JUST THE CLIPS _ Homecoming — Trauma, Therapy & The Odyssey

What happens to the people who come home from the worst experiences of their lives — and never truly arrive?

In Episode 81, Dr. Michael Baltimore and Dr. Dan Rose use Christopher Nolan's take on Homer's Odyssey as a lens on trauma, PTSD, shame, and the long road back home. It becomes an hour on containment, on why what we can't put into words we're doomed to put into action, on the risk of pushing healing too fast, and on what post-traumatic growth actually looks like when you refuse to romanticize the wound.

Two clinicians thinking out loud about integrating the hardest things we carry.

Chapters:
00:00 — Being heard vs. being fixed (containment)
04:30 — Nolan's Odyssey and the reveal that rewrites the story
08:18 — Coming home from war, but not arriving
14:11 — Calypso as the therapist on the island
25:33 — If you can't say it, you'll act it out
32:31 — PTSD: the event, the processing, the trigger
36:27 — Do no harm: the risk of moving too fast
37:58 — Post-traumatic growth
46:52 — Reaction vs. response
57:17 — What good therapy begins with

Got Therapy? is a production of Midland Studios. Nothing in this episode is a substitute for individual therapy — if any of these themes land close to home, please reach out to a licensed clinician.

Hosts: Dr. Michael Baltimore & Dr. Dan Rose

Got Therapy? makes complex psychological concepts accessible and practically applicable. New episodes weekly.

00:00  Cold open (4th of July)

02:00  Self-esteem as accepting your complexity

03:30  Not-me states — Sullivan, Bromberg, and George Costanza

07:00  Self-compassion and giving yourself a break

09:00  Rigidity vs. flexibility — the stick that bends

10:00  Normative narcissism, Kohut, and the Porsche 911

15:00  Microtrauma and social comparison

18:00  Ethical codes and holding your neighbor

24:00  Ideology, the real, and conflict "all the way down"

27:00  Narcissism on a spectrum; the "phallic" type

30:00  Mirroring and validation in therapy

41:00  Countertransference and owning what's in you

45:00  Self-esteem, validation, and the classroom

49:00  Internalizing the therapeutic moment

51:00  Having vs. being — Fromm, and "cultivate life"

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

But also uh post-traumatic stress disorder. I mean, we just talked about PTSD on this guy. He's coming home, he's struggling, he's he's not sure, he's seen the horrors of war, he's committed some of the horrors of war, and now he's back, lost all his men, all of those kind of things happen on the journey back. And um yeah, you so you can see that symbolically everyone that goes to war and is faced with this is gonna have a d struggle inside to sort out what's happened to them. So it's the the event that they witnessed, then this that processing of it, and then it just sort of pops up in their but there is a symbolic order that keeps at bay um the reel of destruction.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

That it, you know, that there is that we are driven in certain ways, and if we want to get Lacanian about this, we're there there is at the center of us a drive, death drive, whatever you call it, that is always rattling the the order of things. But our fidelity to the basic rules of the symbolic order are necessary to keep things growing and not being destroyed. There's a point at which civilization tips into chaos and then we have to start all over again, which is sort of what this thing sent symbolizes. So if you want to think about this, what where this could sort of have a connection with, say, mental health things, in some ways this is a movie about trauma and it's about the journey and integration of trauma. In some ways it it shows what the role of a therapist potentially could be. Um it also shows psychoanalytically that you know part of what kept him from coming home is the trauma in his heart, right? Right. That there was that there was that the the guilt, um, the shame, um, that he could not v vocalize in.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

And so is all this cognitive stuff he must have been somehow processing in a way that is therapeutic in a way, because you know, this it's the trauma that happens, but then what do you do with the trauma and you carry it with you and you kind of ruminate and it comes up and sounds remind you those kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

And it can come up and notice that there were moments in the film where at the beginning all we saw the fall of Troy was sort of his face, and it would look like um ash floating around him, and then it would show this um statue being with its head cut off. I think it was a statue of Athena, and it's having its head cut off. Right, rolled down, yeah. And rolled down. And so trauma in that sense often shows up um so when they f when they breach the walls, they massacred everybody.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

They destroyed, you know, and the whole thing was started because potentially at least Agamemnon wanted control over the trade routes. Like he wanted he wanted more financial power and all that sort of stuff. That's the way the movie plays it. So it wasn't like, you know, there was it was um it was and uh there's a moment where um the Sinon is sort of sacrificed, he's left there to to tell the uh Trojans about the the the that this is a gift, you know, that and um and in being a gift they are obliged to take it in and they they kill him, and um uh Odysseus is inside the horse and he can hear Sinon die, and that also sets up some of this, you know, like this this this um um that you know that and Sinon in the movie was someone who um was uh uh he they drew lotteries lots to see who went, and this poor uh shepherd guy, um his son went and someone paid to take the place.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

And as a result of that, you know, this person wasn't even supposed to be there. And um, you know, so there was there there's all this sort of inequity, there's all this sort of conflict around it, and Odysseus is aware of this, is it you know, and he he carries the um the lot with him.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Might help in some ways because we're dealing with war right now.

SPEAKER_01 4:13

Well, I I think that we could we could take our few uh cue from Kalaipe. I hope I'm saying this right because I think it's I think that was Calliope. Um there is a way, you know, if someone is attempting to integrate a trauma, this is a place where we can create uh you know our goal is is is to do no harm. But this is a place where there could be serious iatrogenic effects where the um the intervention makes things worse or causes negative symptom symptomatic reaction. If you move someone with trauma too quickly to try to integrate that, something bad can happen. Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Interesting idea, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

And I've literally seen that happen. I've I've I've worked with folks where I I wasn't listening in ways that I needed to, and I pushed things in a way that were but when she was turning the back, she said, back, back into your disguises. Seriously. Yes, seriously, that's it. Yes. She said, back, back into your disguises. You know, so the pigs is they were they were big.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Pigs were the real.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

She didn't turn them into pigs, she turned them, she she took away the mask. She said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, and she says, back, back to your disguise.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

Some reason I wasn't thinking of that at that moment. But yeah, okay, yeah, that's right. Yeah, it makes it absolutely make sense.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

But there's also a testing and a resilience that you've been able to build as you've moved through these things. So that's the possibility, too. Right. So and and um you gotta be careful because you can romanticize trauma in a way that I don't think is fair because bad things are bad things. That doesn't make them redeemable. Um, that's why I think that, like in some ways with the movie, he didn't have a choice. I mean, it's possible he could have said to himself, I mean, probably what generated the conflict for him is in his mind he said, I want to get off this this beach.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Is this movie um anti-war? I mean, I I hear that in some of the news um, you know, the thing feeds that pop up, but was it really? I kind of wow, I have my own thoughts about it, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Is it well I think that it certainly shows the effects of war in general. I think that you could make a case that um uh because you could make a case that it might be in it may it may be in favor of an ethical war, that if if if the rules were followed, then it's possible to have, you know, um there's a famous saying, I forget who says it, that war is just uh um diplomacy by other means. And uh which I but uh I there's also a saying too that um um war is for people who are bad at conflict. And I kind of like that one that went better.

SPEAKER_02 6:55

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Because I think that conflict is is inevitable and maybe even necessary. And maybe by disguising himself as a as a beggar, he sort of, you know, he he he allows us to think that we can all be on this journey. And if we continue to think about this as a journey of trauma, I mean part of what happens that um um there was no way he could return as a king, not with what he knows. Like he he he had he had he had felt as if he had betrayed the basic things that made it okay for him to be a king, so he could no longer fit in that place in the symbolic order. We've say it here uh lots of times that the goal is not to end suffering, but get better at it. To get better at suffering is to accept the fact that there are things that you do that are gonna hurt or hurt others, inevitably, whether you mean to it or not. I've worked with folks who accidentally hit people, like pedestrians, and you know, and it isn't that they suddenly have these um um, it's not that they necessarily develop PTSD. I've worked with folks who um will feel bad because, you know, when they were growing up they were uh mean to a sibling um and they feel guilty about it. We begin to unpack it, we begin to see the family dynamics and the fact that you know that the the adults weren't doing their job and as a result of that this this you know created and and maybe that that there's a parallel with this too that we m trauma doesn't have to be capital T trauma as was in war. Right. There is a a continuum where you know I've worked with folks who um were in managerial positions and um um they had to fire an employee. And so they had to come they had to do something that to to to let someone go that they knew they knew the impact it was gonna have on them and their family, but at the same time it was that was the orders they were given. It was necessitated by some sorts of sort of thing. And they come to speak of it in uh therapy, right? So this there is something that they they and so part of what can happen in therapy is someone can begin to say, ah, wait a minute. I right now I want to do this because it's been the way I've always done. But they have suddenly that moment of reflection. They have the capacity to catch their mind and their body mid-flight, and then there's a possibility of a choice in there, whereas before it was simply just automatic. It's just the automatic movement that occurred over it.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

It's so much easier to let the automaticity just sort of row, and you don't have to be aware, you don't have to really concentrate, you don't have to actually live in the moment, which we talked about here so much all the time.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I'm afraid that if I truly say what I want, the worst could happen, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

And but but as you just said, uh the worst has already happened. Yeah. Uh that he's been uh uh been through that, and it just brings it back up because that's the uh that's sort of the tripwire of uh PTSD too, because either a sound or an event or a person or situation is going to trigger something that you've been tr haven't worked through yet, but is still on the edge for you, and it immediately flashes up and is something you have to deal with in the moment. And if you're not prepared for it, you can respond not so in not so great a way.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

And and your response will be that tyranny of automaticity we've talked about. It will be reflex, it will be reaction and not response. So that's what transference is.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

You know, someone who if someone comes in and they're talking to me and I can see that they're you know, I I can think of uh I can think of examples of people that seem initially very almost obsequious, like it's very important that I have to be happy, you know. And if we're scheduling an appointment, they're saying well, you know, okay, well, uh, but let you know, I I and I'm like, I don't, I think this is a burden on them, and yet, and so in those moments there is the way in which the past, which has that traumatic kernel in it, is suddenly in the present.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

And it's possible, like Calliope, again, I hope I'm getting that right, say it could be on the island, can can ask the right question is where have you been here before? I mean, the goal might be to to build a continue to build a better life. Yeah, but I think ultimately the first and the most important step is to just recognize that you're not alone with your sleepless night. All of us are riddled with conflict. We don't have to be uh uh Oedipus who you know who who got Troy sacked. Uh we can just be anybody to say that as we move throughout the world, we in turn suffer and cause suffering. Oh and the goal is to be able to say this is what it is to be a human. Right. And in doing so, you have the potential to then free yourself for action because guilt can also bind. It can cause you to dissociate and not integrate and own things that you, you know. And so it's a it becomes a narrative that they've told themselves that, you know, I'm a bad person, or um didn't necessarily have to be a war or something horrific in that. Somebody who grew up with a depressed parent, say a depressed mom, and so they're sort of driven to be able to make sure they keep doing the right thing. Like, because if they do, they're don't, they're afraid their mom will die. There's a kernel of trauma in that. There is a bit of the real that is that hasn't been processed, right? Right. That you are no longer the kid experiencing this. And so part of what happens in therapy is an opening up of that. Like the um we've talked in here before that Winnicott's idea that the thing that we're afraid of most is the thing we've already survived. And that could be a place of growth, but there's lots of things that could happen, but none of that could happen if shame just shut him down, right? Right. Because part of what happened is that he had he was having conflict with his family, and he was like being really strict on his daughter, and you know, really like you know, um, took the door off her uh uh bedroom and did all these things. And as we begin to talk about it, part of what he was punishing his daughter for the feelings he was had and the shame he felt over those feelings. So you can literally see all these sort of binding him in a way, and when he was able to say, you know what, you're you know, the little girl who you could wrestle with now has secondary sex characteristics, and now this suddenly has a troubling consequence that you're gonna have to live with. We've said it here uh lots of times that the goal is not to end suffering, but to get better at it. To get better at suffering is to accept the fact that there are things that you do that are gonna hurt or hurt others, inevitably, whether you mean to it or not. I've worked with folks who accidentally hit people, like pedestrians. And, you know, and it isn't that they suddenly have these um um, it's not that they necessarily develop PTSD. I work with folks who um will feel bad because you know, when they were growing up, they were uh mean to a sibling um and they feel guilty about it. And we begin to unpack it, we begin to see the family dynamics and the fact that you know that the the adults weren't doing their job, and as a result of that, this this you know created whereas when we're in conflict with ourselves, when we set ourselves up to say, like whenever a patient says, I, you know, I shouldn't feel this way, that is not a kaleidoscope moment, right? That is not owning, because I hate to say this, when you say I shouldn't feel this way, you already feel it. It's not like you know, you know, it's not uh, and we've talked about this before, you have no control over what you feel. Oh, come on. All right, you have the control over what you do with it, but you've your feelings come unbidden. They're gonna show up, man. It's just what it is. And maybe but the idea would be that, you know, and this is a Freudian notion, this is where it gets wrong. Um, if you catch your attractive daughter out of the corner of your eye, you're going to notice her attractiveness before you notice notice her daughterness.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Because that's what it means to be a human being. The goal is not to say uh I'm a horrible human being, but to say, okay, I need to live with the fact that I have an attractive daughter, but I, you know, I'm I'm going to, you know, I'm I'm I'll do better, or I'll uh I'll give this a name is humanness. Well, and it's that you know that from a from a Freudian perspective, psychology perspective, that the idea that we act out of reflex doesn't take us off the hook. Right? You could say, like, well, you know, I did this simply because, you know, my dad beat me. And oh, you're right, man, you did. Freud actually offers, it's even worse because what Freud says, though you have complete responsibility for your unconscious acts, you you you have because you you are it is beholden to you to attempt to keep growing. It is beholden to you to be aware of and mind your own house, and in not doing so, you you you there is an ethical violation. So to the person who says, you know, I did this because my dad beat me, is to say, well, I'm sorry your dad beat me, but you know, you um you you you have not worked toward waking yourself up, and as a result, you keep doing these things to people, right? So you're not off the hook. You we all of us have unconsciouses, all of us have the potential, we all of us have reflexivity and automaticity. Yeah, but it is beholden to us to do something with them. I remember working with a guy, um, uh he was actually a soldier. What PTSD wasn't the main issue, but he uh came in and he said um he was talking about, you know, like how he'd gone to I think it was like someplace like Disney. They'd come back, they'd gone to Disney World, and uh he always used to make these comments to his wife about the women around him just to, I think to tease her, but also he was sort of and um he saw these um these two girls from the back and he made a comment about how you know their their voluptuousness or certain secondary sex characteristics were this this this person uh obviously has not been married very long, or he needs to come to my here's what you need to do in a marriage situation. Yeah, don't do this, yeah, it's something like that. But he said this, and his wife turned and said, That's our daughter. And suddenly it like hit him like, oh my. And you know, part of what is so we want to think about the beginning, the beginning of the book, but also the beginning of therapy. I would say, and this is, you know, we'll have to find a way to maybe to think about this, yeah, because what I would say is the beginning of therapy, um, this is gonna sound cheesy. It has to begin with love. That the very moment you meet someone, you need to have your heart and mind open in such a way as they can feel like this is at least a temporary home. That just like with, you know, that something about the island that Oedipus was trapped in for so many years, there was something about that that he could make his home until he could broaden his homeness. And so that there's something about a parallel there. In the first few seconds, are you loving and connected?