I didn’t discover the series Friends on Channel Four in the UK until it was a few seasons in. I like to watch series from the beginning, so it’s been in my watchlist on Netflix for a while, I just haven’t got round to it yet. You don’t need to be a fan to find it sad when someone like Matthew Perry dies young but, not having watched it, I wasn’t especially affected by it. That is, until I read an article about Matthew and something immediately stood out to me.
That Matthew Perry had long-term addictions to alcohol and other substances is being widely reported. Sometimes addiction develops in of itself - social pressures or ease of access - but often it can be a means of escape from some other issue. We don’t have to read too far into the BBC article to find a clue to what this was.
Perry said of his move to Los Angeles to seek fame, "I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it." In order to want to be fixed, you have to be convinced you are broken, or that there is something inherently wrong with you. The article goes on to describe Perry’s childhood, which was split between his divorced parents “but in which he felt a sense of abandonment from both”.
This feels very familiar to me in the context of my own experiences. Abandonment doesn’t have to be literal, it can be a simple case of parents being too busy, or dealing with their own stresses and anxieties. It sounds as if they had little time for him - his mother’s job, “just meant I spent a great deal of time alone”. The same for me - I had lots of books to keep me quietly occupied, but few friends. Time alone leads to constant internal reflection, or what psychologist Ethan Kross calls Chatter.
“Chatter consists of the cyclical negative thoughts and emotions that turn our singular capacity for introspection into a curse rather than a blessing.” Ethan Kross, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It
I thought that there must be something wrong with me. Why else would no-one want to spend time with me? The question was whether it was something specific (was I ugly or unlikeable) or, worse, the more generic ‘no-one wants you’. Eventually I reached the conclusion that I must hide my true self and act like other people who, to me, seemed to be popular. Becoming convinced of this at an early age can be a cause of personality disorder, particularly borderline personality disorder, or BPD.
A common feature of BPD is difficulty in forming and retaining relationships. A regular fear is that the other person will eventually notice your true personality, the one that no-one wants, and will leave you. The stronger the feelings you have for that person become, the more painful you become convinced that will be. The only solution is to end it yourself, before the perceived pain reaches the level of your childhood abandonment.
Or, as Matthew Perry puts it, “I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloveable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts."
Did Perry have a personality disorder? Had he ever had therapy that might have helped him come to terms with these demons, instead of focusing on the coping method of alcohol? This is what makes me sad because there is nothing more powerful than hearing someone else put into words those same insecurities and unhelpful thoughts that are in your own mind, every day. To know that you are not alone, and that there are people who will accept you for who you really are.
"I need love but I don't trust it. If I drop my game like Chandler and show you who I really am you might notice me - but worse you might notice me and might leave me, and I can't have that." Matthew Perry.
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