Dr Naomi Murphy
Hi. Thanks for tuning in to Shockwave, a podcast exploring the impact of the release of the Epstein Files on the world and finding ways to understand and deal with the impact. I’m Dr. Naomi Murphy, a consultant clinical and forensic psychologist.
Des McVey
And I’m Des McVey, a consultant nurse and psychotherapist. So, why have we decided to talk about falling from grace today?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:01:15]:
When we were planning to have this conversation, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested and it seemed like that does come as a bit of a shock to some people, maybe not that many. I think there is something quite shocking to us when somebody who is very well known, a household name, crops up as being under investigation. And I think before the Epstein files were released, you know, we’d heard that people like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Peter Mandelson, they were all widely rumoured to be in the files. But I think what we’ve also seen as the files dropped was that people who are very highly regarded and highly respected, people like Noam Chomsky, Peter Attia, the health guru, Deepak Chopra. These people are all being named, and of course being named within the Epstein Files doesn’t mean someone’s guilty of wrongdoing, but I think it is quite interesting to see how shocked people are when they see these big names appearing in the files. I wondered whether you had any thoughts on why seeing these people’s names shocks us so much.
Des McVey [00:02:19]:
There’s a kind of experience I had in healthcare where a lot of people sought out status with the least amount of responsibility. And I think in this situation, we apply character to status when they are completely separate entities. And I think that’s what shocks us.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:02:36]:
It has been argued that there’s a biological need for us to look up to alphas because the alphas kind of like set the tone of the rules for being, the qualities for being successful within a culture. And so if we put these people on pedestals and aspire to be like these people who are successful by standards within our culture, it gives us some kind of guidance for how to continue living life the way that we need to. But it also seems to me that there’s something about putting people on a pedestal that seems to fill an emotional need in us, don’t you think?
Des McVey [00:03:13]:
Yes, I think it allows us to feel safe, doesn’t it? If these characters are strong and trustworthy, then that allows us to feel safe. And we kind of go along with that delusion to a great extent, that people in high positions are fantastic human beings. And it’s not the case, but yeah, allows us to feel safe. I think it reminds me of doing some teaching once in a new adolescent unit, and there was like 60 staff there. And I pointed out that there’s a high likelihood that one member of staff here was here to abuse children, and the absolute outrage because even at that early stage in them meeting one another, they had to create a sense of safety. And the safety was then that no one here would do this. We are all care workers and we won’t do this. And I think part of that is a shock.
Des McVey [00:04:00]:
Does that make sense?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:04:01]:
It does. And I think with famous people, their images are often so carefully curated, aren’t they? They’re kind of like a bit of a living vision board for people to to follow. And I think it’s really disappointing when we find out we’re wrong and we’ve made a bad judgment. But I was watching a Sonia Poulton discussion, and she was talking about how she curated the images of the Spice Girls. And we forget that these images of people, especially when they’re very wealthy, but people who rely on, you know, who they are as their brand, isn’t it? You know, actors, successful businessmen, largely there’s a brand that’s built around who they are. And of course, we’re seeing what we’re expected to see. I was reminded of a social worker telling me that a former patient couldn’t possibly have been sexually abused because her family provided him with tea and biscuits and made him feel very welcome. And it’s like, well, what do you expect? People aren’t going to show their worst side publicly when they know there’s a lot riding on it.
Des McVey [00:05:02]:
Yeah, it becomes very much a parent-child dynamic, and we’ve just put a lot of false beliefs and assumptions in people. And I think that’s why it’s kind of referred to as shocking abuse, primarily because these people in high status, churches, schools, politicians, are not expected to behave this way.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:05:22]:
In some ways, we’re all slightly culpable in our own having the wool pulled over our eyes, I think, though. You know, we’ve kind of allowed people to step into this vacuum and look up them. And I remember reading Robert Verkaik's book, I think it’s called something like Why You’ll Never Get Rich, and it’s a really interesting book. But when I read it, it made me realise just how much stacked against the ordinary person, we’re presented with stories of success, programmes like Diary of a CEO, you have people who come on and tell us these magic recipes for how we can be successful in our lives, but they never talk about the role that lucks played in that. So we’re kind of deluded into believing that these people that are wealthy, successful by status standards, have got something superior that we don’t have. And I think one of the things that I found a bit of a relief actually from the Epstein Files was the recognition that how much nepotism and social networks and luck plays a part in why some of these people are successful.
Des McVey [00:06:27]:
Does it still happen? I remember years ago, I don’t know if it was to apply for a passport or some document that you had to go and get your form signed by a vicar or a nurse or a doctor. Do you remember that? And that’s kind of feeding the delusion that, you know, if you’re intelligent, you’re very moral. And if you’re incredibly wealthy, you’re very hardworking and entrepreneurial. So we create these delusions to allow us to feel safe, don’t we?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:06:53]:
We do, and actually I’d say that’s also about the delusion of being academic. You know, that actually somebody who’s working in a manual job might be equally as intelligent as somebody who’s got formal education, but the formal education kind of like validates their intelligence.
Des McVey [00:07:10]:
I think you’re right, Naomi. I think academia expresses that someone may be intelligent in a certain way, good memory, be able to pass tests, and be able to work within an institution. But there’s other forms of intelligence, creative. You need to have good judgment. And then most importantly, it’s emotional intelligence. And I don’t think academia equips you with all that, but we tend to leave people with very high status based on one part of their character.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:07:37]:
Do you think something similar goes on in ordinary life with partners, siblings, older children? I’m just thinking about how often people speak up about abuse by close family members and can find it really hard to be believed. And I’ve done a lot of assessments of parents in childcare proceedings where the lawyers have asked me to, you know, the letter of instruction has wanted me to gauge whether the mother has got an intellectual disability because they can’t understand why she keeps shacking up with Schedule 1 offenders. They think there must be a deficit in her intellectual performance the fact that she’s not able to see the risks associated with these dangerous partners. But usually it’s got nothing to do with intelligence, but it’s got everything to do with their histories of trauma. So I wondered whether, when we think about abuse happening within families, do you think we get bamboozled by the familiarity in these relationships?
Des McVey [00:08:39]:
Yeah, and I think the assumption that by virtue of them being a relative, they wouldn’t do such serious things. We live within a dichotomy, I think, and people are either good or bad, and it’s so much different to that. I think it’s Akbar’s book, The Community of Self, where we’re so many different personalities and characters within that we employ in different environments. Like, if I’m with my friends, I have this different character to if I’m teaching or if I’m doing therapy. And we don’t acknowledge that, do we? We just assume that a person’s either good or bad. And I think that’s currently weaponised in politics. You know, it’s not about how much vision someone has or how great their ideas are. Is it, are they good or are they bad? And can we find something that leaves them bad? And I think this is very damaging.
Des McVey [00:09:29]:
It’s like parents bickering all the time. Imagine a family network where mums always try to catch out the dad, the brothers try to catch out the sister, the sisters try to catch out the other sister. It would just be absolutely chaotic and I think we’re exposed to that every day, that bickering.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:09:44]:
What do you think happens in families where, you know, you’ve encountered these people as well, the adult child that we’ve encountered has told their mum or their dad about sexual abuse that’s been happening with somebody that should have been able to protect them or look after them, and they found it very difficult to be believed by their parents?
Des McVey [00:10:03]:
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true, and I think that one of the difficulties is when people are exposed as abusers, as you know and I know, we’ve heard a lot of names a lot of years ago in the prison, and that they’re now coming into the public domain. And I think it is difficult for institutions, including families, to be able to separate out, a person can be many things rather than just safe and good or bad and dangerous.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:10:28]:
The Epstein files kind of reminds me of what happens with like the Catholic Church, where I think you and I were both raised as Catholics, and there were always these priests that there were lots of rumours around that would be shipped off to America or Australia, and it seemed quite hard for people to believe that these people were capable of doing the things that they were accused of doing by children. And yet now we can see from the extent that the Catholic Church has gone to cover up abuse that actually probably many of these rumours were correct.
Des McVey [00:11:01]:
Yeah, sadly so. We get seduced by this high status equals healthy, positive character. I I mean, you’ve worked in a prison as well. I’ve worked with people that have done horrendous things, but I’ve witnessed them in the prison doing really kind things, standing up to bullying, protecting more vulnerable prisoners, even jumping in and saving prison officers. That doesn’t come out because they have done an appalling crime, they are considered wholly bad. And then because they’re in prison, then, you know, the world is a safe place. On the other hand, these intelligent, high-functioning people in politics and in royal family at the moment, they’re good, and therefore we create a safe environment for ourselves. It’s complete delusion, don’t you think?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:11:44]:
We forget how much abusers go to great lengths to protect their reputation and to maintain that facade of looking like the ideal person. I’m just thinking about Jennifer Freyd. She’s a professor of clinical psychology. She was sexually abused by her parents, and she’d never forgotten it, but when she spoke about it, her parents tried to denigrate her by saying that she must have had these memories of abuse implanted in her brain and in her mind by a therapist, and they started the False Memory Syndrome Society in America, and there’s a similar society in the UK as well. It’s quite awful to think that people who are victims of sexual abuse not only have to go through that experience of being sexually abused, but then when they do end up having the courage and the bravery to speak up and to be articulate about that, they then can get denigrated for the process of speaking up in addition.
Des McVey [00:12:44]:
Yeah, and often humiliated by that process which is so dysfunctional. But in terms of the current issues that are topical, how do you think that’s damaging us? What do you think exactly? If it is damaging, how would that be damaging us as a society? Why do you think we make this mistake and we don’t learn from it? Why do we make this mistake?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:13:04]:
I know, because I think we’re all guilty and susceptible of it, aren’t we? You know, I think, maybe you see it, I mean, a lot in teenage girls, don’t you? This need to put people on a pedestal for aspiration. I’m not sure that boys do that quite as much, but, teenage girls kind of like really idolising both males and females. It’s not just a romantic crush that’s happening. And I think for some people that continues into adulthood, if you look at the popularity of all these celebrity magazines and all those posts on Facebook that are focused on celebrities. So I think there’s something about us trying to live our life out by having these people on a pedestal that we look up to in some way.
Des McVey [00:13:48]:
Yeah, I think that’s evident in Bruce Springsteen, who’s idolised, you know, worldwide. But since his biography where he discussed and exposed his depression and his internal loneliness that a lot of fans have rejected him because that doesn’t fit with his narrative and his music and his singing. Whereas someone like Ozzy Osbourne, because his behaviour fits with the narrative, they allow him to have, if you like, a mental illness and addiction. But Bruce Springsteen wasn’t allowed that. Don’t you think that’s incredible how we function?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:14:19]:
Yeah, I didn’t know that. I found that quite sad, really. You know, it’s interesting, but it’s ultimately, it’s quite sad if we’re expecting people to not be able to be their authentic selves.
Des McVey [00:14:29]:
It’s been there before, hasn’t it? A lot of the boy bands have not been allowed to, that part of them, their gay side, is not allowed to be described, discussed, or exposed. And when it is, it’s done as a character flaw, isn’t it? It’s to get attention and effectively to destroy the band. So that is there before, but I think it’s more poignant with Bruce Springsteen for some reason.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:14:50]:
It’s really interesting. And I think just the whole, you know, analysis of idolatry and that sort of halo effect. A clinical psychologist has a great Substack, Dr. Simon Rogoff, and he writes about narcissism in famous people. Thinking about people with celebrity status, it does raise an interesting question, you know. If somebody’s convicted of a crime, are we allowed to enjoy the fruits of their talent? So I’m thinking about people like R. Kelly, for instance. Does his music have to stay off the radio because of the grotesque crimes he’s committed? Woody Allen marrying his adoptive daughter, you know, do we then have to throw all their artistic works in the skip as well.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:15:31]:
I mean, I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but I think it does pose quite an ethical challenge for us. How do we hold in mind good and bad in one person?
Des McVey [00:15:41]:
I think you’re right. I think it’s, and the more dangerous thing is in the narrative, it’s very clear at the moment, is you don’t befriend a paedophile, which ultimately means paedophiles can only befriend paedophiles, which creates paedophile rings, which is so, so dangerous. But it’s been dictated to us that it’s wrong to befriend a paedophile or have a paedophile within your area of employment, and that effectively puts more risk on children rather than reduces risk on children, don’t you think?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:16:08]:
Yes, but I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. I think, you know, there’s something about people being held to account and taking responsibility. So for instance, Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t really taking responsibility or being held to account. So I think there is an issue in his friends effectively endorsing him and giving him more PR and continuing to validate his status when actually this is somebody who had committed harm. And I think there’s something about how do we manage to ensure that people who are engaged in wrongdoing of whatever sort, take responsibility, have consequences. And actually the consequences he faced to me seem pretty trivial consequences given he wasn’t treated like a typical person who’s convicted of sex crimes, the fact he was allowed to carry on his business. And actually, his business clearly is very interwoven with his risk. So I don’t think it’s a simple question.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:17:06]:
But I agree with you about the whole, if we’re just shaming people and saying everyone needs to stay away. But I think his friends could have held him to account. But instead, what we see in the Epstein files is numerous people minimising his crimes, which essentially, you know, undoes any sense of responsibility. And the victims of Jeffrey Epstein needed accountability and they didn’t get that.
Des McVey [00:17:30]:
So complete absence of remorse. And I think you’re absolutely right, is to be a friend is to help them get over the dangerous behaviours they’re presenting, manifesting. And I think it was celebrated rather than admonished in any way by his friends. But yeah, absolutely take your point, it’s more nuance maybe.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:17:45]:
You know, related to that, I think it does highlight another cognitive fallacy, this, you know, the black and white thinking, which I think is quite interesting. And hopefully we can explore in more depth in a future episode. But, you know, it highlights how rarely people are all good or all bad. So what we’ve seen is, you know, the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie taken to Epstein. I think they’re about 13, and they were taken to his house after he’d been convicted of crimes against minors. And so, totally unprotected by their parents. I mean, Virginia Giuffre also spoke of that, her huge regret at the fact that she’d procured other young women and led them down the path that she’d been led down. So there’s something about, what point does somebody stop becoming a victim and become a perpetrator? How do we deal with people who perhaps are both victims and perpetrators?
Des McVey [00:18:39]:
Yeah, and I think that’s where you’re very skilful, isn’t it? Obviously, if the victim more than often is acting out a lot of their own unresolved trauma, then, you know, it’s about treating the trauma and addressing that trauma, then moving on to addressing their offending behaviour. But it is difficult because they’re seen in their environment as an offender now. They’re no longer a victim. And both you and I had that difficulty at work. We were more than determined to treat their offending behaviour, but we knew we had to get through treating their traumatic behaviour so they could actually empathise with their victims. And it was such a difficult, difficult drive, wasn’t it?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:19:16]:
But why is it so damaging to us as a society when we make these kind of mistakes and hold these people up as being in somehow, elite or superior to the rest of us in society, and then see this happen.
Des McVey [00:19:30]:
I think one of the salient issues is the betrayal trauma and how that impacts on us. We all of a sudden, we lose trust in authority, we lose trust in institutions, we lose trust in people making good judgments, and our own judgments as well.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:19:44]:
Can you just clarify what you mean by betrayal trauma for someone who might not be that familiar with the term.
Des McVey [00:19:50]:
Well, it’s effectively, someone that you’ve got this identity for, you realise that that’s not their identity and they’re corrupt and they’re dangerous, and you had been seduced or duped into believing in them, whether it’s a different person. And then how it impacts on your ability to trust your choice of relationships, to trust institutions, to trust the media. It just, it gets into most parts of your life, but it also impacts on the nervous system and it keeps you more hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant. So a lot of the time the reptile brain takes over because you’re constantly monitoring. And I think that will be getting played out in society. And I think, as I said before, that could be increasing conflict with people, not as calm as they used to be. It could be increasing road rage, increasing violence, increasing people arguing over parking spaces because they’re all, we’re all currently in a hypervigilant state, not using the frontal cortex as much as we should do.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:20:46]:
I think the thing that I thinks so damaging is the fact that it really undermines the possibilities of victims and survivors being believed. And then, it’s so hard for them to get any kind of support anyway. If you think about the millions that were spent in Britain on the independent inquiry into childhood sexual abuse, and millions were spent on that, but yet there’s still no sort of redress scheme where victims can get compensation for what’s happened.
Des McVey [00:21:14]:
I think it’s great now because more’s invested in trying to not believe the victims in terms of if we believe the victims, we also have to believe that the world’s not a safe place, that our leaders aren’t safe, that we have this delusion we created in order to tell us to function doesn’t exist. So there’s so much invested in not believing the victims, don’t you think?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:21:35]:
Well, there is, and probably one of the wealthiest psychologists is Elizabeth Loftus, who’s frequently testified in support of accused men, mainly men who are accused of sexual offences, and on the basis of this idea of memories being false and falsely implanted, even when the person’s never lost their memory. And the basis of her research is the idea that people could be duped into believing that they were lost in a mall as a very young child, when somebody acted as a confederate to that narrative. I think there’s something quite different about, you know, we know that survivors can suppress memories and put them to the back of the mind and recover them much later on. But from what I’m seeing of many of the survivors speaking up about Epstein, they’re not men or women who forgot that they’d been raped or sexually abused, sexually exploited. They’re people who it happened to them you know, and they’ve retained those memories since. But, it really undermines the narrative for victims, I think.
Des McVey [00:22:44]:
What, inasmuch as people in high status don’t do these things?
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:22:48]:
Yes, yes, exactly. And also, I think the assumption is that the victims are seeking compensation. My experience of victims generally is what they want is an apology. They want an acknowledgment and an apology, and they end up feeling quite angry that they’re having to fight for it. And actually, when many of them will need years of therapy to recover from the harms that have been placed on them. So why shouldn’t they get compensation? They might need compensation to pay for years of therapy, but, many victims, that isn’t the thing that matters most to them. What they want most is they want acknowledgement, and they want an apology, and somebody to assure them that this isn’t going to happen again, and to take steps to make sure that it won’t happen again. I think that’s why there’s been so much of a push from survivors.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:23:35]:
You know, Lisa Phillips has done amazing work at championing and holding survivors together as a cohesive organisation to try and push for the release of the Epstein files in the first place. Because without the files being released, it’s very hard to get accountability. And we know that this is just a fraction of the files that are there. Really doesn’t serve victims well. And I think if it’s not serving victims, it’s not serving the most vulnerable members of society. And so it doesn’t serve us to fall into this idea and this belief system that because people are wealthy or leaders or famous and on our TVs all the time, to think that they therefore must be a good person.
Des McVey [00:24:16]:
Don’t we also have to allow them to have flaws? I don’t mean flaws as in paedophilia, but if we don’t allow them to have flaws, then if we hold them in these high levels of expectation, it’s not even corruption or, I mean, there’s one that’s going around just now, it’s Nigel Farage, and he swears at his computer. Most people do that. But this is, this man can’t run our country because he swears at computers. So, it’s about understanding that, as I said earlier, we are a community of selves. We aren’t just that one personality. And I think the importance is allowing that to be filtered through, because this untrue dichotomy is, I think, incredibly unhealthy. So how do you think we can prevent ourselves from from falling into this trap.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:25:04]:
I wonder if we’re always clear about what skills and attributes we’re admiring and why. You know, I think so often we’re looking up to people because we aspire to have some of the trappings of their life and assume that their happiness comes with these things. The bottom line is, don’t we all just really want to be happy and peaceful, feel loved, have somebody to love? I think we can get a little bit confused about what it is we’re admiring in these people that we’re presented with.
Des McVey [00:25:35]:
Yeah, and it’s ubiquitous, it’s in all areas, you know. I remember listening to a little argument a doctor was having with a patient, and the doctor’s argument was nobody joins the NHS to harm people. But it’s that, that’s the normal day life, that if people do this, then there is no risk of them behaving that way. And I think we’re back to my earlier example of when you highlight to a group of people working with children, one or two of you will be here to sexually abuse these children. They get panicky, they get dysregulated, they complain about me. But ironically, normally the kids, if you told the kids that, they feel safer because they’re at that age where they have realised that people are, so kids who have been abused have been accustomed to that someone can present so many different ways. It was the kids that said, actually, if someone, I think if that was acknowledged, we would feel safer. If you went to a kid and said, look, we know we can’t keep you safe completely, but we know there’s a risk and there’ll always be a risk there, the kids will feel safer.
Des McVey [00:26:38]:
So that’s just one example of how we have to stop thinking of people in a very one singular way.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:26:46]:
And I think there’s also something about power and how we give away our power so easily. So in one of the clips, that we used for the introduction, Dr. Mindy Peltz. She’s an expert on menopause, and she’s talking about the disappointment in Peter Attia, who’s a longevity wellness coach. And she talks about critically appraising the information that you’re given. And I think we assume that because somebody’s on TV, or because we’ve read something in black and white that they’ve written, that that somehow gives them more awareness. We forget to draw on our own lived experience at times, and actually, can we step into our own power and hold on to our own perceptions and think about, well, okay, does that sit with what I already know about the world? Does that sit with my particular situation, my set of circumstances, or do I need to discard that? You know, if you look at how much advice we’re given around what we eat, for instance, and it’s so often conflicting. So you have to find a way to make sense of it for you personally rather than just swallowing everything hook, line, and sinker, I think, that we’re presented with.
Des McVey [00:27:56]:
Yeah, don’t you see it in conferences as well? If someone comes from overseas, there’ll be more people attending that regardless of whether someone else who’s born in Britain has got something really useful and innovative to describe. People will be going to overseas, so we always assume that the other is brighter, is clever, is much more intelligent, is bringing us something. And they do the same, such and such is coming all the way from Australia, so therefore it must be useful information. You get so seduced into believing these things.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:28:27]:
I think that’s very true. And I’ve also heard friends talk about that in terms of organisations, that actually if you buy in training from an outside provider, it is seen as being superior than somebody in-house was to provide that training, even though you could have the world’s expert in whatever it is within your organisation, it would still somehow be, there’d be some greater status or knowledge or expertise conferred on that person because they’re coming from a different place. Des, is there anything that we can offer up in terms of encouraging people to counteract this trap that we’ve all perhaps been falling into?
Des McVey [00:29:04]:
In the short term, it’s maybe acknowledging that you can’t escape what’s going on just now. None of us can escape it. It’s like if you’re in a family and your mum and dad are bickering and bickering and bickering, you might not be part of it, but that bickering itself is like drip, drip, drip. It’s increasing your hyperarousal. It’s increasing your reptile brain from working. So there will be increased anxiety in lots of people and lots of places. And I think it’s about, maybe acknowledging that actually I’m more at risk of overreacting or acting out, or, you know, that’s what I find difficult. It gets streaked down, doesn’t it, that we don’t look at what the end results are, what the end symptoms are.
Des McVey [00:29:44]:
And it’s usually people being damaged because there’s so much conflict and bickering going on. Accept the ad hominem politics of what they are. They’re just meaningless jibes poking at one another to support a very undated model of democracy.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:29:58]:
One of the things that I often end up talking about with people in therapy is thinking about the relationships they have with, say, partners and asking them to think about how the power balance lies within that relationship. So I think especially if you’ve got people who find it hard to talk openly about their needs and what they want, you know, so we sometimes call that people pleasing, don’t we, or fawning, but actually in doing that you’re giving away your power. And I think there’s something of a fawning kind of behaviour going on here where we hold people in high status. The way to counteract that is to try and think about power within relationships, that a healthy relationship has balance within it, where there’s a kind of like a sharing of the power. And I think we can all try and connect more with people in our personal lives in a more balanced way. And actually, if we’re connecting with others in our real-world existence in a balanced way, it makes it easier to think about what are we doing with our power in relation to famous people, wealthy people, people who are in decision-making positions of authority within the country, you know. So thinking, if you’re giving your power away in relationships, why are you giving your power away? In my experience, people are often doing that because they’re frightened of rejection or because they’re holding feelings of low self-worth. And I think, as children, we’re all born with the right to be loved and treasured by our parents.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:31:20]:
We should expect that. It shouldn’t be dependent on what you’ve achieved, even though, you know, too often it can wind up with kids feeling like they have to be accomplishing things at school or on the stage or on the sports field in order to feel like they’ve got their parents’ approval. But as kids, we really need to know that we’re treasured just for our existence. And if we don’t get that, we might be more susceptible to adoring others and trying to buy our way to the top, as it seems some of the people in these files have. It seems like people have bought their way to the top by engaging in quite dark destructive activity. So I think for all of us, we can think about how we have power in relationships and trying to really strengthen our own power in relationships, not to have power over, but just to make sure that we’re taking power equally in relationships.
Des McVey [00:32:13]:
But also remembering that everybody can be kind, selfish, honest, deceitful, brave, caring, loving, and generous. And I think it might be helpful again within relationships is to accept that there might be parts of that person you don’t like, but the most dangerous thing to do is conflate it into that being that person. And it kind of allows you a way to navigate the conflict and navigate the tension is just acknowledging that, you know, I don’t really like that part of you. There’s so much difference there to I don’t like you. Because there’s something about maybe you can work on that part of yourself. But to be told it’s you, you’ve committed this crime, therefore you’re a murderer, rather than breaking it down and looking at the healthier parts. And if you encourage the healthier parts, obviously you reduce the risk.
Des McVey [00:33:05]:
But we don’t do that, do we? I don’t think we do it enough.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:33:08]:
No. So what are we going to talk about next time, Des?
Des McVey [00:33:10]:
I think we should focus on vicarious trauma, obviously describing what that means and how it impacts on us and how prevalent it is.
Dr Naomi Murphy [00:33:18]:
Yeah, I’ll look forward to that. And if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, please like it and subscribe to us because it does help. Thanks very much. This is Shockwave, coping with the Epstein emails.
