever gonna come back.
Puder:
I get families that reach out and they want some solution. They want some help with their loved one. And it's really, really tough because just as they feel powerless, you can feel their powerlessness as a provider.
Are there other themes in the show that you wanted to hit on?
Spotlighting Dreams, Language, and a Relatable Struggle in The Bear (00:52:25)
Bender:
You had mentioned dreams. There are just so many dreams that are depicted here. I thought of an interesting one. Again, we don't know a lot about this character, but Uncle Jimmy is telling Carmy about a dream that Uncle Jimmy himself had about Carmy’s dad. He says, “Back when we were talking,” suggesting maybe there's a falling out. And he does comment on that too. But the dream is that he and Carmy’s dad are driving with their friends. Carmy’s dad's in the front seat and they're driving through this area and all of a sudden a kid comes out onto the road and they stop a millimeter before hitting the kid, but the dad goes flying through the windshield. He wouldn't wear a seatbelt. And in the dream, the dad just keeps going and going and going and going. And Uncle Jimmy's talking about this. And to me it suggests, I don't know what the dad was involved in, but one interpretation is the dad was just gonna keep on doing what he was doing and no one could stop him. And maybe that's something like Michael has, maybe that's some kind of addiction. Maybe it’s references to gambling and bad business decisions. I don't know what, but to me it represents how when somebody is in the throes of addiction or maybe making decisions, as you said, that lead to their demise, you can't stop them. You can be there for them, but they have to want to change themselves. And then you can be there for them. But you can't literally hold them back from doing what they're gonna do.
Puder:
Yeah. We would like to imagine that we could have that power, right? We would like to have some omnipotent control. But we don't. And yeah. I love doing dream work. I often ask patients if they have had any new dreams because it's really telling—they’re glimpses into their inner world in a way that maybe they can't even express in words outside of the dream. The primitive emotions, sometimes it's just what's happening the day before. Sometimes it is that nightmare, right? Like, Carmy’s nightmare of his boss yelling at him.
Bender:
And then there's a nightmare that he had. I don’t know if you remember the scene, it opens up one of the episodes where he's on a TV show, a cooking TV show, and he turns around and someone's stolen his knives and then someone's stolen the meat. So he is left without the materials he needs to accomplish his goal. But there's clearly messages there, like, is he gonna be able to do this? Is he gonna be prepared? Is he gonna have everything he needs? What's gonna happen? Are people gonna sabotage him? So there's so many themes and dreams that come out here. And that was another fun part of The Sopranos, as a side note, you know, seeing all the dreams in that show too. So it's cool to see dream work back again in some of these TV shows.
Puder:
Yeah. It's, you know, that sort of performative anxiety. It's one thing working for someone else, especially if you're working for someone that reminds you of a family member. It's another thing to launch your own thing, and launching your own thing brings unique anxieties and fears. And I think that that gets manifested sometimes in dreams and kind of stepping out into the unknown, right?
Bender:
Yeah. The questions of your worthiness, your abilities, your, your confidence, all of those things come up and that's what's happening there is he's trying to revamp this joint.
Puder:
Yep. Any other themes we wanted to touch on before we kind of wrap up our time here?
Bender:
There was a great line in episode six in the first season where Sugar says to Carmy, “I'm really mad at you. You never ask me how I'm doing. You never ask me.” And Carmy's reaction is, “I guess all the time I feel like I'm kind of trapped because I can't describe how I'm feeling.” And he goes on to say, “So to ask somebody else how they're feeling just seems, I don't know, insane.” And I thought that, I remember that again, is really telling about this character. I don't know how I feel. I'm trapped by not knowing how I feel. And I think that is so true for so many patients that I see. I get lots of calls from people saying, I need you to see my partner. I need you to see my husband. I need you to see my wife.
Bender:
And it turns out, after starting to work with some of them, many of them don't even know the words for how they feel. They'll tell me, “Yeah, I'm not really good with feeling.” So I'll ask them, “Do you know what you feel some of the time?” And a lot of times they say, “Actually no, I don't think I do.” So there's a lot of work to be done there. And here's this character who feels this way. He's not in therapy, at least in the first season, he's going to Al-Anon, which is probably close. But his sister's saying, “You should think about how other people are doing, and I want to be close to you.” I think another way the message will come out of that conversation she has with him. And again, there's his limitations.
Puder:
Yeah. When he said that to her, I felt sad for her too, though. I felt sad. Because, you know, it's often the person that's maybe a little bit more healthy in the family that gets missed the most. Yeah. I felt for him, he's dissociated and needed to dissociate from any feelings. If you're in a family structure with a mom like his, and you get angry, like the hell that you have to pay for it is not worthy of the amount of anger that you're gonna express. So it's better to just dissociate and then to put on a nice face or to behave or to try to say soothing words. And so patients like that, they could have a difficulty in getting in touch with what they really feel. Sometimes I'll start to feel for them, or I'll see their facial expressions, kind of see what emotions might be there.
Sometimes it'll come out as a bodily sensation, like a tightness in their chest or heaviness. So it's like almost just describing the bodily sensations, but sometimes they're just very dissociative. And sometimes it's helpful to just decrease the shame of the dissociation itself. It's like, you know, it's at times it's okay to go numb and it's okay to not be in touch with what might be there, because maybe that was adaptive for you. And you know, I'm here for you in the midst of this sleepy stupor that you feel trying to get in touch with your emotions.
Bender:
I think so. The other way I felt bad for Sugar was because she didn't have an out. As I mentioned earlier, she said, “I'm the one who has to deal with this.” So she didn't get to disassociate. And I, in real life, see lots of people who took on the role that she had in their own families. When there were other siblings, say fighting with parents or having their own issues, they ended up becoming the designated caretaker in some ways. And possibly, the depressive style that I know Shedler just talked about on your show. You know, I think Sugar really had to be there for her mom. And I could see her being angry at both of her brothers for that as well.
Puder:
The depressive style is adaptive, especially in that context where your mother is completely impossible to predict– the highs and the lows. Because, if anything, you can take that frustration or anger you may feel and you turn it on yourself. And so it's another protective way of dealing with the anger and the frustration. And so I actually see Sugar reaching a point in her life, and I see that maybe she's done a little bit of work, and so she starts expressing her frustration to the family members, but not really getting back what she needs in the midst of it. But maybe at least it's being put out: “This is frustrating.” So you can kind of see them at different stages of development I think.
Bender:
That's right. And I don't think she fits completely that depressive personality style, but I do feel like she has had to put her own needs on the back burner. And interestingly, she marries the guy Pete, who her brothers and everybody Richie thinks is a milk toast guy. Nobody likes him, but he's just kind, he just wants to do what's right. And he even brought over that eighth fish because he’s like, “I couldn’t come empty-handed” and he's trying to make jokes with the aloof brothers.
Puder:
He's almost aloof. He's a little bit disconnected from what's going on socially. Like he's not picking up the cues, maybe.
Bender:
I think that's the way I would say more accurately. Because I think when I think ‘aloof,’ I think of people trying to convey, “I'm not gonna connect with anybody,” but he's overly trying in some ways and missing certain things.
Puder:
He's making it almost like he didn't socialize a lot growing up, and then he's subsequently in an environment with people who literally grew up on top of each other. So they've been overly socialized and they're kind of mean at the same time, so he's like trying to fit in.
Bender:
I think so. But I think for her, this is a guy that is normal, so to speak, and can take care of her.
Puder:
Oh yeah.
Bender:
And is just kind, is the opposite of what she saw in her life and in her family.
Puder:
And he's the one that interacts with Donna in the last episode of the second season. Donna comes to the restaurant—it's the opening day—and he's the one that kind of bears the burden, bears the weight of her outside.
Bender:
Yeah.
Puder:
And then he goes back inside and he doesn't tell his wife that he had seen the mom.
Bender:
Yeah. That scene really stuck with me. I mean, he's basically watching this woman not be able to be there to celebrate her children and their accomplishments and opening this restaurant. And it's potentially maybe part of the histrionic piece that she's not the center of attention. It wouldn't be about her, it would be about others. But that was really hard. And he did have to bear that. And he had to bear knowing that his mother-in-law would just break her kids' hearts, yet again.
Puder:
Yeah. You just can't show up quietly, eat your food and celebrate that? It's like, what is going on? And as someone watching this, maybe if you had a really healthy family, you're not a therapist, you're like, “This doesn't make sense to me. Why can't she just go in and enjoy the meal?” Whereas, it would almost be jarring to the reality for her to be able to go in and celebrate it would be too much, too much fuzzy, unrealisticness.
Bender:
It would be. I also wondered in that scene, and maybe you could tell me your thoughts on it, did she realize it would be too much for her kids? Like, did she have a glimpse of, “I'm too much”, or is it more as I was saying earlier, that she wouldn't be able to be the center of attention, therefore she wouldn't go?
Puder:
I think it's more that she was going “all bad” on herself. I think, someone like that, remember she could flip from idealizing herself—“I'm gonna be the star of the show”—to literally, 10 minutes later, devaluing herself. And so, she could have set out with this ideal like, I'm gonna come here as a queen and be greeted and cared for by my children and kind of fulfill this fantasy of being this life-giving force. And then when she gets there, something flips in her. And she's like, “I am gonna destroy this. I am the destroyer of the world.”
Bender:
It's interesting.
Puder:
It could be both, and.
Bender:
I think it's a good interpretation of it.
Puder:
Both. And maybe, you know. I don't know, is it insight as well though? “I'm really going to destroy this?”
Bender:
Well, I think to go ahead to the next season, there's a scene where Sugar needs to rely on the mother during a time when she's about to give birth. And there are a few moments where the mom recognizes her own problems that she brings. So I think you're right, that there can be a moment or two where she can see that. And I think that was wrapped into that too, which is kind of, “Oh, you're sparing your kids, but at the same time you're hurting your kids.” It's probably very much the way they felt about her. Like this love-hate thing.
Puder:
Yeah. Well, very good. I think this is a good kind of segue into us going to get some food together. Yes. Maybe some food. Not quite as good as The Bear .
Bender:
See, I wanna try that chocolate cake. I think there's a recipe on the internet somewhere for The Bear chocolate cake. I'll have to look that up. But, I do know that the next season's coming out, so we'll see more food. I'm sure.
Puder:
You know who's the character of respite for me? The guy that just is really bent on making the best pastries.
Bender:
Marcus.
Puder:
I love Marcus. Yeah. I love Marcus.
Bender:
Didn't talk much about him. There's so much to talk about here, but you know, he has his mom who's ill, he's trying to take care of her. There's just so much stuff with him.
Puder:
There's so much. It gives you a glimpse of how people's lives are complex. Like when you go to a coffee shop, treat the people, the baristas with kindness, not knowing what's behind their stories, you know?
And everyone's got a story. And if we can, if we can just be more patient and kind and considerate.
Bender:
Yeah. I agree. And, going back to where we started. I think the idea of a work environment, the idea of people struggling, many, many, many people, if not all, have struggled at some point. Not everybody can see themselves in Succession or in those shows about the ultra wealthy, but everybody has struggled and they can see something here, working for something. And I think it brings people in–Abbott Elementary, another show, set in an elementary school in Philadelphia, the idea of people at work. So I think people who work and go day to day, and really struggle. That does resonate with people.
Puder:
Yep. Yeah. And I think that everyone likes to portray a picture online that they have it all together. Right?
Bender:
Curated life.
Puder:
Curated life. And I'm going in about 11 years of personal therapy. Still trying to figure it out.
Bender:
Yeah. I'm on 25 years, so I'm the same way.
Puder:
I'm hoping to overcome Yalom's numbers, eventually. And in one of Irving Yalom’s books- I love his books- he's like, “And with this therapist I did three times a week for five years, and with this therapist…” And if you're not someone who gives therapy, you won't understand the need to be in chronic therapy, maybe.
Bender:
It's true. But it's ongoing work. Work in progress.
Puder:
We are all wounded healers. So. Good. Well, thank you so much for coming out here.
Bender:
Thanks for having me on again. I hope to be back and we'll see what happens in season four of The Bear.
Puder:
Nice. I'll have you come back if people want. And if you want us to cover a different show and you want me to agonize through the burdens of watching a show.
Bender:
Or people can reach out to me. Same here. If you want to email me a show you would like me look at, I'm at Doctor. Eric Bender all spelled out, and my website is: https://www.doctorericbender.com/. You can reach me there and I'll see if I can maybe pair up with you again. We can do another show.
References
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