This is an I Heart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
I'm Nick Turturro.
You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.
And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest.
I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins.
What are you doing with my belt?
To Bill Burr.
I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.
And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.
It's called happiness.
Delivering happiness.
And many, many more.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.
You're the problem.
Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was?
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men.
Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much.
I'm Yamanika and I'm out.
Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
You're not hired just to fill time and space.
You're hired to fill the space with you.
Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Our hometown is not a test tube.
90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town.
Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.
We need cities on a shining hill.
This is our town.
A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back.
Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?
Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast.
This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families.
It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.
Cindy said I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth.
Listen to Season 3 of Burden of Guilt on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Speck and welcome back to The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of your 20s and
Apologies in advance.
Got it really croaked then.
My voice is kind of bad.
I have been sick and then also decided to kind of go out boogie boogieing last night and I'm
I don't know what it was.
I wasn't singing.
I think I'm just dehydrated, but she's croaky.
So I'm sorry if you're one of those people who hates the sound of like, what do they call it?
Vocal...
What is it called?
Vocal fry.
I feel like I'm really giving vocal fry today, but it shouldn't detract too much from the content.
I have a special bonus episode for you guys today.
If you are not familiar with these bonus episodes, we've been doing it for perhaps the last year or so.
And these are kind of more bite-sized episodes where we take a popular psychology term a phrase a concept a theory and we break it down for you and we reveal what it really means what it's actually about
Basically we myth bust some common psychological ideas that you probably see online and
That maybe have lost their original meaning, but we also get into the deeper history of these terms, how they came to be so popular and also some fun, you know,
Um come along with them
Today we have a very interesting one
I do want to give you a heads up though
This episode does include some details about um violence and domestic violence so if that's something that you aren't particularly interested in in hearing about or you're sensitive to i would probably skip this one
It's not too much detail, but we definitely mention it.
We are talking about Stockholm Syndrome.
I think these days when we use the term Stockholm Syndrome, it's often quite colloquial and quite casually used.
Normally in reference to a situation where someone has kind of fallen in love or become very loyal to someone or something that they shouldn't be loyal to or which is harming them.
Normally in regards to love, there is a very famous One Direction song of the same name called
Where they basically just think about being intoxicated by this girl.
You know, they're obsessed with her.
They long for her.
They've got Stockholm syndrome.
It is so much more than that.
And it's a lot more serious than that as well.
It's not about obsession.
It's not about intoxication.
It's actually very much about survival.
So Stockholm Syndrome in a psychological sense, in a forensic sense...
Is a term used to describe what we would call a paradoxical emotional bond that forms between a victim and someone who is threatening, harming, controlling, or holding them captive.
That might include having positive feelings towards a captor or an abuser, having sympathy for their perspective, feeling gratitude for small acts of kindness against maybe a broader backdrop of unkindness.
Fear and distrust of people who are trying to intervene and get you away from this person basically any feeling or reaction that we kind of see as being irrational or counterintuitive
Towards somebody who means you harm, is causing you harm, and yet people feel a sense of loyalty to them or a sense of an emotional bond to them for strange reasons, but also less than strange reasons as we'll get into.
From the outside, the reason why we call it a paradoxical emotional bond is because, as I said, it kind of goes against how we think people should react in situations like this.
We have this idea that if somebody is hurting you, you wouldn't want to be around that person.
If somebody is holding you captive...
You're not going to have positive feelings towards them because they've taken away your agency and your independence and your privacy and your freedom.
So shouldn't you have bad feelings about that person?
Shouldn't you hate that person?
And most importantly, shouldn't you want to escape that person?
Shouldn't you want to take any opportunity offered to you to get away from them?
The thing is, this isn't always the case.
And it's not that these people are choosing or siding with an abuser or a person who holds power over them.
Stockholm Syndrome is a survival strategy that forms under conditions where a person has so little choice and is experiencing such an extreme situation.
A once in a lifetime kind of stress, that they act in the only way they see is available to them to survive.
And in that situation, the way they do that is by forming an emotional bond, by perhaps having sympathy, seeing their captor or their abuser as human as a way to connect with them.
So the term first came from a very real hostage situation in Sweden in 1973.
It was a bank robbery at a credit bunk in Stockholm.
And it involved two captors and four employees and they were held hostage for six days.
Now, what made the case so famous was not the robbery, although that definitely made headlines.
It was what happened afterwards.
Some of the captives, you know, as they were being rescued, almost seemed to fear the police more than the men who were holding them hostage.
They seemed to have sympathy for these men.
There was one hostage in particular, her name was Kristen Enmark, who...
Essentially, very much felt sorry for her captors, very much criticized aspects of the police response, even went on to raise money for the legal defenses of her captors
And their captors refused to testify, said they trusted them fully.
And this confusing reaction really caught the attention of psychiatrists and forensic psychologists who were seeing this way of responding as...
Pretty counterintuitive, but also very interesting.
They wanted to know kind of what happened in that situation, what happened in that bank that had turned these people so quickly into seemingly allies of the people who were harming them and holding them captive.
And that's where they got the term Stockholm Syndrome to refer to these four people.
And what they saw is kind of like almost a medical condition or a medical reaction, a psychological reaction they had to this event.
This is a very simplified telling of the story.
You know, we could spend two hours going moment by moment about what happened and diving more into the outcomes and what happened afterwards.
But it was the first time that this experience had a name.
Another famous case is that of Patty Hearst.
You may have heard about this.
Hearst was a 19 year old American actress.
She was the granddaughter of a very famous newspaper publisher and politician at the time.
His name was William Randolph Hearst.
She was kidnapped from her apartment in 1974.
By like a liberation army group they were a radical political group and during her captivity these videos came out these recordings came out of her
Criticizing her family, rejecting her family.
She even adopted the name Tanya.
She was seen taking part in a bank robbery with members of the group where she herself would have had an opportunity
To escape.
And she was arrested.
She was not rescued.
She was arrested and put on trial for assisting them in crimes.
And her defense argued that she had this rare thing.
She had Stockholm syndrome.
She'd been coerced.
She'd been deeply psychologically affected by captivity.
And
And the jury saw the evidence and said no we're still going to convict you
So they didn't believe it
But now I think we definitely see it a little bit differently
We see what was a very young girl in a very stressful situation where she didn't feel safe
The only people she could trust were these people who you know essentially meant her harm.
But they were the only ones there and she kind of fell into a relationship almost with them.
So I've kind of been not referring to this as a mental health diagnosis.
I don't know if you've noticed that, but for a reason, because it isn't.
It still isn't accepted as mental.
I guess it still isn't accepted as, yeah, just as a medical diagnosis.
It isn't included in the DSM.
There are no universally agreed upon diagnostic criteria.
Stockholm Syndrome is mainly just a descriptive label because it's also incredible.
And in those situations, only about 8% of people, according to FBI analysis, were held hostage for extended periods of time.
Exhibit what we would call Stockholm Syndrome.
So of 1,200 hostage situations that they looked at, of those that had a surviving person, 8%.
8% of people were kind of
Experiencing even just a level of sympathy, loyalty, care, trust for their captors.
There's another often discussed case in relation to Stockholm Syndrome.
This woman called Natasha Kampuschk.
She was kidnapped in Austria.
She was 10.
She was held captive for eight years.
And then she escaped in 2006.
And there's a movie about her.
And after her escape, obviously she's going through...
Such an incredibly stressful period of time in her life and just probably one of the most stressful things you can experience as a human to be kidnapped, then to form a relationship with this person, then to be rescued.
And the media really grabbed on some facts of this case and were like, she feels empathy for him.
She forgives him.
She
Look at this strange girl.
She loves him.
Like they were saying all these awful things.
And this is again where Stockholm Syndrome came back into the limelight.
And she herself, Natasha, has been really critical of the label Stockholm Syndrome.
She says that it can take power away from victims by implying that they choose this reaction, that something is wrong with them, that they're weak, that they have this syndrome that's affected their brain.
She really says, you have no idea what this is like until you are in the situation.
This isn't a choice.
This is a survival strategy.
You know, if someone has spent years trapped with an abuser, learning how to read them, manage them, reduce harm, preserve some sense of psychological stability, like that's kind of all you really have.
All you are looking for is information, information that lets somebody stay alive.
And sometimes seeing your captor or seeing somebody as human is the smartest thing you can do in that situation so that you can gain better access to their mind and how they work and why or when they might be willing to let you go or show you kindness.
So with that being said, what's actually going on here?
What are the psychological mechanisms that create this kind of effect?
I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
If you know me, you know I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people.
Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
You're not hired just to fill time and space.
You're hired to fill the space with you.
You have something in your guts.
You go with it.
And Shawn Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one.
He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood.
He hadn't been on a plane before without his family.
It was so pure.
Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, Portlandia fans.
Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.
You know us, or rather, you know them.
Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken.
We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast.
Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process.
How did any of this get made?
Why did we think that was a good idea?
We're ready to talk about it.
And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life.
Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more.
Kyle is going for it here.
You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody.
I thought you were all going to write a song.
I remember you thinking that.
Listen to Podlandia Ayo Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.
And Sean Clements.
We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.
Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.
The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.
I call him Taro Reed.
That's a good name.
They're all named after cast members of American Pie.
Yeah.
I don't.
I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski.
I don't think she was in American Pie, but I still like that.
Haven't looked it up.
She was prominent around the same time.
Then Mary Steenburgen.
Why are you guys talking to me like...
I'm worried.
Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play...
I just really am trying to set you up for success here.
Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
On Solita, we share the messy stories of traveling alone as a woman.
Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you.
No.
I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.
I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility.
Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us.
Not a lot of people smile around here.
I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it.
So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Nick Totoro.
You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.
But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza.
And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street Pizza to a new guest.
For pizza now?
Then we sit down for a real conversation.
I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins.
What are you doing with my belt?
To Alex Rodriguez.
Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the GOATs here.
Bill Burr.
I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.
And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.
It's called happiness.
Delivering happiness.
Mariano
Rivera, and many, many more.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.
One way to understand Stockholm Syndrome is through our nervous system and how it responds to threats.
We often talk about fight, flight and freeze, but there is also a fourth reaction that we commonly call fawning, like fawn, F-A-W-N.
The basic idea is that if fighting somebody is useless or dangerous, if fleeing somebody is impossible, and if freezing doesn't end a threat...
We, the final option we have available to us is to move towards pleasing, placating, reading the room, reducing the risk of escalation, and perhaps even trying to convince this person
Hey, look, I'm your friend, don't hurt me.
Imagine being physically, psychologically, emotionally, socially trapped with someone who can hurt you.
Your brain's primary function in that moment
Isn't going to be to produce a balanced moral analysis of is this person deserving of sympathy or not
Should this person
Should i be kind to this person or not
Like it's not going through this shouldn't i should i situation it's just like what is going to keep us alive
So it might be that you become tuned into their mood it might be that you start to really notice
Are they irritated are they calm what tone of voice should I use with them should I agree with what they say
Should I smile at them should I stay quiet should I act like a friend.
That hyper attunement, maybe from the outside, looks like closeness, can start to feel like closeness or like a relationship, but it is basically a way to monitor threat and to get through this however one can.
Researchers from the University of Queensland actually describe this through the idea of traumatic entrapment and appeasement.
Their argument is that when a person is trapped with a more powerful aggressor, and that could be a partner, a criminal, a family member, even a really awful, cruel boss.
Appeasement can become a crucial survival strategy if not the only survival strategy more recently in a 2023 paper so yeah quite recent researchers have actually argued that the term appeasement is
May be more accurate and have less of a victim-blaming tone than Stockholm Syndrome because it focuses on what the person is doing to survive rather than implying that they had a choice, rather than implying that what this thing was, was a relationship.
No, it's something else.
It is something else entirely.
Another mechanism at play here is when fear is transposed into gratitude.
If someone threatens your life but then chooses not to harm you,
Your body and your mind is going to experience intense fear and intense relief.
And that relief
Because it is so profound, because your life has been spared, your brain can misinterpret that as gratitude or as though the captor has shown you a deep kindness.
And that becomes very emotionally confusing.
Over time, a lot of people report who've experienced this, that, you know, the mere absence of violence or even small moments of human decency, they feel like acts of mercy.
They feel like this person may have sympathy for them.
It feels like this person is human.
And that convinces them that maybe they actually care about you.
Maybe they care about what you're going through.
And maybe like there is some kind of redeemable part of them.
And that is a very, very critical thing that you want to hold on to.
If you are being shown signs of kindness that indicate that somebody could be redeemable,
You really want to cling on to that.
And if that means trying to bring that out of them more, of course, you're going to do that.
They're not the exact same thing, but a lot of people will show these links between Stockholm syndrome and trauma bonding.
And they say they're quite similar.
Think of a trauma bond.
A trauma bond is just a broader concept entirely.
It's that kind of addictive emotional roller coaster that we have with a toxic partner or family member or friend where the highs really make you stay despite the lows.
There's that intermittent reinforcement there that makes you feel compelled to be with them or be around them.
Stockholm syndrome is a very specific type of trauma bond that happens very quickly during an extreme crisis.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia published an article in 1993, which found that emotional attachment can be especially strong when there is a power imbalance.
And when that power imbalance occurs,
Seems to dictate everything that happens to somebody but also involves this intermittent like kindness and then cruelty
The bond is not created on the kindness alone and it's not created on the fear alone
It is created by the cycle between those two things threat and then relief threat and then relief
Victims remain hopeful
For the kind moments to keep emerging, they remain unsure when they will, and that further complicates any effort to escape or resist because they are perhaps waiting for the right time that they could do this, or they're still hopeful that this person may bestow, you know, one final massive act of kindness and let them go.
This also relates to isolation and dependency and the fact that in these kinds of situations, it's kind of just the people in the room.
There's no outside input.
It is typically one person and their captor or a couple of people and their captors.
In a hostage situation, somebody's well-being, the person's well-being and their survival is entirely dependent on the captor.
Food, water, access to the bathroom, sleep, physical safety, all of that is controlled by the person holding them captive.
The captor becomes both the source of terror and also the gatekeeper of survival.
And so when you have basically zero agency, the mind does strange things.
The mind tries to create agency, maybe by thinking, okay,
Hey, I was kinder to them today.
I showed sympathy for them and they treated me this way.
Therefore, maybe something I do is influencing the outcome.
Maybe my actions can change what is happening to me.
I can influence this.
I do have agency.
And that alone feels so hopeful and so alluring that somebody might start to mimic a relationship with somebody or mimic an emotional bond with someone because it seems useful and because it gives them a sense that they can change what is happening to them.
There is a very relevant theory here from somebody called Jennifer Freyd, and it's her work on betrayal trauma theory.
Freyd proposed that in these kinds of relationships.
The mind may engage in what she calls betrayal blindness.
This doesn't necessarily mean the person is unaware of what is happening but rather that their awareness is limited, fragmented or pushed out of their immediate conscious focus.
This can involve forgetting, minimizing or reinterpreting harmful behavior in ways that allow the relationship to continue because the relationship now feels like the only place where somebody is safe.
If acknowledging the full reality of the harm would threaten access to care, protection, basic needs, then maintaining the relationship can take priority over fully processing the betrayal or thinking of a way out.
This is especially evident in childhood abuse where a child is entirely dependent on their caregiver for safety, for attachment, for survival.
In those situations, recognizing a caregiver as dangerous can be so overwhelming and just simply not a reality that the child can accept because then they would have no one.
So they do things to instead preserve a sense of trust or attachment, even if that means distorting or suppressing certain aspects of their experience.
That same underlining dynamic can also apply in coercive situations, in captivity situations, trafficking situations or abusive situations.
It is a complex form of psychological adaptation.
There is some incredibly interesting research that shows us the underlying mechanism behind this.
Researchers in New York conducted a study in 2010, which basically looked at a set of infant rats.
Rats when they're very young very much like children you know rely on their mothers for everything for warmth for feeding for just survival and they actually learn to recognize and approach their mother largely through smell because they can't see
What they found was that in early life, rat pups, as they're called, can actually develop a preference for their maternal odor, the smell of their mother, even if that odor has been paired with a mild electric shock.
So even if that association harms them.
And researchers have argued that this makes developmental sense.
For a very young animal, staying close to the caregiver is so essential for survival that the attachment system...
Can override the ordinary avoidance learning that would usually take place and say, avoid this person, avoid this thing, it's going to hurt you, it is hurting you.
In other words, the infant rat's brain is biased towards staying close to the caregiver because separation may be even more dangerous than the distress associated with staying with them.
And we can see a lot of parallels to captive situations, abusive situations, coercive situations, and obviously in people that aren't children.
Because when you're at that stage where like somebody is providing everything for you, you are basically a child.
Right.
Like when you're a kid, your parents decide when you get fed, when you go to bed, everything about your day, when you are stripped of all agency and somebody is doing all those things for you.
It's a very similar emotional and mental state to be in.
What's really important to understand is that these responses are often not conscious.
Right.
They're not deliberate responses.
It's not a decision to sit there and think,
Maybe I'll bond with this person.
Maybe I'll form a deep relationship with them that's going to be very confusing if this ever comes to an end.
You know, maybe I should, maybe I should do this or that.
Like, it's not like somebody is sitting there thinking through every single part of this and what it means for them.
Maybe they're thinking of it in a strategic sense, but a lot of the time it's automatic and it's instinctual.
Again, this really comes down to our nervous system that often acts in a way beyond our complete conscious thought.
The decision is happening fast.
It's happening automatically and
And what people think after the fact doesn't matter as long as there is an after the fact, as long as somebody survives.
So what happens then?
What would happen when somebody is released?
When the person who has done this to them goes to prison or dies or is arrested?
Do they feel sympathy?
Does that sympathy continue?
Do they want to be with that person?
What actually happens?
What a lot of FBI interviewers and researchers found is that a lot of the time there is this weird...
Reality like this is weird like vacuum space between when somebody is rescued or survives a situation like this and when they kind of come back to themselves that is really really confusing
They find that a lot of, specifically their research is on hostages, so hostages really struggle to recall exactly what happened.
They struggle to recall the exact nature of their appeasement or their experiences.
Mainly because we know that trauma can affect memory and the ability to describe events clearly.
Stress and trauma influence how memory consolidation takes place.
Now, sometimes stress can create something called a flashbulb memory, which is like a very strong memory that's almost like a photograph.
Everything is very clear.
Everything is, you know, memorable.
Other times, though, it creates something called dissociative amnesia, where the mind literally blocks certain memories from coming up to the surface or from being consolidated in the first place.
Causing these gaps, causing these blackout moments.
This diagnosis of dissociative amnesia is a little bit controversial.
I think there are some researchers out there who would say it's not real.
But we do know that memory loss in the face of trauma does happen, especially if that trauma is very severe, comes upon us very quickly and is just incredibly out of the ordinary.
There's no narrative.
There's no way to understand it.
It's such a rare experience that our brain suffers.
Doesn't really have a story to tell us about it.
In terms of how long it takes for people to break their appeasement reaction or their Stockholm syndrome, some never do.
Some never, never see their feelings or their reaction to their captor diminish.
This is really interesting for psychiatrists because some people may say they no longer have these feelings or this sympathy or this loyalty towards the person who's held them captive or harmed them.
They'll say what they think people expect them to say, which is, I hate this person.
I wish them harm.
They're evil.
But when they're really pushed or tricked, like they do still kind of slip up.
And there's these moments where they will defend them, where it seems that these beliefs carry over because they were at one point really important for survival.
It's difficult to disentangle what you felt once with what you feel now with what is expected from those around you.
And what we do know is that there might not be a timeframe.
We can't say, well, it will take six months or 24 months or 36 months to heal from this.
But it's rarely the flip of a switch.
It's not like one moment you have sympathy the next you don't.
It's often a gradual reprogramming very similar to cult reprogramming.
Because what you're really having to grapple with is, you know, the fact that you are safe now.
Like I'm safe now.
I don't need this attachment or appeasement to keep me safe.
But when something that out of the ordinary and shocking happens to you.
And you can see how quickly life can just be changed in a minute, how strange life can be, how scary life can be.
Some part of you never feels safe again.
And so we'll continue to keep what it sees as a necessary survival skill on the back burner.
What's really critical, and as I said, it's the same for cult deprogramming, is not to belittle or shame the person.
You have to be very curious.
You have to be accepting.
You have to really be open-minded.
Because a big part of why Stockholm Syndrome occurs is that
You know, the only person you've shared this life-changing experience with, the only person who can understand what you went through is your captor, is the person who did this to you.
You know, that's the only other person who was probably in that room.
And this person also likely told you that no one would believe you, no one would understand you, no one would protect you the way that they did.
So opening up leaves somebody insanely vulnerable.
To those things being proven true you know to
It's such a vulnerable place to be like I feel this confusing way and for somebody to be like oh my god how could you feel that way
Or like oh my god that's ridiculous
Or like what are you talking about
Suddenly it's like, well, of course now I can't talk to anybody.
The only person who would understand this is the person who created this reaction in me.
It kind of draws people back into the situation when they feel shamed for it or feel like people think they've done the wrong thing.
There is actually a specific kind of psychologist who specializes in cult deprogramming and in what we call exit counseling.
And it's very, very rare because Stockholm syndrome is very, very rare.
But again, it doesn't focus on trying to make somebody realize that they were crazy or that they should be ashamed or that this person is awful.
It's really a kind of psychoeducation that says, you know, well, of course that would be your reaction, right?
Of course, this is how your mind processed this.
This is just how your brain experienced and responded to danger to keep you safe.
So there's no shame.
You're not some freak.
You're not some, you know, there's not anything wrong with you.
This is a very serious.
Specific, unique, rare situation to be in that's still unexplored, but that we know our brain has counterintuitive and strange reactions to.
Again, your brain doesn't care if you're fulfilled, doesn't care if you're happy, it just cares that you're alive.
And this is one of the ways that it does that.
So that, my friends, is our full episode on Stockholm Syndrome.
I know I mentioned cult deprogramming and I want to go into it more.
So I want to let you know we're going to do a full episode on that very, very soon.
It bears a lot of similarities to exit counselling for somebody with Stockholm Syndrome.
So if you're very interested in this kind of
Element of things and specifically in forensic psychology
Do not worry that is coming to you soon
Thank you as always to our researcher Libby Colbert for her assistance with this episode
Make sure that you check out an episode on Netflix if you haven't already
That is right we are now on Netflix
Not this episode though because this is a bonus episode that is only audio hence why these episodes sometimes sound a little bit stranger because
I guess where i am right now
I'm literally in my bedroom
I'm recording this in bed compared to my beautiful state-of-the-art studio so hence why somebody actually said she was like oh who was it this
Somebody commented was like are you using ai to make your voice
And i was like no i just i'm doing it old school which is
Kind of ironic.
But yeah, that's why there's a little bit of a quality difference, especially today with my voice.
So if you've made it this far, thank you for bearing with me.
Leave a little, what's like a Swedish emoji?
Leave a little meatball down below.
If you're listening on Spotify and you have made it this far, I really do appreciate when you listen all the way to the end.
And anything else you want to know, hear about, keep in touch with, learn about, you can follow us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast or Substack, the psychology of your 20s.
Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself.
We will talk very, very soon.
You
I'm Nick Turturro.
You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.
And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest.
I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins.
What are you doing with my belt?
To Bill Burr.
I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.
And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.
It's called happiness.
Delivering happiness.
And many, many more.
Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.
You're the problem.
Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was?
If he got a bunch of women, then I should have a bunch of men.
Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much.
I'm Yamanika and I'm out.
Listen to You're the Problem with Yamanika on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.
You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.
Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out.
You're not hired just to fill time and space.
You're hired to fill the space with you.
Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Our hometown is not a test tube.
90 miles northeast of Nashville, a battle for the future of America plays out in one small town.
Developers with right-wing ties have purchased hundreds of acres of land.
We need cities on a shining hill.
This is our town.
A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment and fights back.
Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now, did you?
Listen to Our Town on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast.
This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families.
It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.
Cindy said I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth.
Listen to Season 3 of Burden of Guilt on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeart Podcast.
Guaranteed human.
