Mary Dobson, LMFT, CEDS, interview was published in HighsNobiety today on the unfolding Jonah Hill/Sarah Brady alleged ‘emotional abuse’ scandal

HighsNoblety today interview.

Full Transcript of the Interview

1. In Jonah’s text messages to Sarah, he asks her to stop doing several things, including surfing with men, posting photos of herself in a bathing suit, and modeling. Are these legitimate things to ask of a partner?

Great question. In the now infamous text exchange, Jonah presents Sarah with several areas of uncomfortability for him in the form of that laundry list of items. For the record, there is nothing wrong with a partner sharing about areas of vulnerability and discomfort, or even asking for reassurance and comfort from their partner around these areas that induce insecurity or fear of abandonment or betrayal. With that said, it is critical to note the undertones in Jonah’s text messages, for he was not merely asking Sarah to stop doing these things—he was giving her an ultimatum between engaging in these activities, or having him as a partner. Asking and telling are not the same. While it’s acceptable to say, “this behavior makes me uncomfortable and I wish it didn’t,” or I wish I could avoid this feeling of discomfort somehow,” it is another thing entirely to say, “this behavior makes me uncomfortable, and because I’m uncomfortable, you will now need to alter your behavior and rearrange it in a way that gives me a feeling of comfort.” Such a suggestion infers that Jonah’s internal emotional life has a higher priority value than Sarah’s happiness, livelihood, identity, and personal freedoms. 

If Jonah felt that being in a relationship with Sarah was untenable unless she amended her lifestyle, then the correct statement would be, “I care about you and would like to be in a relationship with you, but I am too insecure at this moment in time to tolerate the feelings of discomfort triggered by your public image, body, surf culture, and social life, so I need to take space, do some more work on myself, and perhaps come back when I am strong enough to tolerate my insecurities and accept you for you are at this moment.” It is never the job of a partner to determine our comfort. That is, as we shrinks like to say, “an inside job.” Expecting others to change so that we aren’t triggered is unrealistic, and an ineffective relational strategy, no matter what kind of relationship it is (parent/child, friendship, siblings.) People don’t owe us behavioral change. We can ask, but it’s never owed. 

2. I’ve been seeing a lot of discussion online about how Jonah’s text messages weaponize “therapy speak” — for example, he characterizes the things he doesn’t want Sarah doing as his “boundaries for romantic partnership.” What are your thoughts on this?

As we know by the brilliant film Stutz, Jonah appreciates, and has participated in, therapy. Unfortunately, Jonah’s experience as a longtime therapy patient does not qualify him as a therapist himself, and he is certainly not Sarah’s therapist. What we see in the texts is Jonah utilizing a “one-up position” with Sarah, acting as expert on boundaries by way of his experience in therapy, and simultaneously capitalizing on her lack of experience with  “therapy-speak.” This is actually manipulative, whether Jonah intends it to be or not. In Jonah’s desperation to feel comfortable in his relationship, Jonah presents his boundaries in a way that suggests they are endorsed by his therapist, and covertly uses his therapist as an abettor to his statements (while it is highly unlikely that any therapist would have validated Jonah’s demands within the context they were presented.) 

Jonah’s weaponizing use of term ‘boundaries’ reflects his ignorance of the therapeutic tool he’s attempting to utilize. Boundaries are intended to insulate something that is precious to us, in order to protect it. Jonah can set boundaries for himself, as we all may, but he is in fact very much crossing a boundary by setting boundaries for his partner’s behavior. 

3. I’ve seen people point out that setting boundaries doesn’t mean setting “rules” for other people - do you agree, and do you have any examples of more appropriate asks when it comes to boundary-setting?

We set boundaries for ourselves. A boundary that dictates the behavior of another person is not a boundary, but a ploy for control. For example, we can’t set a boundary that a parent doesn’t drink too much at a holiday dinner. We CAN set a boundary that if a parent drinks too much at a holiday dinner, we can choose not to be around them, by either leaving or asking them to leave. Boundaries are how we pre-determine our level of participation in a tricky situation. Here is an example of an appropriate boundary that Jonah could have set with Sarah: “I have decided that it’s too triggering for me to see people admiring your body on Instagram, so I’ve decided to unfollow your account so I don’t have to look.”

4. How do you think gender and gender roles play into the conflict between Jonah and Sarah? 

Jonah wanted Sarah to cover up, and specifically limit socializing with men, because he saw her body as an object of lust and objectification. Jonah did not trust other men around Sarah with her body, but he also did not trust Sarah with her body. Jonah’s request that Sarah limit viewership of her body to him alone indicates possession, and such a viewpoint is rarely seen in a female to male relationship. Jonah saw Sarah’s body as possessing the power to attract admiration and arousal, and he wanted to rid her of this power in order to disempower Sarah. 

5. Is there anything else about Jonah’s text messages that raises red flags for you? 

This conflict was marked not only by gender and gender roles, but by the power and economic imbalance between a wealthy celebrity and someone who is not. Jonah’s tone with Sarah implies superiority, and is alternately pedantic, patronizing, dismissive, and ridiculing. Jonah holds the power in the relationship with Sarah, and Sarah must accommodate his whims and demands, or another woman will step in who will. Jonah’s knowledge of his celebrity and fame comes through his lines as entitlement and expectations that Sarah will cater to his wishes because his needs and wants are of higher importance than hers. 

At one point in the interchange, Jonah and Sarah reference a financial arrangement. Sarah has begun questioning Jonah’s authority, and confronting his behavior. Jonah reminds her that he has financial leverage over her, even including her own psychotherapy bill. He offers to continue to pay for her therapy through the end of the year, which is unsettling, because many therapists may be swayed to side with a celebrity who is footing the bill over his partner, who is not. Sarah’s financial dependence on Jonah is an overlooked element in the power differential between them. Sarah was beholden to Jonah, and more likely to acquiesce to his demands, however unreasonable, because he was helping her. 

6. There’s been a fair bit of criticism leveraged at Sarah for posting the messages online. What’s your take on that?

The veracity with which Sarah has unleashed this character assassination is without question concerning. Over the past week, Sarah has doubled down and posted a near constant stream of private text messages between herself and her famous ex. While Sarah may have recently experienced a therapeutic breakthrough in which she feels freed from her self-blame around not being able to make this relationship work, Sarah’s compulsive posting and incessant attacks on Jonah are misguided. I believe that Sarah’s motive to help liberate other women from controlling relationships has been surpassed by her righteous indignation, and desire for revenge. When we are so committed to ‘cancelling’ someone due to their treatment of us, it is generally more constructive to look inward and find forgiveness for the qualities in ourselves that allowed such disrespect. In lieu of persisting with her focus on Jonas, I would recommend addressing this anger and venom in therapy, so it can be productive. 

·7. Do you think Jonah’s behavior constitutes emotional abuse? Do you have any advice for someone in a similar predicament?

Most people, at some time or another, will exhibit emotional abuse towards another person. I have treated many couples who were stuck in a pattern of emotional abuse with one another for decades, only to enter couples counseling, learn tools, become better attuned to one another and themselves, and find a new, peaceful and productive communication style. Sometimes, individuals are emotionally abusive in one relationship, and become emotionally abused in another. Poor communication skills and inadequate conflict resolution can be resolved in therapy, with impressive results. It would be unfair to label Jonah as an emotional abuser. Rather, it is fair to say that Sarah’s world and all that came along with it presented a challenge to Jonah which he could not overcome. Rather than acknowledging the mismatch between his insecurities and her lifestyle, Jonah attempted to force Sarah to become someone she is not. Upon discovering that, Sarah exploded with rage, mostly self-directed, for having put the success of a relationship above her personal authenticity. This rage has largely come out at Jonah as the trigger for her self-abandonment. One would hope that she is also looking at her part, and giving herself grace for losing herself in people-pleasing to suit a charismatic personality. Ultimately, no relationship is worth self-abandonment, and a healthy relationship will never request divorcing parts of yourself in order to maintain its survival. 

Click here for more information on couples therapy.

When Compare Equals Despair, (And How To Handle It)

By Mary Dobson, licensed psychotherapist, certified eating disorder specialist, Founder/CEO: Lift Wellness Company, (serving Westport CT in-person, and TN, VA, CO, TX, NY, DC, GA, NC, PA. CO, FL, MA virtually); Founder/CEO Lift Teen & Parent Wellness Centers, coming January 2024 to Westport, CT. 

Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’ If true, there is no question why so many young American women are more joyless than ever. NAMI cites 1 in 6 U.S. adolescents, and 1 in 3 young adults, have experienced a major depressive episode, and young women have emerged as the highest-risk group for mental health. 

To put comparisons in historical perspective: just before the advent of broadcast television, many Americans were only visually exposed to the faces and features of the individuals who lived in their own town or district. When it came to beauty and body comparisons, the options were limited to classmates, colleagues, community members, family, and friends. A person with aesthetically pleasing proportions might be admired, or even envied, but their attractiveness would have been chalked up to good fortune or good genes. Opportunities for comparison were limited, and time-restricted to the length of physical interaction. Further, while a person may objectively notice that an attractive person is frequently admired, no measurable means of comparison existed. A beautiful person could be admired, and the admirer could still believe that if a comparison were drawn between themselves and the beautiful person, their appeal may be equal or near. 

As the American beauty industry evolved along with media, beauty companies discovered the power of utilizing television, newspapers, and magazines to sell a new to the American consumer: the dream of aesthetic improvement. ‘If you don’t like the way you look, you don’t have to accept it. You have choices, and you can change it.’ This simple but powerful suggestion created ripple effects in intrapsychic relationships, the psychology of an individual’s self-relationship, as well as the psychology of spending behavior. The freedom to choose, or buy, cosmetic improvement, was being sold as a fast-track ticket to greater self-esteem, better sex, a wealthier mate, a happier home.

Quite ironically, the exact opposite has proven true. Mental health is on the rise in America. The advent of social media platforms like Instagram in 2012 is so statistically relevant to American mental health that the Surgeon General recently issued an advisory about social media’s adverse impact on youth mental health, citing risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. Problematic, when up to 95% of young people ages 13-17 report using a social media platform and more than a third saying they use social media “almost constantly.” (US Dept of Health and Human Services.) 

Americans are now confronted with hundreds of images of faces and bodies in a day, and the opportunities to compare are bottomless. Further, unlike in the past, there is a measurable means of tracking the court of public opinion. “Likes,” “follows,” “shares,” and checkmarks, or the absence of these things, pronounce a person visually appealing or not, and there is no arguing with the evidence. Individuals know within minutes of posting how their visual aesthetic is playing on a worldwide audience, through comments, traffic, unfollows, and DM’s. When negative feedback is received, a person is then presented with modern day solutions: change yourself! The preferential representation in feeds by ‘influencers’ of a particular skin tone and physical anatomy, avows and reinforces the superiority of Eurocentric beauty standards, and provides some tangible suggestions to improve one’s appearance in order to garner greater popularity, or love via ‘likes:’ smaller nose. Lighter skin. Smaller bone structure. Straighter hair. Bigger eyes. The popularity of certain social media influencers can also invent (or extinguish) define beauty trends: Bigger butt. Bigger lips. Bigger boobs. Bigger eyebrows. Smoother skin. Whiter teeth. Longer lashes. Smaller waist. 

Depending on who and what you follow, your echo chamber of an ever-narrowing beauty ideal will only further perpetuate the suggestion that in order to be liked or loved, one must confine themselves to a standard of beauty that may or may not resemble your own. While plastic surgery has grown in tandem with the beauty industry’s ability to be carried around in your pocket, not everyone is able to jump right in to surgical solutions. Filters, body-morphing and face-editing features such as those on Adobe Photoshop Express, can produce a refined and polished version of yourself, which may even meet the standards of your comparison-objects and garner an internal sense of worthiness and equivalency in ‘follows’ and ‘likes.’ But there is a flaw to that system, in that the discrepancy between edited images and your own real-life appearance will create a chasm where self-loathing and body dysmorphia can fester and grow. By creating an idealized version of self, the unedited image that exists in real life becomes intolerable and unacceptable. Rather than working to accept your flaws, you have erased them, but only in the metaverse. The gnawing disparity between a filtered image and your true presentation creates more unhappiness about your real presentation, and an internalized sense of shame. Forgetting that others are also altering their appearance in this forum, the knowledge of falsifying yourself makes any experiences of perceived aesthetic inferiority almost unbearable, leading to grief, despair, and self-hatred. 

In my clinical psychotherapy practice in Westport, CT, and Boca Raton, FL, where I treat eating disorders, body dysmorphia, perfectionism, and self-love, I have seen a tremendous rise in body dissatisfaction due to social media. I am particularly disheartened by pre-pubescent and pubescent women, whose bodies are quite literally in a state of transformation in order to produce menses. These growing women point to women who are five to ten years their senior, and in a separate physical developmental stage altogether, and lament the differences in physique, facial structure, or tone. The unfairness of a perfectly imperfect growing person, comparing themselves to a person whose story they do not know-- who could suffer from eating disorder, mental health, or plastic surgery dependence-- and using that visual as a weapon against themselves, is egregious.  

We take cues from our environment, and our modern-day environment exists in the 2D and the 3D. Individuals with high levels of anxiety or rejection-sensitivity will create constructs on how accepting the world will be, based on who and what they see portrayed in social media. If a seemingly flawless person posts a photo and it is met with a comment that they need to lose weight, all viewers will experience the vicarious trauma that occurs when we observe bullying, and know that we could be next. Given the presumed similarities between online behavior and social behavior, most people make determinations from online behavior that carry over to real life. If a person decides the internet is not a safe place for their authentic selves, then the real world will not be either. Feeling unacceptable and inadequate leads to detachment, isolation, and loneliness, which are three causal factors in the development of depression. 

Because filters are free, acceptable, and available to everyone, most Americans have probably experimented with them. Just because usage may have felt benign at the time does not mean that harm was not caused. The inferred underlying message behind a filter is clearly, ‘you are not enough, just as you are.’ Many who start off with filters innocently eventually progress into body-altering and face-contouring apps, because the filter alone is no longer sufficient to effectively eliminate perceived flaws. The use of filters is progressive, because once you look a little better, that will no longer satisfy, and you will want to see what a lot better looks like. 

Some Suggestions to mitigate harms caused by ‘the comparison trap’: 

1. Sign off. Conduct regular ‘social media cleanses.’ I believe that regular use of a social media cleanse is essential for mental health maintenance. Just as you may take time away from alcohol during ‘Dry January,’ a social media cleanse provides an opportunity to re-examine your relationship with the apps that take up so much of our time. In reclaiming that time back, we break the knee-jerk reaction pattern of picking up the phone and going straight to social. It’s critical for each of us to learn what we then do with that time instead. Do we call a friend, reply to a message, take a walk, practice self-care? Behavioral addictions like scrolling provide quick and easy dopamine hits, but on a break, we are reminded that we have control of our time, our thoughts, and our media consumption, and to that end, we can choose what narratives to subscribe to. 

2. Delete, Unfollow, Unsubscribe. You can tell so much about a person by looking at their feed. As people change, so will their feed. Unsubscribing to accounts that promote diet-culture, plastic surgery, hours in the gym, and obsessive emphasis on appearance, WILL enhance your self-image. Then, subscribing to accounts that share positive psychology tips, heartwarming hero stories, inspirational videos, relationship advice, cute puppies, health-at-every-size, or beautiful scenes from earth or space, will immediately enhance your mood. If you like the way you look in a filter, pick ONE (for me, it’s always been Clarendon ,) and apply it in one click to your photo-sets so you don’t have to agonize over your photos, alter them individually, or over—analyze your shots. 

3. Quit using appearance altering applications. There is no safe use of face or body-altering apps, because the very use of them perpetuates a falsity that will inadvertently trigger your followers by reinforcing a narrative of unrealistic/unattainable standards, and that is causing harm. Your outright self-rejection, manifested in alterations to your features or waist size, will covertly or overtly send a message to your followers that you, and similarly they, are not acceptable and cannot show up as you/they are. Despite what you are thinking, your psyche is constantly observing and taking note of this behavior to form conclusions about your safety in the world. Let your subconscious mind witness your self-acceptance, and form the conclusion that you deserve it. 

4. Be intentional about your real-life appearance alterations and the motives behind. People are free to make reasonable changes regarding their physical appearance. When these changes are specific and time-limited (coloring hair, a nose piercing, a breast reduction, adding muscle,) then they are relatively benign. However, when self-improvement becomes chronic and unattended, it often reflects a larger mental health issue at play. In this case, an individual can have a myriad of surgeries, gain or lose weight, alter their lips, eyes and nose, and still continue to have a list of needed improvements. The unawareness that rejection of the physical reveals an inability to accept the internal self is rampant at this time. We as therapists must work with clients to decide when to validate their hopes and dreams, even those appearance related ones, if they feel congruent to the individual and who they believe they are. But when a person is relentlessly critical of their appearance and appears unsatiated, it’s essential to help them discover the underlying issue at play motivating this self-abandoning behavior. 

5. Make a gratitude list of all of your positive physical, intellectual, emotional and relational attributes, every day. Summer can be a difficult time for body image, and being mindful of this trigger is important. Make sure to give yourself attention and appreciation. Foster body neutrality and radical acceptance. 

6. Experience the summer with all of your senses. Enjoy the taste of ice cream on a hot day. Feel the water on your skin at the beach. Take delight in the warm sun on your shoulders. Focus on the sensory experiences of this season rather than the visual aesthetic in a bathing suit. Let yourself take pleasure in the natural beauty, increased daylight, and fresh air, so you are too filled up with joy to waste time obsessing about your body in a bathing suit. 

7. Remember: never compare your insides to anyone else’s outsides. People tell us constantly how they have been their richest and skinniest, while they’re most miserable and lost. Please don’t imagine that you know how someone’s vacation went, or how happy someone feels, based on a picture in a feed. I have had summers at home in my backyard that were far happier than summers touring abroad. You can never know what someone else is experiencing internally, and the person who is on the move in Montauk and Morocco all summer may never feel the satisfaction, contentment and inner peace you have sitting at Compo Beach without a care in the world. 

Enjoy your summer. Focus on YOUR lived experience. Give yourself dignity and grace. If you need a lift, call your therapist and get your support. We love you and are rooting for your highest good, always! 

Mary and the LIFT Wellness team