Hidden True Crime - Unpacking the Shame Inside the Reiner Family System with Criminal Psychologist

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

Dr. John Matthias, clinical and forensic psychologist is here to unpack the Reiner family system, and how shame can lead to tragedies. Sponsors: Avocado Green Mattress: Get 15% off Mattresses at Avocadogreenmattress.com/Hidden Rula: Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts for just $15 per session with insurance at https://www.rula.com/hidden Mint Mobile: This January, quit overspending on wireless with 50% off Unlimited premium wireless. Plans start at $15/month at https://MintMobile.com/HIDDEN About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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atora.com slash remove. The narrative that the defense is going to want you to believe is that Nick changed his, Nick's, Nick was in a conservatorship diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective in 2020, that he went off his meds for a period of time, he became super agitated, and he acted out in murder his parents. That's what they're going to argue and that he didn't understand. Correct. The consequences of his actions. Therefore, he should, be found not guilty by reason of insanity, right? I mean, that's not what happened here. That's not the story of Nick Reiner. The story of Nick Reiner is way more complicated. Hello, Hidden Gems. We are back. Lauren and John. We're back to discuss another episode of

the Nick Reiner case, heartbreaking case. Nick Reiner is charged with killing both of his parents, Michelle Reiner and Rob Reiner to Hollywood Legends. And we've just been trying to figure out and understand this case, what possibly went wrong in Nick Reiner's life, what was happening, what was happening in this family for such a tragedy to take place. And last we stopped, as I recall, you had a lot of notes on the table. And I would not let you end until you read that Billy Bush quote from me. Yeah. On the interview, I was like, we're not leaving.

until you read that quote. But you had like so many notes all over the table and I could see them all and I could see how much you still had left. And it was in my opinion some really fascinating information. And I'm having a little hard time. I'll admit, not being able to see the table or now your desk. You're already looking down at all and I'm like, what's he got tonight? Yeah. There's still a lot of notes by the way. So I'm trying to distill all of my information into this show will be a bit of a challenge, but bear with me. Yeah, I think it'll, it'll come together, I think, but it's, it's, there's a lot here. And there's, there's a lot of variables, I think, that go into these murders.

And I've been giving it a lot of thought, by the way. I've been giving it a lot of thought because it's really weighing heavily on me. And in many ways, I see this as a relationship, the relationship between father and son. That's really the determinative element here. And not just, by the way, Rob and Nick, but Rob and Carl, his father and maybe even going back further than that. I mean, I just don't know enough about the Reiner family. By the way, just a little factoid about the Reiner family. So Rob's grandmother was named Bessie,

and Bessie's last name is Matthias. Bessie with one T. So same pronunciation, but Bessie Matthias, married Irving, Reiner. Those are Carl's parents, so that would be Rob's grandparents. And it turns out that Bessie had a brother named Harry,

Harry Matthias, who was the first entertainer in the line, in the long line now of Reiner family entertainers and people involved in Hollywood, which is just about all of them, by the way. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But it begins with Harry, Matthias. Okay. And so with one T. So I don't think we can trace the lineage back to my family. family, but just it's kind of a cool. It was a cool coincidence that I found in doing some research

on this case. So Harry Matthias. Yeah. Harry Matthias, yep. And that shows you've been doing some deep research, too, to come across Harry Matthias. So. So I've been giving this a lot of thought because the father-son relationship, I think, is at the foundation of this mystery, this dilemma, the motivations for these crimes. And of course, for me, I have a son and I'm a father, and the father-son relationship is really critical in my life. And it's one of the things that really propels me forward day by day, day by day, just to be with him and to develop a really close, intimate relationship with him

and to really hopefully raise a healthy, independent adult someday. That's the goal, obviously, but I feel such responsibility, and I feel such commitment to him and to that relationship. And I feel very protective of him. And I think those are probably some of the same elements that Rob experienced in his relationship with Nick. And so one of the questions I've been asking a lot is how did that relationship get derailed? How did it come off the rails? What happened? what was going on in this relationship, what was going on in this family.

And I think the answer, so I think the key to this situation, to these murders, to this mystery of sorts, I mean, there's, I mean, we don't know for sure, I guess, that Nick committed the crime, but it seems like there's a fair amount of evidence that he did. So I guess it's not a mystery. When I refer to mystery, I'm talking about why. why did this happen, right? And so the first episode I talked about parricide, and then our last episode, I talked about schizophrenia

and the relationship between schizophrenia and violence. And so I won't be getting into that as much. We'll talk a little bit about schizophrenia, but not a huge amount. Well, we want to discuss the difference between schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia because we're now more clearly learning that it's schizoaffective. And so there's certainly some questions there too. But yeah, later down the line. Yeah, I mean, so that issue, by the way, is not going to be super critical in terms of figuring this out.

There's not a major difference between, you know, I talked about the spectrum, the schizophrenia spectrum, and on the far end of that spectrum is schizophrenia, and then very close to that is schizoaffective. and that's because they're closely related. Schizoaffective disorder is basically the combination of a mood disorder that's concurrent with positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions or hallucinations. So you need some combination of schizophrenia and a mood disorder typically, so that could be major depression or it could be bipolar disorder. But it's a mood disorder that's concurrent essentially with some symptoms, positive symptoms of schizophrenia.

So it's not going to make a big difference, whether it's schizophrenia or schizoaffective, and it's not particularly clear. I think what's important for this discussion about that, however, is there's now evidence that there was a conservatorship in 2020. There was a California LPS mental health conservatorship from 2020 to 2021 that was so significant. It's the type of conservatorship where the neck in this case would be, it labels the person under the conservatorship as, quote, gravely disabled. And the condition that allowed his parents or family to put him in this conservatorship was either schizophrenia or schizophrenia or schizophrenic or schizoaffective disorder. It's not entirely clear which one, but what's important about that, what's important about that, most important about that is I questioned to some degree whether there was a diagnosis of schizophrenia or whether there was some lingering. Now it appears that there's enough people

that have diagnosed him with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder that it does appear like that's a valid diagnosis. Right, right, not just a talking point for Alan Jackson or something or the defense. Right, right. I mean, I think if I think there's still questions there. Agree. About, I think there's still some questions there about, I don't know about malingering, but about a one-year conservatorship versus why wasn't it extended? Why wasn't it longer, right? Was this, you know, was this frustration? We'll talk about this in terms of the family system, because that's really what I want to talk about tonight.

But I think there's questions here about, was this conservatorship? put in place because the family was so frustrated and they were unable to control Nick was did Nick play a role in that right? What was his role? Did he, you know, did he want a permanent place at home? Did he want to live there permanently?

And therefore, maybe he participated in that or suggested it or maybe, I don't know. I think it's complicated. Yeah. I mean, but at the end of the day, I think what, if you're going to,

I wasn't going to get in this too much, but now we're touching on it. If you're going to present an insanity defense, you're really going to have to tease out these different components of mental illness, which would be schizophrenic in this case, versus substance abuse, which appears to be methamphetamines, right? Methamphetamines are known to create paranoia and potentially hallucinations and delusions, right? You're going to have to figure out a way to, and then there's a history. Nick has a history of aggression and violent ideation, and there's so many people that have noticed this and talked about it. How do you separate those pieces?

Right? Even if you just said it was schizophrenia, which is the narrative that Alan Jackson is trying to develop, that there was a change in medication. And that led to a lot of agitation, which led to aggression, that Nick was, quote, out of his mind. that's what people said that were around him and they're saying that that then directly led to the murders that it was that it was the medication change but I mean it's way more complicated than that I would agree yeah

that doesn't take into account the substance abuse or the drugs at all and obviously the prosecution if the prosecution is playing with the idea of the death penalty they clearly think that there's premeditation they clearly think that he understood the consequences of his action right? They seem to think, they seem to have what evidence they have seems to be compelling enough to move in the direction of criminal responsibility, or in other words, they believe they can rebut

an insanity defense. So it's complicated. Yeah, it is. Well, we're glad you're here then, because we need you to make it less complicated or break it down through us. I will say this, that whatever forensic evaluator or evaluators take on this case, they're going to have their work cut out for them because it's going to be very complicated. And insanity cases are among the most complicated in terms of really trying to figure out causal connections or pathways to the murders. And that's what they're going to have to do if it comes to that. Right.

And by the way, for those that are new to our channel and welcome to split screen, this is why we like to do it at our table. John is shy and he is always looking down at his notes. So you're doing a great job just there. I always try to get him to look up, look up, and you're doing great, babe. But for those that are watching, understand that he has to look down at his notes a lot and concentrate to unpack this. So go ahead and we understand. There's a lot of notes.

So, yeah. So, yeah. Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, and then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where ORA comes in.

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Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. You know, the question, the question I've been grappling with since our last show, and it's really, you know, a puzzle to me too, is what do I think are the primary components of this family, of the relationship that Nick and Rob have that leads to the murders? Right? That's really what I want to try to figure out. And I want to start. So there's something that keeps coming up over and over again for me. And I'm going to start there. And what that is is Rob's relationship with Carl. And I want to talk about, I'm looking at my notes here because I have quotes that I need to read too. So back in October of 1986, in an issue of interview magazine, Rob did an interview with Betsy Born. And one of the things he told Betsy is that he felt unseen by his father.

And he also felt isolated and misunderstood. What's interesting about this interview, so this is 1986. This is near the beginning or at least this is during a period of of Rob's career when he's starting to make larger movies. His career is really starting to take off. And so he says this in 1986. And then years later, this is an interview that Rob did with fresh air,

NPR's fresh air, Terry Gross. He said, quote, I felt that my father didn't love me or understand me. And the point, so. And that was just now. That was recent. Right. It was just recent. So you have this snapshot from 1986 to 2016 to 2025, where Rob is basically reiterating these same themes over and over again. And what's important here, I think, is not only the fact that these issues aren't resolved, right, that the sense that Rob feels compelled to talk about these over a period of,

of 40 years, roughly? Yeah. 40 years, right? And the other thing I know about Rob, so Rob, in 2016, he does an interview with Howard Stern. He and Nick do an interview with Howard Stern. And there's a joke that Howard Stern says something like, it seems like you've been in a lot of therapy. And Rob says, Rob is kind of playfully says to Howard Stern,

well, the only time I'm not in therapy is when I'm not doing things. like this. So Rob basically says, look, when I'm not working and I'm not talking to people like you, Howard, and I'm not promoting movies or making movies, I'm in therapy all the time. All the time. Right. So this is a guy, Rob Reiner, this is a guy who obviously is very invested in his mental health. He's very invested in becoming healthier. And yet, here you have Rob Reiner from 1986. And I'm sure there's more. I've only looked at, I've looked at quite a of these interviews with Rob, but 1986 to 2025 were essentially he's reiterating the same thing. And so what I want to pick up on here, what's important here, sure, not feeling loved and understood

is really important, but this idea of not being seen is so important. I think if we want to understand this case, we have to start with this idea of not being seen. And the reason we have to start with that is because the idea of being seen has a lot to do with shame. Shame is the emotion, essentially, of feeling like you're not being seen. Shame is the emotion of feeling defective, feeling flawed, feeling judged by other people. It is very much a visceral emotion. It has to do with how we feel about ourselves. Shame, actually, when it's when it's profound and deep, it tends to organize all of our perceptions around our self and our self, worth around how we see other people, around love and our acceptance of love and around

failure even. And so if you look, if you, like, if you dig deep enough and you really listen to what Rob Reiner is saying and you see this, these slices in time of him saying essentially, I didn't feel seen, I think what really stands out to me is this is a story about shame. And not only is this a story about shame, which we're going to unpack today, but it's a story about so there's a family systems theorist his name is murray bowen brilliant guy he developed this theory of family systems called bowenian not surprisingly mohenian family systems therapy and bowen has this we're going to talk about a couple of bowen's main ideas but two of them are

one of them is called what he called the multi-generational transmission process And that's pretty much what it sounds like, which is that generations tend to unresolved emotional issues tend to get transmitted across generations. So in other words, shame would be an emotion, if not resolved in one generation, would be passed subtly or not so subtly to the next generation. And I think the way shame shows up in the Reiner family has to do with legacy. It has to do with legacy pressure and legacy expectations, right? That's really where this comes into play. So, I mean, I think there's other subtler ways where it comes into play. But I just read this quote where Rob said that he wanted to be just like his dad, right?

That's an idealization. That has to do with legacy. That has to do with creating an idealization of what his father had done and how successfully was and wanting to live up to it. So you have this legacy pressure, I think, in the Reiner family that's constant. And if you go back, if you go back and look, and I said this earlier, if you go back and look at, so Rob was the eldest of three kids. He has a sister, Annie, and a brother Lucas. Both are artists. His mother, Estelle, was an actress and a singer.

And then in the Reiner family, the one we're talking about, Nick wanted to be a writer and maybe an actor or maybe a comedian. And then you have Romy. Romy is in the entertainment business. She's gotten into acting. And then you have Jake. Jake has gotten into acting and writing. All of these people across two generations, all of the Reiner's across two generations

are in the entertainment business. Right? Think about that for a minute. Everyone. Legacy. That's legacy. Everyone. Everyone.

And then you go back to Carl and you go back to Harry Matthias. Right? Like, this is the family that's immersed in Hollywood, and they're immersed in the entertainment business. And whether they like it or not, they have to deal with the shadow of that. They have to deal with the pressures and the expectations that come with being a Reiner

and the inheritance of that legacy and the expectations around that legacy, right? And then, you know, the interesting thing about that is if you think of Rob. So Rob has to deal with this issue too. And Rob says that in many of these interviews, he says a lot of the same things, by the way, but he essentially says that his father,

I talked about this in our last show. He says that Carl never really validated him until he was 19. He did a production of no exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher for a local theater. And he was the producer. And his father came backstage and his father basically said, he told him, that was good, no BS. And Rob was thrilled by that because it was the first time.

That was his validation. That was the first time his father ever validated him. And he was 19 years old. And then Rob says later when he talks about, so Rob, when he's 39, Rob does the movie, he produces and directs the movie, Stand by Me. which is a movie, by the way, that he feels very probably, it's one of the movies where he feels the most amount of pride. It's one of his favorite movies. He tells, he said this multiple times in not only in 2016 interviews, but in the

1986 interview for interview magazine, he says that he relates to Gordy, who's a character and stand by me because Gordy has a father that he believes hates him. And he says essentially that he really didn't feel like he came onto his own until he was 39 years old. He described himself as a late bloomer to the interviewer, to Betsy Bourne. And he described his 30s, his young adulthood in his 30s as a period of adolescence. And because of that, he said, because of all these legacy pressures, he actually got into psychoanalysis between the ages of 18 and 20. So I think what's interesting here is that Rob really struggles for almost all of his young adulthood, right, until he's 40 years old.

Rob struggles to differentiate from his father, Carl. He's trying to figure out who he is. He's trying to, you know, the term we would use is individuate or differentiate. Differentiate, by the way, is a term that Murray Bowen uses in Bowenian's family systems theory. but Bowen believes that the job of a family is to help the children differentiate from the parents so they can live independent, productive, healthy lives. So family therapy to Murray Bowen is about creating a self that's differentiating enough from the family so that that self can function independently and autonomously.

And it's about Bowen believed that every family system is just mire, in anxiety. There's different degrees of anxiety. Some family systems have little anxiety, some have a lot, but family systems that have a lot of anxiety, in those families, it's much more difficult to differentiate. It's much more difficult to create a separate self. And the reason that's true is because families with tremendous amounts of anxiety become more amashed.

They become more involved or over-involved with each other. to solve this problem of differentiation. They don't want the family members to be independent because that becomes more anxiety provoking to them. So the way they deal with the anxiety, and this is in unhealthy families, and this gets into the idea of triangulation, which we're going to be talking about a lot.

But Carl, so what's important here is that Rob finds a way to differentiate, but it takes years. He's a late bloomer. He doesn't do this until he's like 40 years old. And I think, I think that what's happening here is that Rob is really struggling with this idea of being unseen, this idea of this shame, of living up, is he going to live up to his father's legacy? And he's got a father that I think is, for the most part, you know, he doesn't validate him until he's 19 or praise him. He's got a father that's very withholding of affection and attention. He has a father who's emotionally distant.

And so in this type of family system, you're going to get a lot of anxiety. You're going to get a lot of shame about you're going to get a lot of shame around being successful. And you're going to get a lot of shame around being judged by others as being. successful, being judged by people outside of the family who shine a spotlight on the Reiner family. Absolutely. And as you say this, all that goes through my mind is Nick Reiner, just hours before the murder, is asking everybody at Conan O'Brien's Christmas party if they were famous. I think it just kind of goes with what you're saying, that this is on their mind, you know, this legacy, or at least on Nick's mind, but keep going. Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, and so if you think about Carl, if you think about the relationship between Carl and Rob, I think you're going to see a similar dynamic. I think probably what you're looking at is a lot of unresolved shame. Because you don't have a home, you have a home environment probably with a lot of anxiety, a lot of expectations. And the other element here is conditional love, right? that if you have parents that aren't the word we would use attuned or they're not marrying certain things to their children, certain emotions, certain, they're not validating them with praise or feedback, it becomes very confusing. It becomes very stressful to the child because

they're not able to really, they're not able to kind of use that feedback to figure out who they are, to develop the sense of self. And so what one of the offshoots of the offshoots of that type of family system is that love becomes conditional. And it becomes conditional on performance. It becomes conditional upon living up to this idealized legacy. Right. And in that environment, by the way, in those types of environments where love is conditional, failure is often experienced as an existential threat.

So in other words, in a healthy family, you should, you know, the parents should say, don't worry, do your best. If you fail, you know, it's disappointing, right, but you can move on. So in normal families and healthy families, failure would be seen as a disappointment to a child. It would be something that they might be disappointed by and upset by, but they can recover from. In an unhealthy family with this kind of legacy pressure, failure becomes an existential threat to their core being, to their selves. It becomes annihilating. And so you can imagine a child growing up in this type of environment where failure is constantly weighing on their mind if they don't meet expectations.

And if they're not meeting those expectations and they're not getting praised or acknowledged or validated by their father or their parent, like in this case, Carl. And so one of the, one of the consequences of conditional love is that normal developmental processes get interrupted because children that are under that kind of pressure, they're less likely to take risks. They're less likely to grow up. They're more likely to procrastinate. They're more likely to engage in addiction or substance abuse, right? And that's what we see with Nick.

Okay. Yeah. But the basis of this is shame. The basis of this is dealing with this family reputation and this incredible legacy that's been created from Carl on. And one way or another, whether Rob, you know, Rob's been in therapy for years, right? Clearly, he's dealt with this issue. But that's not that.

The issue is whether it's still at some unconscious level, whether this shame still is a part of this family system, whether it pervades the family system, right, whether it impacts the family system, Even the idea of guarding, let's say that Rob, for example, thinks he's dealt with the shame. There's still a sense, I think, in which Rob is very much trying to guard the family legacy and the family reputation, right? Like, even if it's not conscious, even if it's just don't hurt the family name, right? It's an unspoken message.

That's still playing into this expectation of you have to succeed. You have to, right, if you're going to go in entertainment, And also let's talk about that. Like none of these children decided that they wanted to pursue marine biology, right, or something completely unrelated to entertainment. They all felt the pressure of this legacy and trying to meet the expectations of this legacy. And I mean, I would imagine for Nick in particular, that was really crippling. It's not hard to imagine, for example, that somebody like Nick at 14 or 15, right,

this is when Nick starts becoming, this is when Nick first uses drugs that we know of. Right. Well, his first rehab was 15. Yeah. If you think about that age, that's an age where the, we're expectations at school and in life are starting to ramp up. Like at 14, 15, that's a time when you have to start performing, right? And all of a sudden, Nick turns to drugs. He sees himself in some ways, maybe as incapable of performing at the level that's expected of him. And he's so, I think, he's confronting the possibility of failure maybe for the first time, and he's unable to deal with it.

As I said, it's an existential threat. So drugs make sense. You know, there's, so instead of dealing with all the anxiety and the pressures of this legacy, this idealized legacy that he's expected to meet or maybe meet or he thinks he should meet, he turns to drugs. What's interesting about that is there's a guy named Hamilton Morris who did a podcast with Dave Mannheim who does the Topi podcast, and they talked about this issue about Nick and drugs.

And Hamilton Morris proposed, which is really right on, I believe, that there's something going on here called self-handicapping. And self-handicapping is essentially when you create obstacles, to success that allow you to explain away your failures. So in other words, you create lower expectations to protect yourself esteem. An example would be, let's say I have a major exam tomorrow. And instead of studying for my exam, let's say college students do this all the time, by the way, let's say I go out and party all night.

Let's say I go down to the strip and get drunk and, you know, party. And then I go take the exam drunk and I fail. well, now I can tell my friends the reason I failed wasn't because I'm stupid. The reason I failed was because I was partying all night and everybody knows I would have passed it with flying colors. If I didn't party all night, right? That's self-handicapping. You're setting up obstacles that you create to explain away your failures. And it's really based on the idea of a fear of failure and fragile self-esteem or even shame to some degree.

It's driven by shame Because you don't want to experience shame You create excuses for your failures And I do believe And I agree with Hamilton Morris here I do think That part of this is self-handicaping I say part of it because it's a lot more complicated

We're going to have to talk about the family system But I do think there is this element of All of a sudden in 14 or 15 Nick Reiner starts using drugs He starts going to rehab And essentially at that point I think you have something like arrested development.

Yeah. Not only the drugs, but the shame. Shame, I sometimes think of shame as an emotion that arrested, it, shame keeps people frozen in time in a way because once you have a tremendous amount of shame and maybe you're expressing it through perfectionism that you can't possibly live up to or reach, you don't try. If failure is existential, then you stop trying, right? You're impeding the normal developmental process because you're not,

you're not risking failure in relationships. Think about teenagers. You're not risking failure in relationships with maybe dating, with social interactions, with, think of all of it, with homework, with exams, with, I mean, you can, There's so many ways in which... I'm thinking of so many things. Yeah.

With emotions, right? You're also by doing drugs, you're potentially, you're getting kind of a dopamine high, which means you're not, you don't have to cope with the emotions of failure, the emotions of disappointment, the emotions of sadness, right? All the things that go along with normal development, you're not going to confront those because you're doing drugs. The drugs will dampen and blunt any emotions you might have. to have or you might have to write any normal emotions that a teenager should experience to become healthy.

Yeah. And so, so you have Nick, I think engaging in this process of self-handicapping, but it's largely based, it goes back to the shame, I think. I did want to read, I did want to read a quote here, by the way. This is from a book called The Many Faces of Shame by Donald Nathanson. It's an edited volume by Guilford Press. It's older. It was published in 1987.

It just so happens to have a chapter by Leon Wormser. I love Leon Wormser. Leon Wormser is a brilliant old school cycle analyst who I love his books because they're really, they're like, they're written in a jargon of like old school cycle analysis, which is like really dense and complicated and I love it. So like it's not self-help, right? It's not like reading a self-help book where you're talking about your inner child. This is like really old school psychoanalytic jarbon about edipus complexes.

And so it's a lot of fun. I love sitting down and reading Leon Wurmser. Anyway, he in chapter two of this book, Wormser has a chapter called Shame, the Vowed Companion of Narcissism. That's interesting. but I want to read I want to read Wormser's description of shame because I think it's helpful.

So shame is the feeling one when one is looked at with scorn. It is, in other words, the affect of contempt directed against the self by others or by one's own conscience. Contempt says, quote, you should disappear as such a being as you have shown yourself to be failing, weak, flawed, and dirty.

Get out of my sight. Disappear." Unquote. One feels ashamed for being exposed, exposed as one who has acted in a way that reflects poorly upon oneself by treachery, by bedwetting, by being a tattletail, by having failed in school or life. In short, of failing someone else's expectations or failing the demands of performance by one's own conscience, standing under the glare, of one's own mind's eye. To disappear into nothing is the punishment for such failure. There is a particular significance of seeing and being looked at, that is, of exposure in shame. That's powerful.

I do have questions. I know that you need to keep moving on, and we're talking about the Reiner case, but if shame keeps us from trying, Because that was really interesting to learn just now. It can. It can. If shame can keep us from trying, how do you overcome that?

Well, that's the problem, right? That's the problem that Nick confronts. That's the problem that Rob confronted. I mean, Rob overcame it. If you go back to Rob, he didn't overcome it until he was 40. And the way he overcame it was he kept trying, and he was apparently able to deal with failure to some degree. I mean, I don't know exactly his failures, but...

He had critics. He had critics, right? He was able to adapt and cope enough, and he was obviously in therapy for many, many years. And all of that, I think, helped him move forward, and it helped him differentiate enough from his family that he could create a sense of self on his independently and on his own. And so I think, but I think it was a lot of work for him. And I think, by the way, I don't think those issues were resolved. I think those issues are the same issues that show up with Nick.

Like it or not. I mean, I think Rob might disagree with me and he might say that he worked on this. But it's not. So this idea of this idea of the multi-generational transmission process, which Bowen talks about, which is the idea of passing on, on results. affect. And I think in this case, so for Bowen, those emotions would be anxiety, depression, and shame. I mean, for Bowen, they're mostly anxiety, but I would add depression and shame here. By the way, after Robin Williams died, Larry King did an interview with Rob Reiner, and he talked

about Robin Williams' death. He told Larry King, quote, it hit me at a very, very deep level. I have depression. I've wrestled with it my whole. whole life really hard. But you can manage it and you can live with it. That's what Rob told Larry King. So I think the depression, and not surprisingly, Nick struggles with depression too, right? That those get too effective is almost certainly probably depression. And so I think that the issues that the Reiner system, and when I say system, I mean the five of them, struggled with.

and the emotional processes that were passed on have to do with shame, depression, and anxiety to some extent. All family systems deal with anxiety according to Bowen. An important point here, by the way, is that a lot of people, when people think about multi-generational transmission of certain things, they think of like maybe behaviors, like addiction. Like, oh, you know, my great-grandfather was an addict and then, right, and then his, father was an addict. And they think of things like behaviors being passed on. But Murray Bowen makes the point.

I think this is really important in family systems. And it's important here and understanding the writers that what's passed on isn't really the behaviors. It's the underlying emotions. It's the emotional process that gets transmitted. It's the shame. And the way that shows up in this family, the way it shows up in the legacy pressures, the way it shows up in parenting styles, right?

way it shows up. And if Rob, for example, has low self-esteem. And this is a guy who obviously doesn't look like he does. But I would imagine that he's probably struggled with self-esteem for many years because his father didn't validate him. And that's all he wanted from his father. And he talks about it for decades and decades and decades. It's all I wanted.

So things like self-esteem will show, things like, low self-esteem will get transmitted from generation to generation, and they will impact the children, knowingly or unknowingly, right? Those are the types of things, and shame and self-esteem are closely like. The higher, the shame, the lower, typically the self-esteem, right? And so if Rob has shame, he probably has issues around self-esteem.

Yeah. And this stuff doesn't get resolved. Bowen also has this idea, Bowen has this idea he calls the family projection process, which is similar to projection for an individual, except it's part of the system. And the idea is that the system transmits emotional problems to the children. So again, the family projection process here would be,

would probably revolve around depression, anxiety, and shame. Okay. That makes sense. You know, another test of shame would be, I think this is another interesting offshoot is, and you see this in the movie, for those who have watched being Charlie, Charlie, who is a stand-in for Nick,

you know, both Rob and Nick say that it's not autobiographical, but it certainly has a lot of autobiographical elements. I personally think it's very autobiographical, but, you know, within reason. I mean, obviously there's the father is a politician. I mean, there's some clear different. differences, but one of the things about that movie is Charlie is, he's angry, he's sarcastic, he's entitled, he's resentful, he's bitter, right? Like, there's nothing you're going to do

to appease Charlie in this movie. And Charlie, even if you say that it's not autobiographical, and this isn't Nick, it's pretty close, right? Like, Nick wrote the script. At the very least, I think you'd have to say that Nick, that Charlie is Nick's alter ego or a part of Nick, right? That it's a representation or symbolic of how Nick sees himself. Absolutely. Right. Absolutely. And my point is that sarcasm and entitlement, a lot of these elements that you see in this movie are often a byproduct of shame.

sarcasm and anger are almost not always, but often directly related to shame. They're a way to keep people in the distance. So if you're really sarcastic and angry, people are not going to want to get close to you. You're going to naturally create distance between yourself and other people if you're always bitter and sarcastic and resentful, right? And angry, right? People don't want to get near anger a lot of times. And so by doing that, Nick is obviously pushing people away with his anger.

Charlie's pushing people away, right? He doesn't want any intimacy. He doesn't want people to get close to any type of vulnerability. He doesn't want to feel that shame. And so I think it's interesting because anger really is a defense. It becomes a defensive maneuver to really kind of deal with shame. it's also you know it's a way to deal with fear i think to some degree in helplessness and vulnerability um and in the movie he kind of presents himself as a bit of this comedian he actually does a stand-up

routine i'm going to read by the way a moment from the film when he's when nick or i'm sorry Charlie, I guess. Charlie is doing a comedy bit. And Charlie's doing a comedy bit that he thinks is funny to this group in rehab. And here's what he says. This is one of his jokes. He says, quote, my dad's a piece of shit. It's not funny, but I just wanted to say it, unquote.

And he thinks that's humorous, right? I mean... Right, not very funny. It's not funny. My kind of humor. Yeah. But I mean, but that's how shame gets expressed. And that's, that, that rage he has, not only towards his father, but towards his family, towards the world.

And I think a lot of that is driven by this unresolved shame. And I think some of that unresolved shame is transmitted from Rob and his relationship with his father. So I think you see kind of this, this Boenian idea of the multi-generational transmission of, emotions, unresolved emotions that show up. One of the things in describing his relationship with his dad on Howard Stern. Nick, this is what Nick said on Howard Stern.

Howard Stern said, was it hard? And by the way, this is an interesting point too. It is almost every interview that the Reiner's did for this movie and elsewhere, The question that everyone brings up all the time is, is it hard growing up in a famous family? Is it hard growing up? As a Reiner.

As a Reiner. Right. As a Reiner. Is it hard growing up with all this legacy pressure? People sense that this is important. People sense that this is driving the narrative. And it is driving the narrative. Right?

Like all the interviewers sense it. They sense it in 2016. They sense it. That's what they taught. Dan Rather did an interview with Carl and Rob years ago. And he brings it up, right? Everybody that interviews the Reiner's brings this up as being salient and important. And the reason they bring it up is because it obviously is.

But Howard Stern brings it up. Howard Stern says, was it hard growing up for you as Rob Reiner's son? Here's what Nick says. It's probably worse to live in the same. Syria. There's a shadow aspect to it. I mean, I just, when I heard that, I almost fell off my chair. It's probably, what? Like, I can't you. So Syria in 2016, by the way, for those who don't remember, Syria in 2016 was a mess. Syria was being bombed by the United States. There was, Russian planes were dropping poison gas. I mean, it was in civil war. I mean, Syria is still a mess.

but back in 2016, living in Syria would not have been pleasant. I don't think anyone would reasonably want to live in Syria in 2016. And he's comparing growing up and his family to living in Syria. Can I suggest something about this? I hear it a little differently. Okay. I think it's shame of his shame. I think it's shame of his shame.

I think that answer, I think you agree with me on this one. I think we're going to take the same thing from it. He's talking about how hard it is to be Rob Reiner's son. That, yeah, it's really, really hard. But it's like he feels shame that it's hard. It's like double shame. He is ashamed and he feels guilty because he knows it's worse growing up in Syria. And he's ashamed that he even feels shame about it.

Like he is a, he knows that he's lucky and everyone wants him to be lucky. and he hates it. He hates being Rob Reiner's son. He hates the pressure and then he feels shame that he hates it so much. I think he's actually implying like it's the whole comparison game. You know? Right. He's ashamed that he's ashamed. Like I don't know. That's how I take it. Yeah, that's true. Shame is as you point out, because Shane is what is an emotion about being seen. It's a comparative emotion. It's about being seen by other people. having other people judge you, right? But as the worms are pointed out, it's not just that.

It's also about your own conscience and judging yourself harshly. It's about not living up to your own expectations. Correct. So I think the sarcasm and the anger and the resentment, all of this, I think, is a response to this underlying shame about, as you put, like, not meeting, not living up to these expectations and this legacy pressure. Recently, there was a person who many of the sources have not identified themselves because they've been close to the writer family, but this person did.

His name is Danny. He did an interview with The Daily Mail. Yes. And I'm just going to read a little bit of what he said because it's remarkable, which, by the way, what he says is very similar to the character Charlie that you see in being Charlie. So this is no surprise. He said, and Danny was in rehab, by the way, not for drugs. He was in rehab for a shopping addiction. So apparently, according to Danny, he, one time he took his parents' credit card and went out and spent $250,000 on a shopping spree on his parents' credit card.

Quote, Nick had no sense of gratitude, no sense of appreciation. He was just a bleepin, pompous little punk. Nick Reiner hated his parents, especially his dad. He would rant through the night about how much he effing hated his parents. I think he just had really oppressed anger towards the fame, right? So there we go again with the legacy pressure. A couple other things. He noticed that Nick attacked another teen at the facility.

This is when Nick was 15, 16. he also attacked Danny he said quote he really Nick really truly had no cause to hate them except for the fact that they are the reason for a lot of his problems and that boiled down to the fame so Danny is noticing the same dynamic

that I'm discussing and I think again I think the basis for this is this underlined shame that's really driving this process and that's being passed on through the generations. There is, however, there's a couple of other important ideas to bring in here that really, I think, will help understand the situation. And that you and I often talk about this idea of triangulation. So Murray Bowen, Murray Bowen was one of the first family systems therapist to introduce

this idea of triangulation. And Bowen's idea was that in a system with, you know, more than two people, when anxiety became intolerable, a lot of times what happens is a third party is brought in to diffuse the anxiety. That's a triangle. So you have two people that are having a conflict, and then you bring in the third party to try to reduce that anxiety, to reduce that conflict. That's triangulation. Triangulation to Murray Bowen is like, the fundamental building block of family systems therapy. You have to understand triangulation if you want to understand family systems. There's also something in family systems called the identified patient.

And the identified patient is commonly seen as the symptom bearer. It's the person in the family system that, or you can think of it as a scapegoat. It kind of takes on the family issues or the family dysfunction. And then that person gets placed in therapy and the family points the finger at the hamlet say it's Nick and says, hey, look at how dysfunctional Nick is. We're fine, right? But Nick's the problem. Go fix him.

I think there's an element here where Nick does carry some of the unresolved emotional issues and anxiety in this family. Yeah. And the reason, what the identified patient does and what triangulation does, it helps stabilize a dysfunctional system. What happens is that the person who's carried, the identified patient is basically not only carrying the symptoms, but the identified patient diverts attention from the family dysfunction. And the identified patient, in triangulation two, it distracts from the intergenerational wounds.

Instead of this family saying, there's a lot of shame here that we have to address, there's a lot of shame. There's a lot of shame that we need to resolve and discuss. And maybe they did. I can imagine this happening in some of these treatment facilities, maybe to some degree. Although, as TMZ pointed out in their special, most of these treatment facilities did not deal with his mental health issues. They only dealt with the addiction. They only tried to get them clean for 30 days. And then they would cut them loose, right?

So they weren't really dealing with these underlying family dynamics around shame and mental health. and potentially schizophrenia, right? They were dealing with just the drug issues, which is a symptom. So they're not really addressing the real issues. But it's not hard to imagine that, you know, that if you, if Nick is being scapegoated in this family, then he's absorbing a huge amount of stress. And his shame is only increasing exponentially

because the expectations are unrealistic. And he's kind of being asked to carry the symptoms, of this family, so the family doesn't have to really look at their shape. The family doesn't have to, he's diverting attention from the intergenerational wounds that begin with Carl or maybe Harry. I don't know. They begin with Carl or maybe Harry. Harry Matthias.

Yeah. And they're being passed on through the generations. And he inherits that. He doesn't cause it. He inherits it from his dad. And maybe his dad, maybe his dad doesn't want to deal with that. even though his dad's been in therapy for years and years, at some level I would argue that Rob probably still doesn't feel seen.

And one of my arguments here, by the way, is Rob starts as an actor. He's in this show all in the family, right? He plays Meathead. Initially, he's known as an actor. And then what's interesting, even at 19, when he's just out of high school, he does, he directs, he produces and directs this play No Exit, but he doesn't act in it.

What's interesting about Rob Reiner is that most of his career is built off screen and behind the camera, not in front of it. In other words, to me, that would indicate some shame in the sense that shame is about being seen and being judged. It's about being on camera all the time, right? It's about people looking at you and judging you and seeing you as flawed or defective. Rob doesn't want that. He could have been an actor, but he moves. off-screen. He doesn't want to be seen. That's shame. He did some great films behind the scenes, though. I have to kill him that. Absolutely. I mean, every good film needs a good director.

There's no doubt he's bringing his wisdom and his life experience to these films. But my point is that he's not showing himself, right? He's not being subjected to criticism about himself on the screen as an actor. He doesn't want to be seen. And I think seen directly, like literally. And I think some of that is a manifestation of shame and how this issue is not resolved in the Reiner family, how this issue is passed on. And one of the arguments for this, by the way, is Romy.

Okay. So if you say, if somebody argues, well, Romie and Jake, and I don't know anything about Jake, Romney and Jake are fine. Like, isn't this just Nick? Isn't it easier just to point the finger at Nick and say, Nick's a drug addict, Nick's a personality disorder, Nick's got schizophrenia. Clearly, this is all on Nick.

That's where I go. Yeah. So in a 2022 episode on All of Us podcast, Romi revealed that she had been smoking up to 25 joints of marijuana a day while also taking antidepressants. Romy shared that she had been on and off antidepressants since she was 15 or 16. which not coincidentally happens to be the same age,

when Nick starts using drugs, when Nick, and again, this happens to be the same age, 14, 15, 16, this is the same age when most kids are now being evaluated and asked to perform at a higher level. So the fear of failure becomes much higher around this age. That's true. Romi shared that she had been on an offensive presence, she was 15 or 16,

and described depression so severe during high school that she sometimes couldn't get out of bed. She also detailed years of night terrors and panic attacks, saying that she felt like she was, quote, fighting for her life every night. Romy said that her dreams were so vivid and violent that sometimes she would murder people in her dreams

just to survive. That's so sad. I know. Right? But my point is that I think there's more going on in this family system than meets the other. And I think, like, the fact that Romi has these mental health struggles shows to me that this multi, what Bowen called the multi-generational transmission process.

And I've described that as with Rob involving depression, anxiety, and shame. You see all of those same things show up with Romi. To Romi's credit, she's gotten some parts. She seems to be doing well as an actress. She's managed to adapt and cope with these mental health. health issues. I'm guessing she's probably in therapy. I don't know for sure. But, and, and whereas Nick, obviously, he hasn't been, he wasn't able to adapt. He wasn't able to, he wasn't resilient enough to, right to adapt. But the fact that Romie is also struggling with similar issues,

yeah, I think really shows that this is a systemic issue. And that we're talking about, intergenerational wounds here, not just one dysfunctional person that just shows up with schizophrenia. We're talking about something larger. And this, by the way, is going to get us into triangulation a little bit. So I explained triangulation. You know, it's interesting to think about this system in terms of triangulation because you have, you have Rob, who's more of the disciplinarian, and then you have Michelle, who's more of a stabilizer. So she's more of the emotional stabilizer. Someone would say enabler. in the movie being Charlie, for example, Charlie wants an overnight pass.

And his father refuses to let him have it, whereas as the mother shows up behind the father's back to give him this overnight pass without the father knowing, right? You've got this double dealing. You've got this, you know, Nick, there's a point where Nick says in one of the interviews, you know, my mother understood more of my emotion. My mother was more understanding how I shouldn't go to rehab, whereas Rob wasn't. And so here you have, the parents are kind of splitting these different roles, and they're

bringing, they're triangulating Nick in the sense that the parents both have kind of different functions here, right? One is kind of an enabler, one's a disciplinarian, and Nick is kind of the, Nick becomes the recipient of that, of those conflicts. And what's interesting about that, and I'm going to take that a step further, by the way, because the triangulation, I believe, goes way beyond those three. But one of the interesting things about that conflict in particular, which is, again, so you've got these different roles for his parents, and they bring Nick in,

and Nick is sort of the battleground where all of this conflict plays out and all of this dysfunction plays out, right? He's the recipient of that. And so what happens in a family like that, oftentimes is conflict replaces intimacy. The conflict gets reenacted repeatedly because this is a family, at least with this triangle, where they, I believe, and Nick in particular, they really struggle to connect and they really struggle to express their intimacy. It's conflict that they're, it's conflict that stabilizes the system. And they're organizing around this crisis.

But there's something else going on here too, which is that many times people think of triangulation. And Bowen talked about this. Many times people think of triangulation is occurring between people. So again, Rob, Michelle, Nick, right? But it actually goes, when a family system is immersed in irresolvable conflict, a lot of times the only way to resolve that conflict is to triangulate an outside party. It's to externalize the conflict. So in other words, you bring in an organization or you bring in an institution and you triangulate with them.

And that's what's going on here. Rehab is a triangulation. The conservatorship is a triangulation. The movie being Charlie is a triangulation. Those are all attempts for this family that's locked in this conflict that they can't resolve to try to resolve it in other ways. In fact, Rob talks about this on one of the interviews of Dean Charlie, and he says, Rob says, quote, there were times we had fights. He's referring to being on the set of being Charlie, Rob, quote, there were times we had fights.

We went at each other and it was very difficult. It was very emotional. But in the end, it, quote, became a cathartic experience. In other words, Rob is kind of telling you why he made this movie. He made this movie, I think. It's a peculiar movie to make, by the way. Like there's nothing really redeeming in the end about this movie. And I'll talk about that at the very end of this podcast today.

But this movie doesn't really accomplish that much, except I think this is Rob's attempt to triangulate. a Hollywood or a movie into the family process to try to resolve this problem. Yeah, that makes sense. It's an interesting way to put it, but that makes perfect sense to me. Yeah. Guess what? Surprise, surprise, surprise. Yeah, their way of processing this.

It's their way of doing therapy. It's their way of trying to resolve these conflicts that just are constant, right? And so, but of course it doesn't work. Right, because the system here needs conflict to survive. If you were to eliminate the conflict here, then this family would be face-to-face with the real dysfunction. And I don't know if they want to go face-to-face. I don't know if they want to look at the real dysfunction. And so conflict and anger and rage become the primary relational language in this family.

That becomes the language of intimacy. There's one of my favorite plays. It's a really hard play to watch is Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. And for those people who have watched this, there's, Sir Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor play the couple in this movie. If you want to see a movie with extraordinary acting

that's very difficult to watch about a really dysfunctional couple, go watch Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Virginia. Wolf, potato, potato, potato. Do you want to know our marital conflicts? It's the way he pronounces wolf and roof. And what other Chicago?

No, it's not, it's W-O-O-L-F. Wool, wolf. Wolf. Well, anyway. With an L. Wolf, wolf, wolf, I don't know, whatever. Go on. Yeah, tomato, tomato.

Woof, go ahead, whatever. So my point is that when I look at Nick and I look at the way he communicates with his parents and I look at Charlie in the movie Charlie who basically is Nick, I'm reminded of this movie so much. And the reason is because the couple in that movie, all they do is yell and scream and belittle each other and that they're enraged all the time. and you know, that's the only way they connect. That is their relational language.

Conflict and rage allows them to feel intimacy because they can't feel it. They're too threatened to feel it and express it directly. Because if they express it directly, they could get rejected, right? They're too vulnerable to say just a simple, direct assertion of I love you. They can't say that because they can't face the vulnerability involved in that. They can't face dealing with real intimacy. That too involves a level of shame. And I think you see a lot of that here, that Nick's anger and sarcasm and resentment and rage.

it keeps everyone at a distance, but it also is the only way he can connect to people. It's the only way he can feel intimacy because he's too vulnerable and too filled with shame to really express intimacy directly. And you see this, by the way, in a lot of the interviews he's doing with his father in 2016. You know, there's moments when they do connect, but for the most part, they're pretty distant. They're not really connecting that well. No, I agree actually. Every picture of them of Nick and Rob, I want to say,

Rob will have his arm around Nick and there's a lot of distance. Yeah. And so the family system here is, I think, is, you know, Nick becomes a bit of a scapegoat. But then on the other hand, he's also a very complicated person. In other words, I think what makes this more difficult is when you pile on mental illness and specifically schizophrenia and depression and substance abuse and addiction, right, and maybe some personality issues, maybe I don't know.

Again, these are issues that an evaluator is going to have to figure out. then it becomes even more complicated. You know, I do think that the addiction, however, is a symptom of the shame. The schizophrenia and the depression and personality issues, that makes it increasingly more likely that Nick is going to be the scapegoat in this family. Right. You know, one of the big questions here that I've really asked a lot is, of this family system and maybe many family systems is

what happens when you have a certain amount of love? What happens when love is present? But it can't be felt or assimilated. What is it that prevents that love from being felt or assimilated? And I think the answer, it goes back to the shame. It goes back to really kind of addressing that issue and feeling it and expressing it. and expressing it and somehow attempting to resolve it.

Yeah. How do you resolve shame or is that just a loaded question because my mind is going? You know? It's very difficult. It's a deeply ingrained emotion, but the simplest answer I can give to that is acceptance. I don't think, I don't,

I'm not sure that there's something like completely overcoming shame. especially if it's involves generations because shame is deeply felt I think it's it's I think there's there's a period of if you're if you're if you're willing to face it directly and really experience it and you know and and really dive into it I think there's a better chance for resolving it but at the end of the day I think it comes down to something like acceptance or self-acceptance that you You work with the shame. You dance with it, right?

You don't fight it. You dance with it. You recognize it's the part of your life. You recognize it's deeply ingrained. You recognize it's occurred across generations. You do what Nick and Charlie, specifically in this movie being charged, what Charlie do not do, which is you don't fight it. Charlie is fighting everything. He's always in attack mode.

And that, by the way, is. That, by the way, I think is an interesting component of Nick. In the movie, being Charlie, he says, and I could see this applying directly to Nick as well, quote, you know these places don't work for me, unquote. He tells one of the therapists, I do have a disease, and it's this place talking about rehab, unquote. So there's this clear sense here in which Nick is blaming rehab and he's blaming the treatment. and he's blaming the treatment facilities and the counselors for all his problems. Yeah. But all of that is externalizing the problem.

The problem is Nick, right? Or at least some of the problem is Nick. It's Nick and his family. But, you know, there's a joke among psychologists, which, you know, mental health people in general, but I'll apply it to psychologists, which is how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Yes. I know this joke. Okay, yeah.

So the answer is it only takes one, but the light bulb has to want to change, right? And so if Nick is the light bulb, he doesn't want to change. Nick wants to fight the world. Nick wants to, you know, he wants to take on the world and he wants to beat the world. In other words, it's not. It's not a healthy response to go to rehab 20 plus times and to blame rehab for. for all your problems, right? Because rehab's not the issue.

The issue is that you don't want rehab. Nick does not want rehab to be successful. Because if he does, by the way, then the triangle we talked about, that changes. If Nick is successful in rehab or treatment, he's acknowledging that perhaps his parents were right. He's acknowledging that perhaps Rob at a point, that in all their power struggles,

Yeah. That maybe his dad was correct. That maybe he did have a problem. Maybe he does need to grow up, right? That's part of this equation too. So one of the things shame does is an arrest development. One of the things drug addiction does is it arrest development. When you start using drugs at 15, you're affecting the cerebral cortex.

You're affecting the parts of the brain that are responsible for decision-making, problem-solving, right? intimacy, right? You are affecting your development in every possible way. And that's true of shame too, because with shame, you're less, as we talked about, you're less likely to take risk because you don't want to fail. The spirit of failure just drives everything. And so you get a failure to launch. As a matter of fact, I'm going to read a quote now that we're talking about this.

This is a friend of the family that Nixon's childhood. I believe, this is from the Daily Mail, email. She said she's known the family since childhood. She said, quote, Nick was always uncomfortable with his status as a nepotism. Nick was, quote, Nick was always uncomfortable with his status as a nepo baby. It couldn't seem to shake feelings of shame that he was somehow breaking a legacy set by his more brilliant and accomplished father and grandfather. She goes on. My sense was that he knew he felt.

failed to launch and he hated himself for it, she said, quote, Nick came from one of the best, warmest, most loving families I know, but maybe all the love in the world couldn't fix what he was going through, unquote. Yeah. Wow. I mean, she nailed it and she's no, I was just going to say that. She nailed it. Yeah, all the love of the world. She absolutely nailed it. Failure to launch. But again, I think in thinking about this issue, it's too simple just to point the finger at Nick, because the story really begins with Rob and his struggles with his dad and his unresolved shame and issues that he still struggles with. As a matter of fact, you know, I think Rob, in looking at some of the interviews with Carl and

Rob, by the way, I mean, Rob comes off as warmer, kinder, more empathic. The problem with Rob and his shame, assuming he has it, which I think he does, but is that he's a lot more conflicted than his dad. He's a lot more conflictant. And because of that, he's conflicted about how to deal with Nick. He's conflicted about proper parenting practices. In fact, there's a quote where Rob basically says, I'll read it in a second. But because he's so conflicted, he exerts inconsistent authority and inconsistent parenting practices. And that shows up with Nick. Right.

That's how Nick gets triangulated between his dad, who's like overly disciplinarian and his mother, who's more of the kind of enabler, right? Rob says, this is an interview he did with ABC News. Rob says he's talking about treatment. And he says, they told us, meaning the rehab facilities, quote, they told us you have to be tough. It has to be tough love, which is not my nature. I'm not a disciplinarian.

I'm an actor. I'll act like a guy who is tough, unquote. That's interesting, right? That is interesting. In the sense that although Rob is saying that he doesn't really feel like he wants to be overly, overly disciplined or harsh with his son, he takes on that role and he acts in that role. And that's what you see in the movie.

The problem here, though, is I'm not sure where you separate the acting from the reality. Right. Like even if he's acting at some point, he's stepping into that role. And he's acting in a way that's inconsistent with the way he wants to be. but this is this gets back to protecting that family reputation right i think he's acting in that role because that's what he's trying to do right he doesn't want his son i mean let's be i don't know how he probably he wants his son to do well but he also doesn't want his son to embarrass his legacy he doesn't want his son to somehow tarnish the family legacy the family reputation i think

to some degree. I'm not saying that that is spoken. I'm saying that's more unspoken and tacit, but I do believe that's a part of the situation. It's more internal. He doesn't, he doesn't admit it. Because, right, because if you don't want to act like a guy who's tough, then why are you acting like a guy who's overly tough? What are the unconscious motivations for acting tough

when you don't want to be tough? Some of it is because he wants to get Nick in line so he doesn't embarrass the family. Maybe, yeah. Or I mean, just hopes it could help his son. Well, yeah, that too. I mean, yeah. I mean, you can't enable addiction forever. I mean, you know, as you say, he's conflicted.

I don't know. I think I'd be conflicted. I'd be conflicted as a parent, you know. I agree. Is it tough love that my child needs? Is it just absolute unconditional love? I don't know. I'd be very conflicted.

too. I wouldn't know what was right. Yeah, there's no easy answers here. I think I just want to point out, however, that this is way more complex. It is. Than just Nick having schizophrenia. Like, the narrative that the defense is going to want you to believe is that Nick changed his, Nick's, Nick was in a conservatorship diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective in 2020.

that he went off his meds for a period of time, he became super agitated, and he acted out in murderous parents. That's what they're going to argue and that he didn't understand the consequences of his actions, therefore he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity, right?

I mean, that's not what happened here. That's not the story of Nick Reiner. The story of Nick Reiner is way more complicated. And as I said, it goes back generations. You know, you wonder if, is this a different family? If Rob Reiner's not, father's not rich and famous, do we see a different version of his relationship with Nick?

I mean, almost certainly, right? I mean, maybe it could be worse, too. Maybe he's not as kind as he, right? Maybe he's not as kind in that scenario. Just getting back, I want to finish with a few thoughts on Rob and Nick's relationship and sort of the dynamic that I think is driving a lot of this. There's something in family systems therapy called symmetrical escalation. Symmetrical escalation basically occurs when two parties refuse to back down.

What happens is both parties amplify each other's behavior. there's the rules tend to get stricter defiance to those rules gets bolder and oftentimes so you have imagine do you have two parties essentially that won't back down both parties want to be dominant and the communication gets to the point where something has to give either one party has to back down or if both parties don't back down then you you you you can have some type of violence, right? And so I think it's not hard to imagine that in this particular case, that perhaps the situation arose where Rob did not back down.

I want to, this is a really interesting, and Rob's history, by the way, was one of backing down, by the way. So that's how symmetrical escalation became de-escalated, because usually Rob would back down and Nick would get his way. And then the system would find what's called homeostasis or balance. The system would return to normal, right? It would still be filled with conflict because this entire triangle was conflicted. There's an interaction here which I think is really, really telling about their relationship.

This goes back to 2016. They're doing an interview for ABC News. Rob tells the story about how Bean Charlie started out as a comedy. And then it became a comedy drama. Until Rob said, Rob discussed it with Nick and said, quote, this subject really could go a lot deeper. Rob went on. He said, I thought it was funny, but it lacked depth.

Right? Yeah. And so Rob made it clear that if Rob was going to, to jump into this process. So we talked about this a little earlier. I think the movie became therapeutic of sorts that this becomes, that Rob and Nick, Rob specifically triangulates this movie project to try to solve Nick's problems. He hopes he can, you know, he helps he can resolve some of these issues by bringing his kid on to a project, talking about it, right? He said it was cathartic, obviously. Absolutely. It ended up not being cathartic. So they,

Rob says this fairly early in the interview about how this is really, Nick saw this as a comedy, but he thought, he could mine it for a little more depth, right? He felt like it was more. And so they're near the end of the interview.

And Nick turns to the interviewer. And so the interviewer basically says to Nick, what do you hope people take away from this? And this is what Nick says. Quote, I hope they laugh. It's funny what happens in these places, it's not all serious.

Wow. Think about that moment. So his father is basically saying, I didn't want this to be a comedy. I wanted this to be something that was deep because it is deep and it is meaningful. And it is, right, it is serious. This is not a comedy.

This is more of a drama. Yeah, and it's cathartic and it's important. Exactly. And Nick concludes by saying, I think it's really funny. In other words, not only is Nick being oppositional with his father, right? But he's saying, I don't think this is serious. Like Nick sees rehab is in some ways pointless, meaningless, right?

And the reason he sees the very dynamic here that he has with his father where he's basically saying, I don't agree with you, dad. I'm opposing you right now. I'm being rebellious with you right now. This is their relationship. If you want to understand Rob and Nick's relationship, that interaction says it all. That Nick doesn't see any of this.

Because, again, the sarcasm and the comedy is really a defense against shame. Absolutely. And Rob is saying, I want to take a deep dive into this issue. I want to deal with the shame or the oppression or whatever, the addiction at a level that's meaningful to both of us, and I want this to be cathartic.

And Nick's saying, you know what, you just wasted your time. This is really just funny, right? That's how I see life. I don't take life seriously, right? I don't, I don't approach things without some sense of anger and resentment, I guess. I mean, he's not saying that. But I think this is a really interesting moment between them because it really speaks to all the dynamics going on in this family

and all the dynamics between Rob and Nick, and also a version of symmetrical escalation. Right? If Rob comes back and says, no, we did this project because I wanted to help you and I wanted to tell your story and I thought it would be cathartic, now we're in symmetrical escalation. Because more than likely Nick's going to come back and say,

no, it's a comedy, right? Somebody's going to lose that battle. Yeah. At the end of the day, unfortunately, obviously, Rob lost the battle, right? I mean, symmetrical escalation oftentimes or can, if it occurs over a period of years, it can end in violence. Tragically, in this case, I believe you had a version of that. I think the trigger, if I had to guess, I would say that the trigger here had to do with

the conservatorship or rehab. It's possible that when they changed his meds, because Nick was agitated, that perhaps he started doing meth again, Rob wanted him back in rehab, they escalated. Or perhaps there was some, I've heard some chatter that the conservatorship was being renewed. And, you know, think about that, by the way. You put a 30, in 2020, Nick was younger, but you put a 32-year-old. young adult who can't meet any family expectations or legacy pressures, you put them in a conservatorship where you're basically saying,

you're disabled, you can't care for yourself, you're done. You will never meet the expectations we said for you, right? You're of total failure. Yeah. Think about the shame that would create for Nick Reiner. Yeah. I think either one of those could have led to a lot of, of symmetrical escalation, which could have eventually been triggers for these murders.

So anyway, that interaction with ABC News from 2016, I think, is really representative of Nick's relationship with his dad and all the qualities we've kind of talked about, not letting his dad make his point, kind of trying to get in the last word. And it speaks to this idea of conflict in the system. it speaks to Nick's rebellious streak and it also I think shows the possibility of symmetrical escalation which easily could have led

to these murders I want to end as long as we're talking about this I want to end with so there's a spoiler alert here but I want to end with the end of the movie being Charlie and because I think the end

I think it's really indicative of everything that we've talked about today here. So the ending is the father attempts to reconcile with Charlie. They've been really fighting the whole movie, and Charlie was acting rebellious for most of the movie, angry, certainly. And at the end, the father gives him a hug,

and he tells him that he loves him. And Charlie takes that in and he moves away from his father. And his response to his father telling him love him that he loves him is, quote, I don't hate you. So Charlie in this movie is incapable of telling his father he loves him. And I think that really summarizes everything we've talked about. I think that's driven by this shame. I think it's driven by this legacy pressure.

I think that anger and rage really becomes, in conflict really become the only languages that allow Nick to connect to his father and probably to his family. And I think also through all these triangulations and through this process of the multi-generational transmission of shame and depression and anxiety, I think that crisis becomes kind of the glue that holds this family together. And I think that's why Nick really doesn't want to accept help and Nick really doesn't want to resolve any of these issues. It's why Nick rebels against treatment.

It's because I think he really needs this conflict and these crises to feel some sense of intimacy and to feel some sense of connection to this family in a way, in the only way that he knows how to do it without being vulnerable. Yeah. You made me realize, too, that the decades-long issue that Rob Reiner had with his father, his father not being proud of him, not being able to say, I love you to him.

I wonder if it was fully his father. Maybe it was his son, too, that he was actually trying to process. Because it sounds like Rob was trying to resolve that through loving his children and being a better dad. than his dad was to him. And yet his own son wouldn't return that to him. And maybe what he was really trying to process there was actually his son not being able to love him too. And trying so desperately to connect to his son. I mean, the pictures of them are awkward.

You know, Rob is trying to be affectionate. And Nick is not connecting. Yeah. And to have that be the last line in a movie about them, you know, not about them, but representing them, I don't hate you is sort of,

to me, a way that Rob's trying to attempt to get his son, too, to say, I love you, Dad. Yeah. So maybe,

maybe it started with Carl, but maybe it transitioned to and ended with Nick. And he continued to, to use Carl. And maybe he could have resolved that earlier decades ago, had his son loved him. Yeah. I mean, I think there's so much going on there. I think part of the issue is that Nick does not want to experience love or he's not willing

to receive love. But I think some of that is shame, though, too. that, you know, praise becomes threatening when you're filled with shame, and love becomes very difficult to receive and hear when you're filled with shame. Because when you're filled with shame, you're defective to the core. You don't believe that you deserve love, right? And so what comes first? Is it the shame or is it Nick's rejection of his father?

Is Nick angry because he's filled with shame? Is he angry because he, as you pointed out earlier, because he's born into this family with all these legacy pressures and that he's forced to perform or, right, that love is conditional in that circumstance? I mean, I don't think Rob intends any of that. But I think the problem is that he can't help but bring it into this family. As much as Rob doesn't want to, as much as he wants to exclude the shame and the depression and all the issues he dealt with. I think it's inevitable through this, what I call the family projection process and through triangulation. I think he can't help but bring this in because he's been struggling with it for so long because he can't resolve it. So maybe Nick's angry at him for, you know, for the weight

of all these expectations and for burdening him with this shame, even if it's not conscious. I think there's a complicated dance here. I mean, yeah, clearly at some point, this is about Nick rejecting his father and sort of like the comedy drama issue, not giving his father the satisfaction of saying, yeah, this is serious, this is a drama. Dad, I understood why you did it.

You did it to help with the catharsis. Yeah. Well, thank you for helping break that down. Such a tragedy. Yeah, any advice? Because I feel more helpless than ever listening to this. Is there anything we can do to help those we love the most, you know? Right. How do you? And I and ourselves as well.

How do you get out of generational patterns? I don't know. Maybe that's another show. I think my final thoughts would be that when love becomes three, threatening, when love becomes threatening because it highlights one sense of inadequacy and vulnerability, somehow you have to make it safe. I don't, for whatever reasons, it was never safe for Nick to receive love. There's no doubt in my mind that love was present in that home, but Nick was just unable to

accept it, right? He was unable to accept anything. He was unable to accept rehab. He was unable to accept therapy in all. the rehab facilities, right? He's just so defiant, which, by the way, this whole, this whole movie being Charlie, it's the first thing that comes on your screen is defiant pictures. Like, if you want to understand this movie, like, I was like, who I looked it up, who owns defiant pictures? It's not clear. I think it had something to do with, perhaps with the Reiner family. I don't know, but like,

defiant pictures made this movie of a defiant kid who defies his father. and defies accepting love, right? Everything is defiant for Nick. And I mean, but, you know, but I think it's a more complicated picture than just pinning it on Nick. Like there's definitely a sense in which the family system plays a role.

And the way Nick gets triangulated, the way Nick gets, you know, becomes identified as the source of problems in this family. The way things get, you know, Nick becomes a scapegoat of sorts. I mean, that's not to say that Nick doesn't have serious problems. He obviously does, right?

But it's still a dance. And the only way you can make a dance work is if both parties are somewhat receptive to the different moves that are occurring, right? There has to be some measure of acceptance and some measure of vulnerability. And maybe that's what's lacking here. Vulnerability. Yeah. Thank you, babe. Yeah.

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