Paula Bruce, Ph.D

‘Baby Reindeer’ is a Netflix drama which has recently captivated a global audience, earning wild praise from both critics and viewers alike. It is based on a supposedly true story, and it rivetingly portrays a stalker relationship between Donny, a somewhat depressed pub worker and struggling comedian, and Martha, an awkward, obsessed Scottish woman who apparently is an impoverished disbarred lawyer. In the backdrop of this story is also Donny’s dysfunctional relationship with a number of other important characters. This includes Darrien, a writer/producer who offers to mentor Donny early in his comedy and writing career, but who also encourages Donny’s descent into substance abuse while sexually abusing him. It also includes Teri, a transgender woman with whom Donny forms an ambivalent romantic relationship which compels him to confront his shame around his sexuality. And it includes Keeley, his ex-girlfriend and her mother, Liz, with whom Donny lives, and who provide support to Donny as he struggles to find emotional and financial independence.

What makes this series so compelling is not just the frightening stalking relationship dynamic portrayed in it, but the fact that it has managed to capture and portray the most primitive parts of all of our conflicts and yearnings in relationships that we are both repelled and fascinated by. All of us, on some deep level, can at times identify with and understand the powerful desires that drive the behaviors of Donny and Martha because all of their behaviors are driven by a deep longing for connection. We are all driven towards connection, even sometimes when it is unhealthy or pathological. Yet, it is impossible to understand the relationship between Donny and all of these characters without understanding how trauma shapes attachment and how the most undesirable of our feelings and urges can get transferred and contained within a relationship.

Donny’s pursuit of a career as a comedian tells us that he has the desire to be on center stage where all eyes are on him, and that he wants to have the power to elicit interest in others. After all, that is what comedians do, exhibit themselves. He utilizes a particular kind of comedic style which is silly, wacky and, in many ways, quite childish. Donny, by all accounts, has emerged from a family that struggled with intimacy, likely contributed to by Donny’s father’s own childhood experience of sexual abuse. Consequently, Donny likely emerged out of his childhood desperately longing to capture the attention of others, longing to have the power to compel others’ interest in him through his childish exhibitionism. In his adulthood, he therefore engages in the pursuit of being seen and applauded for all his childish, comedic ways. At the same time, he has difficulty in being able to care for himself both emotionally and financially. His protracted childlike dependency results in him turning to his girlfriend, Keely, and her mother, Liz, to provide the care and mothering that he has longed for, allowing him to remain in a suspended state of childhood.

Martha, it appears, has had a terrible early life, filled with unspeakable violence and neglect, leaving her only with her baby reindeer stuffed animal for comfort, a likely small kindness she received as a Christmas gift. She would likely cling to this small kindness of a baby reindeer in moments of desperation, pain and profound loneliness. The baby reindeer likely brought her comfort, but it also brought frustration in its limitation and therefore both powerful feelings of desperate love and profound hatred were invested in it. When we get a glimpse of her apartment, we see the evidence of a lonely, isolated person whose dirty, chaotic living conditions reflect her inner turmoil. Her pathological preoccupation with Donny, and her pursuit of him, reflect her voyeuristic compulsions and this coincides with his exhibitionistic desires.

Martha and Donny first meet when she presents herself to the pub where he works, seemingly distraught and claiming to have no money, and she is offered a small kindness of a free cup of tea by him. Martha immediately comes to life in being offered and accepting this cup of tea. This beginning of their relationship is critical as, in that moment, Donny and Martha form an emotional union from which they both struggle to disentangle.

Following Donny’s small act of kindness towards her, Martha begins to stalk him relentlessly, first with misspelled, childish emails and tantalizing phone calls that later increase in frequency, sexuality and aggression and where she repeatedly refers to him as ‘Baby Reindeer’.

Earlier in his life and career, he met a TV writer named Darrien who took an interest in him, offered to ‘mentor’ him and encouraged him to write. Donny began to spend most of his time with Darrien, neglecting his relationship with his then-girlfriend, Keeley. Darrien introduced Donny to drugs and during their drug-fueled experiences, Darrien engaged in various sexual acts on Donny. Although Donny did not appear to be conscious during these acts, he did not confront him or end the relationship once he realized. Instead, he returned to Darrien again and again, filled with self-loathing about the sexual acts he was a part of but desperate for the promise of fame and success his relationship with Darrien seemed to offer.

I do not suggest at all that Donny is responsible for his own abuse, either by Martha or by Darrien. He is, however, engaged in an unconscious dance with each of them to which he contributes, and which keeps him trapped in an abusive dynamic. It continues because each of them plays an important part for the other, and each of them derives some containment of something that they cannot bear to hold. Martha likely holds and expresses all of the neediness, rage and frustrated sexuality that Donny cannot own. And Martha, a survivor of likely horrific child abuse, is unable to own the fear and powerlessness she must have felt, so Donny comes to hold that for her by becoming the frightened, targeted victim she must have been. At the same time, her pathological preoccupation with him leaves him with the kind of intense attention and focus that he craves, and that Martha may have wished for herself as severely neglected child.

Yet, for Donny, it is Martha who is needy, desperate, lonely, and rejected; not him. It is Martha who attacks his transgender girlfriend and raises questions about his sexuality; not him. It is Darrien who is dominant and aggressive in his pursuit of his sexual longings; not him. By being on the other side of the relationship with them, and by engaging in this process of disavowing parts of himself and seeing those parts in them (a psychological process known as projective identification), he can acknowledge his victimization (which is real) but deny all of the parts of himself that he sees as existing within them.

Again and again, in both relationships, Donny denies and minimizes the abuse that is happening and returns to engage with them. This is the clue to understanding that Donny is participating in an unconscious dance. Something familiar is being re-enacted between Donny and all of these characters that provides some deep emotional gratification to each of them, but that is also inappropriate or even horrifyingly abusive and incompatible with true emotional intimacy.

So how does this relate to your life? What can we all learn from ‘Baby Reindeer’? In its cringe-inducing, heart-stopping dramatic portrayal, ‘Baby Reindeer’ shows how people in relationships often form bonds rooted in their trauma histories and are often pulled to unconsciously hold disavowed parts of each other. It demonstrates how people may get repeatedly caught in abusive dynamics not because they like abuse, but because of an unconscious dance that might exist between them that keeps them from true intimacy. Although it appears counter-intuitive, it demonstrates how we may recreate our childhood traumas in our adult relationships with others, even if they are painful, fraught, and abusive. For most of us, it may not be as dramatic, painful or abusive as it was between Donny and all of these characters, but our lack of awareness of what we are not wanting to look at may ultimately keep us from having true intimacy in relationships. The emotional work to be done in these situations is to develop a deep understanding of the disavowed parts of ourselves that we are unable to own, but that keep us linked to another in a tortured or abusive dynamic. This is sometimes difficult emotional work, but the powerful uncoupling from traumatic dynamics and the subsequent emotional safety and intimacy that this work can bring is worth it.

For more information about couples therapy or attachment-focused or trauma-focused psychotherapy, please contact us at info@drpaulabruce.com. We’re here to help.

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