- So that right there
is a strategic apology.
It's a "how can I get this over with
as fast as possible" apology.
There's no "I'm sorry,"
there's no expression of remorse,
there's simply "I snapped at you,
I'll check my tone in the future."
Right?
I'm not gonna cry.
I'm not, not, not gonna cry.
It doesn't help anything, it won't make a difference.
"Mended Light."
(upbeat music)
(audience cheers)
Welcome to "Wednesday Gets Therapized,"
Wednesday Addams from the Netflix series.
I love this series.
As a long time fan of "The Addams Family,"
I just thought it was a perfect, perfect modern update.
I want to explore a little bit about emotional suppression.
Wednesday is coded as neurodivergent, right,
and we're gonna talk about that in an upcoming episode,
but I wanna focus in on just what it does to any of us
when we hold in our grief,
when we hold in our sadness,
when we hold in caring about people, or being angry,
or being overwhelmed, right?
So let's dive in and look at why
Wednesday struggles with this
and then talk about how it applies to us.
- Why are you crying?
- Because I'm upset!
Haven't you ever cried?
Or are you above that too?
(Enid cries)
(soft orchestral music)
- It was the week after Halloween.
I was six years old.
I took my pet scorpion, Nero,
out for his afternoon stroll.
- Aw, she has a pet scorpion.
(Jonathan laughs)
- [Wednesday] They wondered what kind of freak
would have a scorpion for a pet.
Two of them held me down and made me watch.
(dark music)
(bullies laugh)
(scorpion squelches)
While the others ran Nero over until...
(somber orchestral music)
It was snowing when I buried what was left of him.
I cried my little black heart out.
But tears don't fix anything.
- We'll talk about that in a second.
- So I vowed to never do it again.
- Part of life is forming attachments.
It's part of being human.
And the attachments look different for different people
based on their personality,
based on how their psychology,
based on their neurology,
based on their culture.
Attachments look different.
And in her case, she was attached to a scorpion.
I think that's super on brand
and that's so funny that they had her
have this giant scorpion on a leash that she was walking.
We form attachments.
Unavoidably, we lose them.
To death,
to moving away,
to growing up,
to divorce, to breaking up.
And that is heartbreaking and it's really hard.
And so, a lot of people choose
not to form attachments after that
because they don't want that pain anymore.
It's been said that the only way to live without pain
is to live without love, right?
But the fact is if you live without love
you still carry pain.
You carry the pain of isolation,
you carry that pain of lack of connection.
Now, some people truly don't care
and they don't really want that connection,
but most people do.
And Wednesday says in this scene,
"I cried my little black heart out,
but it didn't change anything.
The tears don't help anything,
so I never cried again."
And she's failing to see what the purpose of tears is.
She sees it as weakness, or if not weakness,
at the very least purposeless.
It won't fix anything, so why do it?
Well, it depends on what you're thinking of
when you say it won't fix anything.
Tears almost never change a circumstance.
Tears almost never change a situation.
But tears are our body's natural release for grief
and for sadness,
when we're dealing with trauma,
when we're dealing with loss.
Instead of carrying those heavy emotions within us
and then taking a toll on our bodies
or taking a toll on our minds,
we release them
and physiologically that looks like tears.
But Wednesday's not there yet, right?
She's not ready to really form attachments yet.
She doesn't really, I mean,
she says, "No one tortures my brother but me," right?
That's not really an attachment,
that's just staking a claim.
She's not really connected to her parents,
she's got a roommate that she finds annoying,
and Thing is here to spy on here
and Thing was trying to help her and it didn't go well,
so she said some really mean things to him
and then we get this.
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- I'm busy and bees totally creep me out.
Why don't you ask Thing?
Oh, wait, you can't because he's mad at you.
- Why's he mad?
He's the one who screwed up with Rowan.
- All I know is that we spent an hour
giving each other mannies
and he really opened up.
He feels like you don't respect him as a person.
- Well, technically he's only a hand.
- Wednesday,
he's your family,
and he would do anything for you.
Go apologize and I'll reconsider helping you.
- Giving each other mannies.
- I snapped at you.
I'll check my tone in the future.
Now chop-chop, before all our leads turn cold.
- So that right there
is a strategic apology.
It's a "how can I get this over with
as fast as possible" apology.
There's no "I'm sorry,"
there's no expression of remorse,
there's simply "I snapped at you,
I'll check my tone in the future."
Right?
So that's an acknowledgement of fault,
that's taking ownership and accountability,
"I'll check my tone in the future."
So there's "I snapped at you,"
which is acknowledgement,
that's taking responsibility, right,
that's being accountable,
and "I'll check my tone in the future,"
here's my plan for making it right.
But she skipped something in the middle
which is remorse,
which is "I'm sorry that I hurt you."
And she doesn't really want to express that
because that is vulnerability, right?
And that's a bid for connection
and she doesn't want to connect.
Last time she connected, she got hurt.
Last time she connected, she felt grief and loss,
and so she is completely shut down and powered down.
And Thing's not having it.
He's not impressed with that apology.
- What is it that you want?
Hand cream?
Nail buffer?
New cuticle scissors?
Consider it done.
- Sit down is what he's doing.
(Wednesday sighs)
- I know I'm stubborn, single-minded, and obsessive.
But those are all traits of good writers.
Yes, and serial killers.
What's your point?
I have nothing to get off of my chest
and I am not submitting to your emotional blackmail.
(soft orchestral music)
Fine.
- So show me what's going on, he says.
- When Rowan showed me this,
it confirmed my greatest fear.
That I'm going to be responsible for something terrible.
Not good terrible like Ivan,
bad terrible.
And I can't let that happen.
That's why I need to find out the truth.
Breathe a word of this to anyone and I will end you.
(Jonathan laughs)
- Slides back.
Okay so,
Thing is making bids for connection,
he's telling her that she's obsessive and stubborn-headed
and she's acknowledging it
but she doesn't see anything wrong with it.
And that's both a strength and a weakness, right?
To own who you are and to be proud of who you are
and not see anything wrong with it is a strength.
It's also a weakness if you're hurting people,
or hands, in this case,
and you're just like, eh, it's your problem to deal with,
not mine.
She has a hard time understanding the emotions of others
and seeing the emotions of others
and that's part of her neurodivergence
that we're going to address in a different episode,
but I like that Thing pushes.
He pushes her to take more ownership
and to see how she's hurt him
and then he also, for his part,
sees this is as far as she's gonna go today, maybe ever,
so I'm gonna take it as a win,
which is when he reaches and he pats her hand
because she's opening up.
Now, later, Wednesday finds her room ransacked
and Thing stabbed with a knife into the wall
and he's not responding,
so she rushes him to Uncle Fester.
(dramatic music)
- Fester!
Fester, help!
Help, help, help, Thing's not moving!
He was stabbed.
- Get him on the table.
(electricity crackles) (dramatic music)
(electricity crackles)
Oh, come on, Thing.
- Jenna Ortega's acting here is so good.
She and Tim Burton were talking about
how it was crucial that this be the only time
that you see her cry in the series
as, you know, as a 16 year old.
(somber music)
She hasn't let herself cry.
- He's gone, Wednesday.
- Since her scorpion died. - No, he's not.
Thing.
If you can hear me,
if you die, I will kill you.
(Jonathan laughs)
Go again.
Now, again, please!
(electricity crackles)
- I love that she says please.
She never says please.
I think that's significant.
(electricity crackles)
But she is letting herself really feel,
and the relief.
(soft orchestral music)
- For a minute,
we thought you'd picked your last lock, buddy.
- Who did this to you?
Knife from behind the back.
Cowards.
I promise that whoever did this to you will suffer.
And it will be slow,
long,
and excruciatingly painful.
(Jonathan laughs)
- That's how she says I love you.
And then she actually connects with him.
- I'll stitch him back up.
They found your motorbike, so,
the sheriff won't be far, you need to go.
Maybe next time steal something a little less conspicuous.
- Well, where's the fun in that?
- He's a perfect Uncle Fester, by the way.
- Right, I'll lay low here tonight,
keep an eye on the patient,
and I'll skedaddle in the morning.
- I guess I'll see you at your arraignment
or the next family reunion.
- You'll always be my favorite, Wednesday.
- Be sure to tell Pugsley that.
It'll give him a complex.
(Jonathan chuckles)
- So they've got this beautiful moment of connection here.
She allowed herself to be vulnerable
in front of her uncle.
You know, he saw her cry,
he saw her desperation.
And when it's done,
she makes no apologies for it
and he doesn't expect her to
and he's not awkward about it.
You know, she calmly wipes her tears away.
There's this beautiful thing here
where Wednesday has allowed herself to feel connection
and with connection comes the risk of loss,
or the certainty of loss.
But it's also the only way to really live
is to have people that you care about,
causes that you care about,
things that you care about,
ha, Things that you care about.
And the thing about emotional suppression
is it only hurts us.
Morticia says at the beginning of the series,
says to Wednesday, "You're brilliant,
but you get in your own way."
Now, not everybody feels the same way,
we're gonna talk about that
in our next "Wednesday" episode,
not everybody thinks the same way,
not everybody processes or relates in the same way
and that's fine, that's great.
But we do need to feel.
And when we intentionally stuff our feelings,
'cause there's a difference between, you know,
she's autism coded,
and so there's some emotional disconnect there,
at least different from how other people relate
and how other people feel,
and that's just part of who she is.
But very specifically, she doesn't allow herself to cry
or to connect because she lost her scorpion.
And the whole series of "Wednesday"
is about her learning to value attachments again
and to value showing herself again
and revealing herself again
and being rewarded for that with trust and companionship
and people who have her back, right?
When we stuff our emotions,
we think that we're managing them,
or that we're conquering them,
really we're just making it so that,
she talks about it'll give Pugsley a complex,
but it will give you a complex.
We have all sorts of problems in our relationships
from an inability to open up,
inability to trust,
inability to be honest,
or being so blunt that you're hurtful
all because we want to push these emotions down.
But they demand to be felt
and with the right people
they demand to be expressed.
She expressed this in front of Fester
and the warmth between them,
I mean, look at the look in her face.
There's so much love there
because that trust is rewarded.
So whatever you're holding inside,
release it.
Talk to somebody that you can trust with it.
Could be a counselor,
could be family or a friend,
could be just you alone in a car
having a conversation with yourself,
could be your higher power.
But don't hold that inside
because you're not living an emotionally full life
and you could do damage to yourself
or to your relationships
by just holding it in.
If you enjoyed this video,
I'd like to refer you to another one of our videos,
"Why Do You Lack Emotional Confidence?"
Right, confidence in managing your emotions
or in connecting with other people emotionally.
Check that video out.
If you need help letting things out
and working through them,
I invite you to go to mendedlight.com
and schedule a complementary 15 minute consultation
with one of our specialists.
Also if you have a hard time relating with people
or connecting with people
or working through trauma,
at mendedlight.com you can learn more
about our membership site
where we have a whole series of online courses
to help you process trauma,
help you with relationship skills.
All of these courses, I have created,
they're all starring me
and they are there for you to enjoy.
What did you think of "Wednesday?"
Let us know in the comments below.
How has holding emotions inside harmed you,
and how have you released them?
How has that been healing for you?
Let us know in the comments below
because we love for you to learn from each other
and we love to learn from you.
Until next time, folks,
keep shining because we need your light.
(upbeat music) (audience cheers)