2 hours ago, Granny58 said:

agreed.  I am one of the few who didn't fault Meri through the catfishing, because of how hurt and lonely she must have been.  

Putting on my therapist hat. I'll apologize for my armchair diagnosis. I know many of you dislike those - but I do have the background and education in family therapy (I am not a practicing family therapist) to make at least an educated guess. I'd be unable to make an actual diagnosis from anything I see on TV, but as the Brown fambily masks have slipped over the years of this show, there are breadcrumbs that point in a certain direction. I've been rewatching all seasons from the start with that in mind, because I actually find it a fascinating case study into a type of family dysfunction that most people would never even get a peek into. Disclaimer: this is not a professional diagnosis nor is it intended to be one. It is merely observations and supposition based on my understanding of human behavior.

What I think we're seeing is textbook family dysfunction, amplified significantly due to family size, polygamy, cultural and religious pressure, conditioning, and Kody's and Robyn's undiagnosed personality disorders.

Meri definitely has personal issues she needs to work out, but so do we all. Her defensive and dysfunctional behaviors have amplified over the years, and understandably so. The catfishing was a cry for help and an attempt to find a solution to feeling trapped in something that suddenly stopped working for her. It was magical thinking; Meri believed it was her out, and she probably believed God sent her the opportunity. When it turned out that it was all a sham, it must've felt to her just another slap in the face from God.

Add to that the fact that, for all her life, Meri was led to believe that if one doesn't do well in polygamy, it is due to a personal weakness and inability to subjugate oneself to God's will. Imagine how disorienting that must feel, to be told all your life that "keep sweet' philosophy, and to believe that if polygamy feels personally uncomfortable, it's because of YOU - because God entrusted this to you and dammit, you're fucking it up (I firmly believe Fucking It Up should be a diagnosis in the DSM-5). Add to that the religious tenet (or tenant as the Brown family likes to call it) that spirit babies wait in Heaven to come to moms along with Meri's fertility issues, and I can imagine that in Meri's mind, she feels somehow unworthy or as if she has failed in her duty and must, therefore, be in some way offensive to God. In other words, it's highly likely that Meri believes that Heavenly Father hates her, and because of her religious background, she can't find any other possible explanation for that. And she is terrified others will arrive at that conclusion, as well, so she as she puts it, builds walls in hopes that others won't notice that she is somehow displeasing to God.

I believe Meri also suffers from CPTSD (complex PTSD - often the result of being on the receiving end of years of narcissistic abuse). Watch her in family gatherings; she's afraid to speak because she no longer trusts her own instincts, and she doesn't feel safe using her voice, which leads to her defensive outbursts and attempts to control every situation with passive aggression or outright aggression. With that being said, Robyn zeroed in on Meri as her chief rival and has slowly whispered in everyone's ear everything she sees as "wrong" with Meri while acting to Meri's face like she loooooooovvvvvvveeees her. So Robyn has been quietly sewing the seeds of discord among the entire family with a smile on her face and a gently furrowed brow of "concern." When you watch Robyn in talking heads, you'll see that the gently furrowed brow is one of her go-to moves of manipulation (along with the affects of crying minus the tears). It's how she deflects from her own duplicity. 

I believe Robyn was so threatened by Meri's first and legal wife status, that she has waged a stealth bitch campaign (Stealth Bitch should also be in the DSM-5) from the very beginning. Why? Because SHE should have been there since the start, not Meri. Hell, it was her opening line, and as someone rightly pointed out, it's popped out in some seriously dysfunctional ways over the years like the highly inappropriate and damaging purity speech and the super craptastic drawing she had made of Kootie and the kids (thumbs up, Robyn!).

The clues are often subtle (but not always), but they are there. Robyn has succeeded in making Meri the family scapegoat (or identified patient) who then becomes the perceived source of all fambily dysfunction. Kootie was the first to buy into this scapegoating, but you can specifically see it from many of the family adults now, including all three other wives, Meri herself, Maddie, and Mariah. They can scapegoat Meri and deflect from their own dysfunction and cognitive dissonance arising from how their religion says this should all go versus their own personal experience. 

Meri loved Robyn and feels she invited Robyn into the fambily. She most likely did this in an attempt to appease God, who she was already sure was mad at her or found her unworthy. Bringing in Robyn was an attempt to make her worthy in God's eyes and in Kootie's. On the surface, Robyn expresses love and gratitude to Meri for doing this while scheming for Meri's downfall underneath. So Meri is experiencing cognitive dissonance. The dysfunctional way humans psychologically attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance is through rationalization and justification, and Meri lacks the psychological tools or understanding to deal with these things in a healthy manner. Viewed through that lens, Meri's behavior, defensiveness, and victimhood are a natural reaction of someone who is poorly psychologically equipped to handle Robyn's machinations.

Robyn has many observable tools of deceit that serve to deflect from her behaviors: faux empathy, crying (or pretending to), martyrdom, fake soft sweetness, faux concern with her furrowed brow - the list goes on and on. The fambily eats that shit up with a spoon rather than recognizing what's actually happening because it's easier to see Meri as bad than to acknowledge they have welcomed someone dangerous into their fold. 

What you're seeing is family dysfunction, magnified large. I think Nancy has actually done as good of a job as she can with these people, but they are all so blind to their own dysfunction due to their cultural and religious influences that Nancy is missing some tools to truly help them, and I doubt they'd be willing to be called on their shit (should be a therapeutic term IMHO) anyway. Meri is the product of years of manipulation, gaslighting (true gaslighting, not the pop psych crap people point out as gaslighting these days), misogyny, and religious indoctrination. I have great compassion for her while still acknowledging that she does some super fucked up shit in response to her situation.

I feel like I should be embarrassed that I have thought this deeply about it, but I own my own dysfunction so there you go!

Edited March 24, 2021 by NoWhammies
Edited to add a disclaimer

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