I was recently asked to serve as the moderator for a Distinguished Lecture event, which involved interviewing New York Times bestselling author and former Nickelodeon child star (of iCarly and Sam & Cat) Jennette McCurdy, about her recently published book, “I’m Glad My My Died.” If you have not read the book, DO IT. Add the book to your holiday wish list, get it from the library or download the audiobook. Anyone who is interested in mental health should get something out of this book, and experience entertainment along the way. I am a bit too old to have watched iCarly when it originally aired, so I didn’t come at the book as a fan of a childhood actress; having experience with the show is not necessary to enjoy the book. (That said, I watched a few episodes recently, as the entire series is on Netflix now. I can see why she was successful as an actor, she’s great in that show.)
The book is separated into two parts, “before” her mom died of cancer (when she was 18, I think), and “after.” The before part starts when she is 6 and quickly establishes how she grew up in a chaotic low-resourced environment. The “after” part chronicles her grief and her struggles to find her identity without her mom. I really loved the way she wrote the book in first person present-tense language, so you could really see the perspective of her as a child who wanted nothing more than to please her mother. Yet as a reader, we can see that the behaviors her mom engaged in are problematic even if young Jennette could not. She did not choose to write the book in more classic “memoir” style (past tense, older-and-wiser reflections on past behavior) and thus the book feels more like a novel. She unfolds plot points when then become relevant, so there are surprises and discoveries the reader gets to take along with her.
As I am not a literary critic, I will let go of analyzing her writing choices and instead talk about how she details her mental health journey. I’m a sucker for “my mental health recovery” books anyway, and this one is probably my favorite for the breadth of issues that are discussed (hoarding! obsessive-compulsive symptoms! anorexia! binge eating! bulimia! alcohol abuse! psychotic breaks! personality pathology!) and the unflinching way in which she expresses her complex feelings. She never vilifies her mother, even though she makes it possible for readers to see the villainy of her mother’s actions. The book really lives the “and” of DBT–she loves her mother and recognizes her mother’s dynamic energy and strengths *and* recognizes her mother’s abusive and destructive behavior. She has compassion for her own actions, as she recognizes how they were useful to her at the time, *and* takes the reader on the journey of how she realizes the harm they caused her long term.
When I teach personality assessment to the grad students, I ask them to conceptualize cases using a framework I call the VEIL model. Which was originally called something else, but…..this is the first four letters of my last name, so that’s fun! Anyway, the acronym stands for four domains of personality functioning that I think are crucial to conceptualizing a person: V is Values and Goals. E is Emotion and Self-Regulation. I is Identity and Cognitive Styles, and L is Liking/Loving Others. I ask my students to go through each domain and think about each element and then highlight the most prominent pieces. If I apply this framework to the Jennette of the book (recognizing her whole life isn’t in the book, and she as a person is a complex being we don’t get to see fully), we get this.
V: She seems to value belonging and harmony, and also competence. Many of her actions seem to be motivated by wanting others to like her; she subjugates her own feelings for the sake of others repeatedly throughout the book. She values being competent and the “good” kid–she is a “good sport” and does what others tell her to do. She doesn’t say this in the book (as I think she is not wanting to be arrogant) but she also seems to value doing a good job. She did not want to act as a kid, but she took acting and dance, she recorded a music album, and I suspect she probably got some pride in doing a good job at these things; she values hard work. It also seems as though over time (by the end of the book) she learned to value honesty and authenticity–these were not values she could enact as a child or early after her mom died, but they seem to have been values she developed through therapy and finding people who she could truly be herself with.
E: She appears to be fairly emotionally sensitive; she can access her emotions easily (crying on cue!) and she seems to have strong feelings. Yet as a kid and young adult, she was also uncomfortable with those strong feelings, potentially because of her mother’s tendency to explode easily and without much warning. Her own feelings were often invalidated when she was brave enough to share them, so she learned to stuff them down. She was not taught healthy emotion regulation/coping skills and tried very hard to exert control over her feelings. Her self-regulation skills are actually pretty good; she learned to inhibit her desires and control her behavior. In fact, I would argue that she exhibits many of the telltale signs of overcontrol and perfectionism, which are not sustainable long term and contributed to her later engagement in “out of control” behavior (binge eating, alcohol abuse) because efforts to control don’t work in the long run. It’s like trying to stuff too much into a closet–eventually the doors will burst and everything will come tumbling out. (Then shame results in stuffing everything back into the closet as quickly as possible without looking at it, making it more likely for the doors to burst again.)
I: This is the hardest domain to identify. I think her identity early on was subsumed under her mothers–she was dependent on her mother for praise and validation and her mother was dependent on her success for financial resources but also for the fame and recognition that she craved. So what *was* her identity early on? I don’t know, exactly. Perhaps as a “good kid” or as the “observer.” She talked in the book about how she always preferred writing to acting, observing to performing. In terms of cognitive styles, it does seem as though she internalized some of the criticism her mother lobbed her way, and she was able to hear her mother’s voice. She was critical of her own actions, of her thoughts, of her feelings. But does she identify as a woman? Throughout the book she did identify as a kid and resisted development into a woman, but what about now? Does she identify as an actor? As White? Does she identify as privileged as a star who has a lot of money, or as poor (because she was as a young kid)? Does she still identify as Mormon? These are things I don’t actually know.
L: Having authentic, honest, and *real* relationships seems to be a value she holds for herself now. When she was young, being liked was important to her, particularly by her mother. In the book she talks about how her mother pushed her into acting and it was her mother who wanted her to be successful. Whether she got any pleasure at all from being liked by her fans, it’s hard to say, but I would imagine there is something reinforcing about that. But also a piece that is disconcerting, when the “person” who is liked is a character. I think she grew up performing–for the camera most certainly, but also for people in her life, and being “liked” (whether that was about getting attention from boyfriends, making friends, or getting jobs) does seem to be a theme. I also get the sense that being truly “loved” and known for who she is as a real person is important to her, and something she learned to cultivate as she navigated therapy.
How do those things fit together? Well, I think her chaotic abusive environment shaped a sensitive kid into someone who could be the “good” girl, “good” sport people pleaser, where doing those things probably lessened the chaos and thus got reinforced over time. She learned to control her real feelings and interests, suppressed them because the value of belonging and intimate connection was stronger than the values of growth and authenticity. So she tried to control herself, emphasize her mother’s goals and dreams over her own, but that was ultimately unsustainable for her. Through therapy, she was able to acknowledge and accept her emotional sensitivity, learn new and healthier coping strategies, but her values of belonging (with her friends and family, people who who she can be honest and authentic with) and competence/achievement are still present.
This post exemplifies my personality conceptualization framework as applied to the book. It was such a fun book to read and SO much for to talk with her directly about her experiences. Below is a pic taken in the green room after the lecture. Can’t wait to see what she writes next!
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