Meghan & Harry Interview - (Therapist Reacts #1) - How It Feels

hey deserving listeners a lot of you have been asking me to react to the video in which oprah interviews harry and megan so let's watch my name is dr kirk honda i'm a therapist and a professor let's see what happens it was reported that megan had left kate in tears over the bride-to-be's strict demands over flower girl dresses the narrative with with kate which didn't happen was really really difficult and something that i think that's when everything changed really you say the narrative with kate it didn't happen so okay so i don't know much about the tabloids around this issue but let's just imagine a world in which the accusations against megan were false and the psychological toll that they could take on someone or at the very least the story was blown out of proportion or something and it's tempting as a non-famous person myself and other non-famous people observing famous people and thinking well you know they're famous they've got it all all that negativity in the press it'll be fine and what i know is that they're human beings for me the very few people that know about me on the internet and on youtube when i get a negative comment i mean it goes straight to my soul and i'm not unusual i talk with a lot of other podcasters a lot of other people who create content and they all have the same feeling everyone has a different way of dealing with it we're human beings and i cannot imagine the amount of press and negativity even if it's one percent and that's the one of the things that i like to tell people is like imagine if one percent or even lower than that say point one percent one out of a thousand people absolutely hates your guts and will spend 15 minutes a day trying to ruin your life well if you have a thousand fans or if you have 10 000 fans and that's one person but if you have millions upon millions of fans then you probably have thousands and thousands of people in a very small group a very small minority of people but that amount of people who are trying to ruin your life and maybe even get money from ruining your life through tabloids selling selling tabloids then even if you try to protect yourself it's gonna get under your skin it's gonna hurt i did videos about britney spears and about paris hilton and it was a similar realization of how much negativity they get and we have to add to the equation the sexism of our various societies that for women in the spotlight they tend to be treated much much worse now i don't know about megan but it sounds like right from the start she's talking about that so let's continue watching i don't think it's fair to her to get into the details of that because she apologized okay and i've forgiven her right what was hard to get over was being blamed for something that not only i didn't do but that happened to me okay so according to megan what happened was the opposite that during the wedding the sister-in-law said something that was hurtful megan cried later kate apologized no big deal sounds like water under the bridge things happen during stressful times and it sounds like they worked it out we should all just trust unless there's unless kate has a different side of the story we certainly shouldn't believe the tabloids from megan's side it sounds like a thing that happens between people sometimes i mean for those who know my podcast me and alberto we get in fights sometimes and make each other cry and then we apologize and we move on but no one cares about it and no one writes about it in tabloids or blames one of us because no one cares it happens in families it happens in relationships it sounds like they worked it out maybe if we were there we might say one of them or both of them were being unreasonable or something but you know people make mistakes sometimes it's fine you knew all along and people around you knew that that wasn't true everyone in the institution knew it wasn't so why didn't somebody just say that it's a good question i'm not sharing that piece about kate in any way to be disparaging to her i think it's really important for people to understand okay what i think is implied there is that when it came time to maybe release a statement to the public and say no megan didn't make cake cry kate made megan cry and the institution of the royal family decided uh it's probably best that we don't say anything why would they do that well on one hand maybe they just don't get involved in all the tabloid accusations maybe it's just their policy of like unless it's an emergency the tabloids say all sorts of weird stuff and you just have to live with it we can't be constantly engaging with that and and giving it any kind of justification the other possibility is that the royal family institution as she called it was more concerned about kate's public persona because she is going to be potentially the the next queen or i don't know the exact nomenclature but the wife of the king eventually one day and so maybe they're more concerned with kate's persona and her image and less concerned with megan's i don't know if that's what megan was saying but maybe maybe oprah will ask yeah negate it they wouldn't let her because she's a good person and i think so much of what i have seen play out is this idea of polarity where if you love me you don't have to hate her and if you love her you don't need to hate me okay so she's bringing up another phenomenon that i can speak to in our society which is that we will see women in power as inherently at odds with each other we might see men in power and either we see them as being neutral towards each other or we might even see them being friends or buddies or something but when we see women in power multiple women in power we just assume because of sexism prejudice and stereotyping that they must be cat fighting this kind of thing and why do we do that well there's probably a lot of reasons why why people will assume that and i wonder if that's what was happening for her she's commenting to that she's like everyone was assuming that me and kate were fighting also people seemed to be they they either have to be team megan or they have to be team kate why why can't they just be team both of us that's what she's speaking to right now there there was a whole online uh a piece about this kate eating avocados to help with morning seeds okay i heard about the avocado but you were eating avocados and fueling murder wolfing down a fruit linked to water shortages illegal deforests all right i actually remember these comparisons the same behavior in kate in and megan different tabloids for kate it is avocados is this wonderful thing and but when megan eats avocados it's this terrible terrible act against the earth or something so i don't know as a scientist researcher myself occasionally i have to wonder if they were cherry-picking this when we look at phenomena like this we have to gather many different stories of both individuals and see if there were because there could have been the opposite there could have been stories where they were both doing the same thing and there were some negative stories about kate and positive stories about megan i don't know but if the thesis is correct that when the tabloids or the news or people were talking they tended to be biased against megan and biased for kate then yeah that's not gonna feel so great for megan right and we have to wonder why uh i i don't know enough about british culture or british royalty culture or the tabloid culture but i'm guessing people are hypothesizing racism or anger at her for being an american and and diluting the the royal blood i i don't know if people are thinking that or the fact that she was is a working woman meaning you know she has a job she has a career i don't know about kate this does she ever well you know princess died she had a career right so i don't know i who knows what the prejudice was the reason for the bias maybe they'll get into it advocated for so long for women to use their voice and then i was silent uh were you silent or were you silenced the latter so most of what i understand about the royal family is from watching the crown on netflix i have no idea if that's an accurate depiction i also wondered like aren't these just like glorified rich people i don't understand but then i watched the crown and i had a much deeper appreciation for the role that the royal family has played particularly in history i mean on one hand you could look at him as just glorified rich people or glorified celebrities another hand you could look at them as people that serve the people that they have a role to play in leadership in advocacy one of the interesting things about watching the show for me is this tension between we need to be with the people but we also have to be separate from the people if we are truly with the people then there's no difference between us and the people and then people don't have a reason to listen to us they don't have a reason to look up for it to us or what i don't know exactly how they would put it and so there's a there's a tension there of it would be lovely to be with the people it'd be relaxing but in order to serve the purpose that we serve in the society we have to be separate and to preserve that separateness then that actually gives us the ability to fulfill our duty which is to provide an example and to give stability to a society when they need it to advocate for certain people against margaret thatcher or whatever the you know time in history is and when i watch the show i was like oh i i guess i understand why certain societies have royalty that don't serve a political purpose precisely and i'm sure people from the uk are yelling at me right now going no you don't understand so i and i don't i know that i don't understand but i do know that at the very least they're very interested in their image one could say in a selfish narcissistic way to in a way to uphold their privilege and their power or another way to look at it is that they're upholding their image because it's their duty to do so and in order for them to do good in society they have to uphold their image or is a combination of both right when megan entered the royal family and she was silenced as she pushed that what's up which i don't doubt i totally trust megan when she says that that it was either an effort to narcissistically uphold the false image of the royals so that they can hold on to their power or and or it was trying to uphold the image so that they can do their duty in their society they can do their job as royals and as an outsider who is used to being very outspoken and and doesn't want to be silenced particularly as a woman who knows what it's like to be silenced by society and by people i can imagine that being very distressful like wait you're telling me i can't say what i want to say uh that's not gonna fly with me and so i wonder if that was a major factor in their decision to leave the royal family it sounds like it was it was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that i came to understand that not only was i not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family but they weren't willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband right so i'm guessing that she is saying that kate and william were protected and that harry and megan were thrown under the bus and she didn't like that now i will say that one way to look at this is it's essentially a job right you're being offered a lifestyle and a job and if you like the job then you take it all of us do this when we take on a job we get hired we don't necessarily know what's going to happen and then we start learning oh there's kind of pros and cons to this job and on one hand i get this but on the other hand i get that and then at a certain point maybe you say ah this is the cons outweigh the pros i'm out of here here's my resignation and it sounds like that's what megan and harry did they said you know what we resign i know that's not an exact analogy but they didn't want the the pros did not outweigh the cons for them and so they left william and kate maybe again the way that they're being treated they're willing to stick around it was a lifestyle that they just didn't like they didn't like the way they were being treated and they decided to leave and you know no harm no foul right people have a right to make that choice and i don't know what the big deal is is it a big deal comment below is it a big deal i don't understand people can't leave that job well you can't do this because it'll look like that you can't so even can i go and have lunch with my friends no no you're oversaturated you're everywhere it would be best for you to not go out to lunch with your friends and go i haven't i haven't left the house in months i mean there was a day that one yeah that would drive me nuts that that was my guess as to how micro they control you and maybe for kate and william they're like yeah you know i don't like being controlled but overall i like the job and for megan she's like but i want to see my friends and the pros the the benefits i'm getting from this job do not outweigh the fact that you're now telling me i can't hang out with my friends today i want to see my friends i feel megan's pain to be micromanaged and told that you can't even see your friends that you would be that controlled that's yeah that's that's pretty awful maybe for someone else it's okay with them but not for megan makes sense the members of the family she came over and she said why don't you just lay low for a little while because you are everywhere right now and i said i've left the house twice in four months i'm everywhere but i am nowhere wow that gives some context i've left i left the house twice in four months i mean that tells you something right and yeah and the tabloids are blowing up even though she is playing the game she's following all the directives and again maybe you know more about the situation than i do but if that is true yeah that's that'd be hard to deal with right and she said four years so uh that's four years of living that lifestyle so i could see i wonder how harry feels me you know when he joins i wonder what he's gonna say and from that standpoint i continued to say to people i know there's an obsession with how things look but has anyone talked about how it feels because right now i could not feel lonelier so that's interesting and i was wondering if i was going to be able to talk about this actually a long time ago maybe after the first season of the crown four or five years ago i did a whole episode on the royal family and attachment theory and it's hard to find all details but i looked back hundreds of years and the royal family itself my thesis just based on the little bit that i understand they have multiple generations of attachment injuries going back hundreds of years when we're young when we're zero to five we need to have a lot of attunement well what is attunement attunement is a caregiver a consistent caregiver noticing our emotional state and reacting accordingly to us so you have to notice the child and you have to react to them so the child falls down they start to cry you you don't see them fall down but you hear them start to cry and you notice them crying and then you go over them you hold them you say are you okay and let me take care of you that kind of thing or a kid is getting bored and they're starting to sigh and they're like kind of throwing their toys in frustration you notice that and you take care of the child when there's a lot of attunement to a child's emotional state then a child learns secure attachment they learn that they can come to you as a safe secure base and then they can go off and venture off into the world explore the world even if it's just on the other side of the room or preschool or play with another friend something bad happens they run to you if you're a parent of a young child you know what this process is like your kid is in this constant state of going away coming back going away coming back and when you rinse and repeat that over and over and over again and you do it well you develop secure attachment you need to have a consistent caregiver now it doesn't have to be your parent it can be a grandparent it could be a very consistent nanny maybe a an older sibling typically it's the parents and with the royal family throughout history because they didn't really understand this and it was a part of their aristocratic culture they would send their kids away and they actually depict this in the crown the tv show where there'll be these nannies or governances i don't know what they call them but there are these these people who take care of the kids so that the king and the queen don't have to bother with the ins and outs of parenting and actually taking care of the kids well what happens with that is that as a child you want love and attention from your parents but you're getting very infrequent attention there is a professional who is giving you maybe attunement but maybe not actual attunement because that person goes home at the end of the day and you might even know that as a three-year-old like this person works for me and my family that they're not really my mom and those nannies could maybe come and go maybe there's nannies who work with you for a couple years and then boom they leave you which is another attachment injury of just like i was really attached to that person because they were the one person on this planet that seemed to know me and take care of me and now they've moved on to another job and now i have this new person well when you do that to a kid they develop what we call insecure attachment and there are different ways of coping with insecure attachment and one of the ways that some people will cope with insecure attachment is to avoid relationships the child at a young age two three years old learns i cannot depend on other people other people don't really care other people don't care about my feelings if i do express my feelings no one really reacts to it so i'm just going to turn off i'm going to try to turn off my attachment needs their attachment needs are down there but they try to avoid relationships this is like that's just better to avoid people like that can feel very cold then you get married you have kids and you parent in that way and what's the best way to avoid relationships with your kids you send them off to professionals to take care of them and the cycle just goes round and round and round so you have all these people generation by generating there's a lot of people like this there was a sizable percentage of the of the population who actually live like this and and the royals just possibly are just one of those uh family lines but one of the things that can happen in a family like this is that if you enter a family like that you will feel like no one cares about your feelings especially if you were attuned to when you were young and you're used to people caring about your feelings you're used to people being connected and being vulnerable with each other and when you enter the family and you're looking around you're just like people are acting like they care but i don't think anyone cares about me at all and it's not because they're jerk faces it's because that's the way they were raised and they have multiple generations going back the other thing that it does is there's this general message that's given out to everyone of you need to shut up and you don't matter that's what it feels like in a family like that it feels very distant even though they can be very polite it can feel very cold and very distant we call these disengaged families where people basically just don't notice each other they're not doing it on purpose it's because early in life they learned they had to distance themselves from relationships to cope with the difficulties of not getting their needs met now i'm making a lot of speculations here i don't know if the royal family suffers from this but there's some strong evidence that they do i would have to ask them and as i always say i can never diagnose from afar i don't want to i'm not interested in it but i wonder if that's what megan is talking about here let's rewind that and from that standpoint i continued to say to people i know there's an obsession with how things look but has anyone talked about how it feels because right now i could not feel lonelier right so she is saying and i rewinded it she's saying no one seems to care about how i feel and i feel very lonely that's what it can feel like in a disengaged family in a avoidant attachment style family you can the the primary feeling even for the other individuals in the family is loneliness and if you've been giving these given these messages of that's just the way things are and do your duty and make sure you don't complain because the tabloids are watching it even compounds the issue because if you complain now you're in the tabloids and there's all this trouble and so it's just this this isolation for everyone in the family and that would be really hard to deal with and that's what i think princess die was partially dealing with at least in the you know documentaries i've seen in the way she's depicted on the crown and i don't know if any is accurate but at least that's the story is that princess diana felt very lonely and she kept trying to reach out to people emotionally and according to the story they kept acting like they were in her camp but they weren't really in her camp and charles was suffering in the same way but he grew up in that system he he was acclimated to it and other people entering the family are not necessarily acclimated to that some of you might either be in a family like that or you might have married into a family like that and it it felt very lonely and very cold and you couldn't really figure out why well that might be one of the reasons all right well that does it for part one in which i react to this interview tune in next time when i continue reacting to the interview and everyone out there please take care of yourself because you deserve it you really really do

Channel: Psychology In Seattle

Views: 164,606

Rating: 4.6482391 out of 5

Keywords: Psychology, Therapy, Counseling, Self-Help, Education, Wellness, Relationships, Culture, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Harry and Meghan, Interview, Oprah, Royal Family, Attachment, Family, Therapist Reacts, Dr. Kirk Honda

Id: rN6kRwVxihI

Length: 23min 17sec (1397 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 09 2021