Smothered - (Angelica & Sunhe #1) - Therapist Reacts

hey deserving listeners a lot of you have asked that i continue watching smothered and react to it this is season one episode one last time i did cher and dawn and today i think we're going to see angelica and soon he so let's get to it my name is dr carconda i'm a therapist and a professor let's see if anything of interest comes out of my face as i watch the show hey mom how's it going it's nice and hot in here the way i feel about my daughter she is the very essence of who i am as a mother she's just a precious little diamond to me so as i did with cher and don i'm going to do the same with angelica and soon he i don't know if that's how you pronounce it soon he son he i'm not quite sure what we'll find out but in with cher and don i gave them the benefit of the doubt until i heard otherwise just because something looks strange or it's played up to be strange on the television doesn't mean that it is pathological it might be culturally odd to you that a mother and a daughter would be so close but it's not inherently pathological there are various different ways in which one can get their needs met and so let's let's keep an eye out for signs of pathology and signs of non-pathology so innocent until proven guilty let's continue watching mornings with my mom are so important because we work so much so we try to make the most of our time hey angelica yeah mom are you ready to get in i'll be right there [Music] if the water is still hot we will share the bath water she'll take a quick bath and then i'll go right after her she always goes first and i know what makes her happy when she goes into my bath water after i've bathed shows me so much trust okay so right away we have something that is strange for americans one it's weird to take baths in the united states for some people and it's also strange to share bath water in asian countries i'm half japanese families particularly in the past would take baths all together so not only would they share the water but they would also share the bath there are different cultural norms regarding how to bathe and you know modesty regarding your bodies in western cultures in the united states we are particularly uptight about bodies particularly uptight about showering and bathing i could see a lot of people reacting to this but you know there's nothing pathological about it's just a preference and a bond that is unexplainable it's it's amazing hmm [Music] my mom is the closest person to me in my life ever even after life she's gonna be the closest person to me thank you baby so what we're looking for always in these relationships is is it coercive does the child in particular have a choice in the matter or has the child been forced to say this sort of thing and to believe it are they essentially being coerced or brainwashed into believing that their mother is their best friend it's possible that mothers could also be coerced in this situation usually we're worried about the daughter so i haven't heard anything yet that indicates pathology in that way inflexibility or coercion or power or dominance can a daughter be very very close to one's mother yes can a daughter consider mother to be best friend at the cost of other kinds of relationships absolutely just because it looks strange doesn't mean it's inherently pathological what we're always talking about is flexibility do the two individuals have the flexibility to get their needs met in other ways a common litmus test is for the daughter she wants to have a romantic and sexual relationship with someone she obviously cannot have that with her mother can she have that sort of relationship functionally and still have a good relationship with the mom is the relationship flexible enough for that but it's possible that some adult daughters aren't that interested in a romantic and sexual relationship but then it raises the question have they sub you know submerged their desire for romance and sex because they are worried that it's going to threaten their bomb or is the adult child just naturally not that interested there are plenty of people who are what we call asexual or demisexual or aromantic or both some people just really aren't into sex and that's okay some people just really aren't into romance and some people really are into sex and romance when i first saw angelica she looked like an angel i said she is gonna be my everything i had to be the strong one for my daughter because she had no father my first husband which is angelica's father he hasn't been in our lives ever since she was about six months old okay so right away we get a pretty important detail that the father left the family or something happened and was not there past the time that angelica was six months old so this is the a recipe for enmeshment and dominance and coercion for a child we don't know maybe there are other siblings maybe the mom had other kinds of relationships so what sometimes will happen is the the mother will have a child the father will leave the family the mother is now overwhelmed with parenting she's a single mother she's probably working and she's very stressed out she doesn't have time for friends she doesn't have time for romance and so all of her life is spent working and being a mom but you have all these other needs you have needs to parent well you have needs to have attention from your own child you have needs to do well at work but you also have attachment needs romantic needs sexual needs so as those needs emerge in the mom where do those needs go you're trying to have those those needs met you try to clamp down on them you try to say well i need to put aside my romantic needs for later because i'm not going to get that i need to put down my friendship needs for later because i don't have time for that right now but it crops up you need somebody and you might turn to your own child for those needs to be met you might turn to your child for friendship you might turn to your child for pseudo-romantic companionship the sort of enmeshment that you feel when you're infatuatedly in love with somebody it might not be in such incestuous or sexually abusive but it'll definitely feed you're definitely trying to get that really you know close mutually there's no other adults the mother can lose perspective and thus only rely on the child for those needs to be met also this insular relationship can create a barrier to change for example say angelica is 12 years old and the mother is like okay time to start dating and she goes on a she finds someone to go on a date with she's you know goes on a date and this creates tremendous anxiety for both mother and child mother is anxious because she is pulling away from her her one and only best friend her her most favorite human that she depends on and the 12 year old hasn't been allowed to differentiate so she's terrified when the mother leaves and the two of them might sabotage the situation in a variety of ways to make sure that this other relationship does not succeed thereby returning the mother and the daughter back to the enmeshment so i'm not seeing anything along those lines yet but we certainly have a fertile ground for that sort of relationship in a single-parent single child situation let's continue watching i had to step up in the absence of him not being in her life to be her father as well as her mother her sister her friend i couldn't picture my life without her i don't know where i'd be who i'd be as a person if it wasn't for her okay the other factor that we can see is it appears as though angelica is half black and i believe half korean and that can create problems for a young girl she might be ostracized in her community she might not be but that can sometimes create more reasons for insularity between is that a word insularity isolation between mother and child that the child is having trouble with being treated unfairly in her friend group at school and she continues to return to mother as a safe place which furthers the yin measurement now enmeshment i've talked about this before can be confused for closeness sometimes and closeness can be confused for enmeshment closeness in relationships is good and very close in on the average you know average wise they're they're closer than average but there's flexibility each person given different situations are free to say you know what i want separation or you know what i don't want to hear about that or you know what i'm going to keep a secret from you because in this instance i want to or you know what i want to be in a relationship with this other person and at the sacrifice of my time with you so that's closeness with flexibility and measurement is is closeness without flexibility meaning that neither one of the individuals have the flexibility to recognize their own needs or recognize the needs of the other person and adjust to the situation in a way that is optimal for each person's needs anyway let's continue watching it's beautiful you ready yes i am what are you gonna do for me today i'm gonna touch up your toes right here we've always lived together i have never lived with anybody else i could be without a man if i have her i'd be completely happy just with angelica with me so again there's nothing wrong with that it depends on each person's internal experience does the mother feel limited because of her enmeshment or because she believes she needs to be there for her child and she sacrifices her romantic needs or is she just like you know what me and my daughter we have a wonderful relationship and yeah i'll take romance but not i don't need it the other there's a lot of things that come to mind regarding this other kinds of factors that can lead to that enmeshment can be sometimes single mothers single parents will will feel very guilty about not having the other parent around sometimes a single mother might feel like ashamed that they weren't able to hold on to the father or ashamed that they chose to have a baby with a man who was not a good person and they feel like they have to make up for the fact that there isn't a father around and they feel bad about that and one of the ways that they might try to make up for that to overcompensate for it is to be all things to that child not only mother but also father also best friend also all these things in it can create a lot of pressure for the parent to be all things the other thing that along these lines that can happen is the child can feel guilty for kind of ruining the mother's life or they might feel guilty for being half of their father which can again suppress their own needs and cause them to give themselves over to the mother as a sign of penitence or that sort anyways continue watching i need a man [Laughter] for obvious reasons all right so we heard our very first indication that the daughter has needs for romance and or sex and they're both able to laugh about it and in this instance anyway they don't seem threatened but anyway who knows what will happen on the rest of the season let's continue watching she is the love of my life you are the love of my life if i could find a man version of angelica i would marry them in a heartbeat okay that's a odd way of putting things but nothing pathological we saw that little interaction where the mother was saying something very i don't know connecting to the daughter and the daughter was like okay and didn't reciprocate so how do they navigate that are is the daughter able to find and explore other relationships in a way that is allowed for does or will the mother punish that by either moving in and engulfing her or withdrawing her love from the daughter making the daughter feel bad for those kinds of things a little bit of that would be expected given how close they are but past a certain point of excessiveness to the point where the daughter either has to make a choice between exploration of romance or being with mom or having to completely forgo that anyway let's continue watching bret today uh you know actually i did i do have a fiancee brett lives in omaha nebraska i am satisfied with the long distance i like living with angelica and i don't want to leave her ever okay so the mom does have a romantic relationship with someone and it's long distance and the mom is saying she doesn't want to leave her daughter i wonder what that means exactly is that saying that she has to make that choice that in order to be with her romantic partner she has to move to another town and thus away from the daughter maybe we'll find out some more where are you planning to go i think he's taking me go-kart racing jason's my boyfriend we've been together for almost two years we're very very compatible he gets me 100 percent he understands the need that i have for my mom she needs to be there and so he'll include her in our dates so she's writing in the back while we're in the front and we uh we tore her along my mom is always first and jason knows that i do make it a point to let her know hey i want to see jason he knows that my mom can be pretty demanding okay so we got our first indication of pathology that she can the mother can be demanding that certainly doesn't sound flexible right the daughter also said that she says so my boyfriend knows that my mom comes before him now if the three of them are willing to live that way and the daughter and the boyfriend in particular if they're okay with that nothing wrong with that certainly not a normal way that people live but not inherently pathological i'm guessing we're probably you know heading in the direction of gathering more data that the mother is overbearing but let's continue watching thinking it could be him and i jason would probably appreciate that time the happiness that i see with her and jason i'm trying very hard to embrace it but jason's got too many things that he needs to take care of before i can feel at peace with a relationship okay so there's two messages there that are notable one is that she said i'm having a hard time embracing the happiness between my daughter and jason so that's interesting the other thing is she's saying before i can approve of their relationship i need to see certain things now in the western world and mainstream seattle culture anyway it's it's kind of rare particularly for a older adult as angelica i'm not sure how old she is maybe 30 or something it's it'd be rare for a mother to feel like she has the right to comment on the adult daughter's relationships in such a strong way it might be a little bit more common if angelica was like 18 or something but other parts of the world i and i believe they're korean it's much more customary for parents to be very overbearing with their opinions now to me in seattle when i look at those kinds of parents who are very overbearing and very negative about their child's dating other people i don't like that because i come from a culture where parents should step out of the way and adult children have the right to date whoever they want to and parents should actually support whatever decision the child makes unless it's like completely off you know often left field and a terrible decision that's very obvious so but that's my culture other cultures in fact i would estimate most cultures around the world it's the opposite for a parent to look the other way and not take control of a child's romantic life would be essentially neglecting your duties as a parent you would feel like a terrible human being you would feel like you'd be letting your child down so i don't know what the mother's culture specifically is in terms of that aspect but you know let's keep that in mind as well as we interpret what we're watching well i'm thinking about what i should be doing when you guys go go-karting you have any ideas what i could do [Music] maybe just relax okay so this is interesting so two two things here one is that the mother is basically saying she does not know how to occupy her time when her daughter isn't around that's notable right the second thing is she's asking her daughter to tell her what she should do when her daughter isn't around it's also notable right so uh the the first thing is like that she has no idea what to do with herself when her daughter isn't around this points towards a long history of all her life was focused on parenting her daughter at the expense of any other interest in her life why would a mother do that there's a there's lots of different reasons it's possible that the mother has never developed her own sense of who she is independent of other people she might have been in a difficult family life growing up and she hastily got married and had a child with someone as a way to escape her relationship with her parents you know her parents are very enmeshed with her i'm you know i'm speculating completely here i but i could see a scenario where her parents definitely don't want her to marry a american person particularly a black american person and she marries him it doesn't or she has a kid with him it doesn't work out and then she's maybe even rejected by the family because it's like see we told you it was bad he left you you're a disgrace on our family and you're kicked out and now the mother has no one and she can only depend on the daughter i'm making up a lot of details here but i could see a scenario like that or something along those lines but it is very notable that the mother is like okay daughter you're going to spend time with your boyfriend what am i i don't know what to do and daughter can you please help me figure out what i'm supposed to do with my time alone it's very notable i don't want to relax i get sad when you're not here so i like to keep myself busy when she's gone i literally get physically ill i get the sweats i get anxiety and i want her there okay lots of observations with this this duo so one she gets anxious she actually has a physical anxiety reaction the other notable thing is the daughter is going what [Laughter] like either i don't i didn't know that or that doesn't sound healthy to me so why would a mother have anxiety like that well lots of different reasons one she could be making up those symptoms to to guilt the daughter into staying close to the mother that wouldn't be unusual in an enmeshed relationship um you know parents who are being coercive of children in a mesh relationship will sometimes make up physical symptoms or psychological symptoms to suck suck the child back in uh they might even use it as a you know a guilt trip of just like so while you were gone all night i had a complete meltdown or i wanted to kill myself and you weren't here to help me so it's manipulative now sometimes the person could be so pathological that they'll invent those psychological symptoms and the psychological symptoms will actually become real uh psychogenic if you will or physical symptoms like stomach ache this kind of thing so they could be making it up they could be using it as a manipulation it could be generated by their own psychopathology of dependency on their own child but there's another possibility that she actually legitimately has anxiety symptoms this is probably more likely but who knows and so why would separation from her cause that anxiety well where we know that when a child experiences a lot of chaos with regards to their childhood at the age of five six seven years old sometimes it'll manifest in what we call separation anxiety in that the kid goes to school and is terrified mom even just goes to the dentist for a couple hours and child is terrified and just terrified that their mom or dad is going to die or going to abandon them or something and the child is only not anxious when they're in physical proximity to their parent we call this separation anxiety and we understand this this is an understandable condition that children will exhibit when they have difficulties early in life but it can also happen from parent to child a parent can have separation anxiety from their own children particularly if they depend on their adult child for all of their attachment needs maybe that's what's going on let's continue watching well i didn't know all that [Music] okay well next time hopefully you guys will invite me [Music] okay sounded a little coercive all right well hopefully next time you'll invite me right you know it's not doesn't sound very flexible so we're definitely starting to see some red flags of pathology let's continue watching it's nice to have oh well that looks like it's the end of that duo so i will end the rel the i'll end the relationship here i'll end the episode here uh let me know what you think in the comments below always remember i have not seen the rest of this season so i have no idea where this heads maybe it goes off the rails uh try not to spoil it too much in the comments because sometimes i read the comments and everyone out there please take care of yourself because you deserve it you really really do

Channel: Psychology In Seattle

Views: 68,084

Rating: 4.9519567 out of 5

Keywords: Smothered, therapist reacts, reaction video, analysis, commentary, family therapist, couples counselor, psychology

Id: ohZYtD1mctw

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020